Melting Moments - a Random Recipe

I've chosen Belleau Kitchen's Random Recipe challenge for this month for a slightly self indulgent post. Dom's challenge is titled 'Cuttings, memories and clippings' and it's the memories part that I've taken, rather than the cuttings and clippings. Dom explains the process of randomising your choice of recipe much better than I could, so go to the link if you are not familiar with this challenge.

My mother died last month and while all her family and friends were sad to lose her, we all recognised that she had given up fighting her illnesses several months ago and was ready to go, so our grief is tempered with relief that she isn't suffering any more. In the process of clearing her home, I came across the BeRo recipe book that she taught me to bake with, back in the early 1960s. It's dog-eared, stained and even scorched in places, and is barely holding together as a booklet (so probably qualifies for Dom's challenge as a collection of clippings), but it is still usable, with care. Glancing inside, I saw the recipes we made frequently were marked with pencil crosses, so decided the Random Recipe I chose would be the first marked recipe in the book. I was delighted to see that the recipe was for Melting Moments, as these, and the cornflake flapjacks (which don't seem to be on the website) are what I remember best of all.

The only difference I made to the recipe was to use butter instead of margarine; I still included the lard. I also used vanilla paste with seeds, instead of vanilla extract. I rolled the dough balls in rolled oats rather than dessicated coconut, although I have to confess that I thought they should be rolled in crushed cornflakes - another example of my notoriously poor memory, perhaps, or it might have been one of Mum's adaptations. My recipe booklet suggested marble-sized balls of dough, but I still only got 20 biscuits, rather than the 30 suggested on the website or the 40 suggested by the booklet.

These delicate little biscuits are short and crumbly, and melt in the mouth - this texture is due to the lard, I think. They are small, so are gone in a moment too, which accounts for the name! The vanilla flavour was quite intense, and the oats just gave some extra texture, rather than another flavour, as coconut would have done. These would be ideal for afternoon tea, arranged on a cake stand with other little treats.

As another self-indulgent reminiscence, I've shown these biscuits on a lone plate I found at the back of Mum's pantry, and rescued from eventually going into a skip.