Sicilian Creams

Ah, Silicon Sicilian Creams, an old favourite. Mum's made these for years, and the first time I actually read through the recipe (I was about 7), I gasped and ran to mum, accusing her of feeding me silicon. Sweet little 7 year old Sophie who couldn't read.

The original recipe for these comes from an old, old Women's Weekly Italian cookbook, which is just gorgeous. If you can find it anywhere in second-hand book sales etc, do buy it. It's great.

Anyway, moving on. For Sicilian Creams, you'll need:

- 1 3/4 cups self raising flour

- 60g butter, sliced thinly (my butter in the image isn't sliced thin enough)

- 1/2 cup castor sugar

- 1 tsp finely grated lemon rind

- 1 egg

- 1/4 cup milk

- 1 Tbsp Kahlua

- Whipped cream and icing sugar to serve

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Sift the flour into a large bowl, and rub in the butter. For those who've never done this before, it'll probably be a little bit odd. You need to kind of squish the butter and rub it into the flour with your fingertips until there are no noticeable lumps of butter. It'll probably take between 15 and 30 minutes to get it fine enough, so don't rush it.

Once the butter and flour are combined, mix in the sugar well. Make a well in the centre of your dry ingredients. Combine the lemon rind, egg, milk and vanilla, and pour into your well. Mix it together until you have a soft dough.

Now, lightly flour a surface (eg chopping board or just the bench) and turn out your dough onto it. Knead it gentl until the dough is smooth and soft.

Gently roll out the dough until it's 1cm thick.

Now cut it into 5cm or so rounds using whatever appropriate cutting device you can find (I used a tea glass).

Now lightly grease a baking tray (I actually needed two) and place your little rounds about 1 inch apart from each other. Now bake for 15-20 minutes until they've got a little bit of colour and they've risen.

Take them out of the oven and onto a cooling rack...

Cut each one in half using a serrated knife, and brush the insides of both halves with Kahlua.

Fill the inside with whipped cream, sandwich them together and dust with sieved icing sugar. Perfetto!
(Warning, these are incredibly moreish. If you're not careful you'll have eaten the whole lot in a few minutes!)