Gluten Free Melting Moments

Light shortbread biscuits sandwiched together with vanilla and strawberry buttercream, these gluten free melting moments are a true melt-in-your-mouth delight.

When it comes to Kiwi biscuits that just have this little something special going on, you really can’t go past a melting moment.

These deliciously light biscuits are buttery, very slightly crumbly (in a good way) and sandwiched together with a creamy buttercream filling.

While vanilla is the classic flavour, you can flavour these in a multitude of ways, which we’ll talk about in a moment (pun intended).

Dare I say it, I think these gluten free melting moments are even better than regular ones – the fact there is no gluten to overwork means you’re guaranteed that light delicate textured biscuit.

Anyway, if I haven’t talked you into making these by now, then I’m not doing my job properly. Let’s just talk about how easy they are to make, which should seal the deal.

GF Melting Moment Ingredients

• Butter – I’ve specified unsalted butter in this recipe, as I prefer it to salted butter in buttercream. If you’ve ever eaten buttercream that tasted “too buttery” it was likely made with salted butter, which tastes like, well, butter. Unsalted butter gives the buttercream a more creamy taste, rather than buttery. If you don’t mind the buttery taste, then by all means use salted butter.
• Icing Sugar – Icing sugar helps give the melting moments that classic “shortness”.
• Gluten Free Plain Flour – I used my gluten free baking flour blend, which contains tapioca starch, brown rice flour and potato starch. You can use a shop-bought gluten free flour blend if you prefer, just keep in mind that different blends contain different ingredients and the results may vary slightly.
• Cornflour – If you live outside of NZ or Australia this may be known as cornstarch where you live. This is the second ingredient that gives the biscuits that melting moment texture. If you’re using a premade gf flour blend that is high in starch (if maize/cornflour/cornstarch is the first or second ingredient listed) then I would recommend leaving out the cornflour and increasing the gluten free flour by the same amount, to prevent the biscuits from being too crumbly.
  Make sure you check that your cornflour is maize cornflour and not wheaten cornflour, which contains gluten.
• Xanthan gum – This helps stop the biscuits from being too crumbly, and also stops them from spreading too much in the oven and becoming flat. If you use a premade gluten free flour blend that contains a gum ingredient then you can omit the xanthan gum in the recipe.
• Baking powder – Just a little baking powder for lift. Make sure you check that your baking powder is gluten free as some are not.
• Vanilla – You can use either vanilla extract or vanilla paste in this recipe.
• Milk – This is used in the icing, but if you don’t want to use milk you can use some hot water instead.

Optional Icing Flavouring Ideas

One of the best things about these biscuits is that while they’re delicious with vanilla buttercream, you can also fancy them up with different flavoured fillings.

For the biscuits pictured here, I flavoured half of the buttercream with some freeze-dried strawberry powder. All I did was sprinkle the powder into the finished buttercream and stir it in. You could do this with any fruit powder and there are many available – raspberry, blueberry, plum, passionfruit, mango etc. The powders give a nice natural colouring, but you can also add a touch of matching food colouring to the icing if you want.

Another classic option is to add some lemon zest to the buttercream, and you can replace the milk with lemon juice. Passionfruit pulp also gives a lovely tart flavour.

While buttercream is the classic melting moment filling, you can sandwich the biscuits with jam or marmalade instead.

How to Make Gluten Free Melting Moments

The dough for these biscuits is super simple to make.

You’ll start by beating the soft butter and vanilla together in a large bowl until they’re creamy. Then you’ll add in the icing sugar and beat until it’s light and creamy. Getting lots of air in is what makes these biscuits so light. I find a good 2-3 minutes of creaming on med-high speed to be the sweet spot (pun totally intended).

Then you’ll mix in the combined sifted dry ingredients. It’s best to do this in 2-3 additions, and I like to mix in the last addition by hand as it starts getting too stiff for the mixer.

The dough should be soft, but firm enough to hold together in a ball. If it’s slightly too soft, you can chill it for a few minutes to firm it up. If it’s waaay too soft, then it may be due to using a different flour blend, so you might need to add in a little more flour.

Now you’ll roll tablespoonfuls of dough into balls. I portion out the dough with a 1TBSP capacity cookie scoop – because I have one. But if you don’t, just use a spoon, like everyone did before cookie scoops were a thing and people like me splashed out money on them.

The rolled balls get flattened with a fork (dip it in flour if it’s sticking to the dough) and bake them for 10-12 minutes, or until they’re very lightly golden brown on the bottom. They shouldn’t brown much on the top.

Let them cool on the tray until they’re firm enough to handle, then cool completely on a wire rack.

Next, we make the icing.

Just beat the butter and vanilla with your electric beaters until creamy, add in the icing sugar in several additions and beat until fluffy. Then you can add add in the milk, just a little at a time, just until the icing is a spreadable consistency. We want it to be a stiff buttercream though, otherwise it will squish out between the biscuits when you bite into them.

Then, you ice ’em! You can spread the icing onto the biscuits using a knife (or an offset spatula/palette knife) or you can pop the icing into a piping bag fitted with a piping tip, as I did.

For these, I used a large round piping tip for the vanilla icing, and a large open star tip for the strawberry icing.

Storing the Melting Moments

These little delights will keep well for at least a week in an airtight container at room temperature.

Then all that’s left to do is to sit back with a cup of tea, and have a melting moment of your own.

Quick Melting Moment FAQ

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