Making Moons

My friend Leigh was rather unhappy this week, her hamster nearly died, her boy toy left to spend four months in America, exam pressure was getting to her and her job was getting stressful. I tried cheering her up and being a good friend but sometimes you just have to be unhappy. So I figured the best thing is a cup of tea and some biscuits because it might not fix anything but it helps. I decided to make her Vanilla Moons because when I made them for my friend Elle she loved them.  I got them out of this book and edited the recipe.

This is a super easy recipe that tastes amazing, it’s probably a good recipe to do if you have kids because there is no raw ingredients. Don’t think that its difficult because you need use two bowls there is hardly any mess once you have finished because the dough scoops up all the bits so you don’t have too scrub the bowls clean.

175g Ground Almonds

115g Plain Flour

Pinch of Salt

225g Unsalted Butter

115g Granulated Sugar

2tspns Vanilla extract

Icing Sugar for Dusting

Sift together the salt and flour into one bowl and set them to the side. In a separate bowl blend the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Spend about ten minutes on this otherwise it wont be creamed enough. Really give it some wellie!

Go back to the bowl with the flour in and add the ground almonds. I always sift them even though the recipe doesn’t call for it. Add the vanilla extract and stir together.

Then spoon on the sugar butter and mix together. I use the silicon spatulas that you can use for icing cakes. They are really cheap from most bargain stores and are really good at getting all the mixture out the bowl.

  Keep mixing until the mixture forms a slightly crumbly dough ball.

Oil some cling film or use grease proof paper and wrap the dough in it. I always place the cling film on a counter, I used my draining board because I forgot to move my baking trays, and then oil it with my hands and then place the dough onto of it. 

Then place the dough in your fridge to cool for half an hour. Turn you oven on to heat, 325F/170C/Gas mark 3 and grease two baking trays.  You can also use this time too wash up. Wooo efficiency!

When its been half an hour, whip the dough ball out the fridge and unwrap it. Take a walnut sizes chunk out of it and roll it in your palm.

Then roll it out into a tube and shape into a crescent shape and place evenly on your tray. Then Repeat until you have covered your trays, leaving about a inch for expansion. They kind of look like a row of dentures I think...

Leave in the oven for ten minutes until they are slightly creamer colour than before but NOT brown. Take them out the oven but do not touch leave them on the tray to cool down. After about ten minutes they should be warm but okay to move, move them with a spatular onto a cooling rack and leave them to cool properly or eat them warm. Dust them with a touch of icing sugar and they are done. 

To package them I used a tupperware container which I lined with a Union Jack serviette and a small doily. 

Then layered biscuits on to of that, I forgot to take a photograph of the finished product so the picture looks like I'm being really stingy on the biscuits but I honestly did another layer. 

She nibbled and nommed them and smiled :) Making friends happy is what life is about.

Yours 

Belinda Stepford

xxx