Mrs Resak's Almond Crescents

WHEN I was growing up in Melbourne's western suburbs in the 1950s many of my neighbours were European refugees.
My house was opposite a railway line, just near the railway station.
My best friend Kathleen (or Katti) lived on the opposite side of the tracks.
Kathleen was Hungarian. Her parents were in the Hungarian Resistance and fled for their lives ahead of the Russian invasion by skiing across the border, leaving Kathleen and her brother behind with their grandmother.
Kathleen and I met at primary school in about 1960 when she and her brother were finally reunited with their parents in Australia.
Another neighbour was Maurice Chevalier. When he arrived in Australia the press mobbed him, thinking he was the famous French singer.
He wasn't a singer - but he was very French. We would stand gobsmacked when he came home from work and swept his wife Eileen into a very European embrace. Our parents did nothing like that.
Eileen was Australian but had studied French and they had probably met at the Alliance Francaise.
Eileen was the link between the Australian-born women in the neighbourhood and the new arrivals, most of whom spoke little or no English.
They would move into a group of houses on the other side of the railway line, live there for a few months and then leave. I have often wondered since if the houses were owned or rented by some sort of group that worked with refugees to help them settle in to their new country.
One year a group of refugees arrived just before Christmas.
I was too young to know much about where they had come from but I remember they seemed very sad.
Eileen Chevalier organised a morning tea so the refugee women could meet some of their neighbours.
They didn't speak much French either but they understood she wanted them to ``bring a plate''.
When they arrived at the morning tea, one woman introduced herself shyly as ``Mrs Resak'' (at least that was what her name sounded like to me). She brought a plate of small almond crescents, smothered in vanilla-flavoured icing sugar.
They were the most exotic biscuits I had ever eaten - light shortbreads that melted in my mouth.
Mrs Resak wrote out the recipe for me and Eileen translated it into English. The ingredients were given in grams but Eileen converted them to ounces.
I have made the crescents most Christmases since then and and always think of Mrs Resak when I do. I never met her again.
I hope you enjoy the crescents as much as my family do.

Mrs Resak's Almond Crescents
Ingredients110g (4 oz) plain flour
50g (1 3/4 oz) almond meal
95g (3 1/3 oz) butter
35g (1 1/3 oz) sugar

Method Mix all the ingredients together by hand, squeezing the mixture through your fingers.
Form into small crescents or ``Napoleon's hat'' shapes.
Bake in a slow oven 160C (325F) until pale brown, about 15 minutes.
While still warm, not hot, roll in vanilla-flavoured icing sugar.

Mrs Resak's vanilla-flavoured icing sugar
Mix two packets of vanilla (or vanillin) sugar with 225g (8oz) icing sugar.
Note: This makes a huge quantity, and vanilla sugar is expensive. So I usually shake a few teaspoons of vanilla sugar (from the spice section of the supermarket) in about a cup of icing sugar.
That makes enough vanilla sugar for a batch of crescents.