Monte Carlos - a recipe

My kitchen (AKA my lab) has been very busy lately producing lots of yummy (and practical, but not so yummy) things.  I love it when I make something that we used to buy and can happily declare that we won't need to buy that anymore.  This year I've added tortillas, naan, plain dry biscuits, choc ripple biscuits, yoghurt mix, ricotta cheese, vanilla essence, sliced bread and more to the list of homemades, but I still have a few things to conquer.  Eventually I would like to only buy basics at the supermarket and make everything else that we use (except maybe chocolate.....).

Biscuits (aka cookies) get eaten a lot around here. I've made choc chip, Anzac etc for years, but have a desire to find recipes to replace the shop bought favourites.  I found this recipe for choc ripples which is great and I plan to try this one for crisp milk arrowroots this week.  But on the weekend I made a cream biscuit favourite - Monte Carlos and they're so good, I thought I'd share the recipe. These biscuits are similar in taste to the Arnotts ones, though smaller and less sticky around the jam (both positives in my opinion).

They're not pretty.... let's call them 'rustic'.  But absolutely delicious!

My friend copied the recipe from a cookbook, but I don't know which one.  I will write the recipe exactly as it was in there, but 'correct' it with my changes - if you make them, feel free to do theirs, mine or a combination.

Monte Carlos

185g unsalted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup tightly packed light brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 cups 1 cup SR flour
3/4 cup 1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup dessicated coconut

Simple pantry ingredients = delicious homemade biscuits!

1/2 cup raspberry jam homemade strawberry jam
3/4 cup 1 cup icing sugar
60g butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp milk

• Preheat oven to 180c and grease/line oven trays.
• Beat butter, sugar and vanilla with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add egg and beat well.  Stir in sifted flours and coconut.
• Shape level teaspoons of dough into oval shapes, place on trays and roughen with a fork.  Roll teaspoonfuls into balls (for larger biscuits, a heaped teaspoon) and place on tray, press flat with a fork one way and then the other to create a rough cross cross pattern.
• Bake biscuits for 12 minutes. Cool on trays. Biscuits are firm enough to cool on cooling racks. Bake next batch.
• Make the cream filling by beating butter, icing sugar, milk and vanilla together until light and fluffy.
• When biscuits are cool (no, not before!) place 1/2 1/4 teaspoon of jam on a biscuit, top with 1/2 teaspoon of cream icing and sandwich with a second biscuit.  Allow icing to set.
• Makes about 50 cream pairs (less if you make them bigger)

The first batch I only pressed one way and they were too high.
The second batch pressed both ways on the tray and another lot of balls ready to go.