Mary Berry's Florentines

I first made these luxurious biscuits a couple of weeks ago. I had a bit of spare time on a wet Sunday afternoon and fancied baking something new. I had never made florentines and had always imagined them to be fairly tricky: I was surprised to find that they are actually fairly quick and easy to make. What is also fantastic about them is that the ingredients are fairly standard stock cupboard items - so easy to whizz up without having to go to the shop!

My recipe comes from Mary Berry’s Ultimate Cake Book – except I add a few extra glace cherries, or add stem ginger instead of the glace cherries – which produces delicious florentines!

Randomly, florentines were then the Technical Challenge this week on Great British Bake Off. It was quite handy to hear Mary Berry describe exactly what she was looking for: the thin lattice edges and the crisp crack when you bite into the biscuit.

The trickiest bit of making these florentines is getting the chocolate layer right – cooling the melted chocolate to an appropriate thickness that it can be spread onto the biscuits without dripping through the lattice, and also so that it is thick enough to hold the forked pattern. To make them extra pretty, you can melt some white chocolate and pipe it over the other (non-chocolate-covered) side of the biscuits. Like this, they make lovely presents.

You can vary the nuts / fruit to suit your tastes – as suggested, stem ginger makes a delicious addition. For Christmas, I think that dried cranberries would be lovely.

Florentines

Ingredients 

1. 50g butter
2. 50g Demerara sugar
3. 50g golden syrup
4. 50g plain flour
5. 6 glace cherries  / 25g stem ginger – finely chopped
6. 50g mixed candied peel, finely chopped
7. 50g mixed nuts, finely chopped
8. 200g plain chocolate, broken into pieces

Method 

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C.
2. Line 3 baking trays with baking parchment.
3. Place the butter, sugar and golden syrup into a small pan and heat gently until the butter has melted.
4. Mix the flour, peel, nuts and stem ginger / cherries in a bowl.
5. Stir this mix into the saucepan of melted butter/sugar/syrup.
6. Spoon teaspoons of the mix onto the prepared baking trays and spread out with the back of the teaspoon. Leave plenty of room for the florentines to spread further.
7. Bake in the pre-heated oven for 8-10 minutes until golden brown (turn the trays after 6 minutes if your oven bakes unevenly).
8. Allow the florentines to cool and harden slightly before moving onto a cooling rack to fully cool.
9. Melt about 150g chocolate in a glass bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water.
10. Remove the chocolate from the heat and add the remaining chocolate.
11. Stir to incorporate the additional chocolate so that it cools and thickens a little.
12. Use a teaspoon to spoon the chocolate onto the flat side of each florentine and spread out with the back of the teaspoon.
13. Use a fork to mark a zig-zag pattern into the chocolate.
14. Leave to cool. 

More Christmas present ideas for bakers

My kitchen cupboards may be overflowing but there are still more bits and bobs that I would like to fuel my baking habit. Here are some of the things on my Christmas List this year:

The Contemporary Cake Decorating Bible: Creative Techniques, Fresh Inspiration, Stylish Designs 

 

This has fantastic reviews on Amazon and appears to be a fairly comprehensive guide to cake decorating. 

100 Fondant Models for Cake Decorators: Designs for Special Celebrations

There seems to be lots and lots of books doing  this type of thing but this one seems to be more comprehensive than others and has good reviews.

 Lakeland Tilting Turntable

I've been finding icing tiered cakes difficult and so I really want one of these tilting turntables to help me get the edges beautifully smooth.

Sweetly Does It Cake Lifter
 

I only found this while browsing on Amazon but it seems like a great idea to help me move iced cakes from my new (hopefully) turntable to a cake tin or plate. 









Three-Tier Stackable Cooling Rack 39.5cm X 25cm

 
My kitchen is pretty small and things tend to end up all over the place when I'm cooking - a stacked cooling rack seems a sensible idea for when I'm cooking big batches of cakes or biscuits. This one has pretty good reviews on Amazon.

  



My Kitchen 12 Cup Mini Sandwich Tin

I'm a bit of a sucker for mini things and so love the idea of making mini sponges. I really rate Lakeland tins anyway so this one is definitely worth getting. 



Master Class Heavy Duty Macaroon Pan - 24 Cup

I had a go at making macaroons earlier this year - with mixed success. I'm keen to have another go and this tin seems like a great idea. 




Wilton 101-Piece Short Cookie Cutter Set 

A huge set of cookie cutters for a fairly bargainous price - you can't go far wrong!









Kitchen Craft Cookie Cutters, Leaf Shaped, Set of 7



 

Love these leaf-shaped cutters - next autumn, I really want to make pretty autumnal cupcakes and these would be brilliant! I'd also like the set of basic shapes. 









Alphabet Mini Cutters, the full set for Cookies, Icing, Sugarcraft & Cake Decoration

I've looked at Tappits etc, but these seem like they will be much easier to use - great for names etc. You can also buy a set of numbers. Be aware that these say that they are for cookies but they are pretty small so much better suited to sugarcraft. Worth a look around if you want to buy these - I saw some sets in TK Maxx (Cribbs Causeway) for about £6 today.


Pattern Edged Combs and Scraper

These are fairly cheap (£4.99 at the moment) and look fun to play with - adding patterns to buttercream on tiered cakes - will definitely need to be used with a turntable though!



















Really Good Tin - Step away from the biscuit tin

Just because I love this range and I think this tin is fun! A lot of the tins I currently use are old chocolate tins so maybe it's time to get a proper one!

Puff pastry mince pies

I love mince pies! I have to admit, we do buy shop-bought – especially early in the season. However, not much beats a home-made mince pie and, once you have made the mincemeat, it is so easy to make a batch of pies. Everyone thinks that you are a domestic goddess – even if you do just use shop-bought pastry!

I made the mincemeat a couple of weeks ago, but only got round to making my first batch of mince pies on Thursday this week:  in time for my mum’s arrival! Having had some pretty good puff pastry mince pies from the Co-op, I decided to make my own. However, even Baking Supremo Mary Berry says that she doesn’t make her own pastry – which is a good enough excuse for me, so my pastry came courtesy of Mr Sainsbury!

The co-op mince pies were flat rather than having a curved base, I’ve never made them like this but decided to give it a go. It was actually a lot easier than trying to put disks of pastry into a bun tin and they worked out pretty well – although I think I could have possibly baked them a little longer - but they tasted great anyway!

Christmas Mincemeat

Makes 3 lb (1.35 kg)

Ingredients

1. 8oz (225g) Bramley apples, cored and chopped small (no need to peel them)
2. 4 oz (110 g) shredded suet
3. 4oz (175 g) raisins
4. 4oz (110 g) sultanas
5. 2oz (55g) currants
6. 2oz (55g) dried cranberries
7. 2oz (55g) dried sour cherries
8. 4oz (110 g) whole mixed candied peel, finely chopped
9. 6oz (175 g) soft dark brown sugar
10. grated zest and juice 1 orange
11. grated zest and juice 1 lemon
12. 2 level teaspoons mixed ground spice
13. ¼ level teaspoon ground cinnamon
14. good pinch freshly grated nutmeg
15. 3 tablespoons cherry brandy or amaretto

Method

1. Combine all the ingredients, except for the alcohol, in a large oven-proof bowl, mixing thoroughly.
2. Cover the bowl with a clean cloth and leave the mixture in a cool place overnight or for 12 hours, so the flavours have a chance to mingle and develop.
3. Pre-heat the oven to gas mark ¼, 225°F (120°C).
4. Cover the bowl loosely with foil and place it in the oven for 3 hours, then remove the bowl from the oven. Don't worry about the appearance of the mincemeat, which will look positively swimming in fat. This is how it should look.
5. As it cools, stir it from time to time; the fat will coagulate and, instead of it being in tiny shreds, it will encase all the other ingredients.
6. When the mincemeat is quite cold, stir well again, adding the alcohol.
7. Pack in jars that have been sterilised (see below).
8. When filled, cover with waxed discs and seal.
9. The mincemeat will keep for ages in a cool, dark cupboard but it is best eaten within a year of making.

NOTE: To sterilise jars, wash the jars and lids in warm soapy water, rinse well, then dry thoroughly with a clean tea cloth, place them on a baking tray and pop into a medium oven, gas mark 4, 350F, 180C, for 5 minutes.

Puff pastry mince pies

Ingredients

1. 6 tsp mincemeat (preferably home-made)
2. 2 tblsp milk
3. 250g puff pastry

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C.
2. Line a baking tray with baking parchment.
3. Roll the pastry out to approx. 4mm thick.
4. Cut out twelve 8cm disks.
5. Place 6 of the disks on the baking tray and brush with milk.
6. Place a teaspoon of mincemeat in the centre of each disk.
7. Brush each of the remaining pastry disks with milk and then place them, milk side down, on top of the other mincemeat-topped disks.
8. Press down around the edges to seal.
9. Brush the tops of the mince pies with more milk.
10. Cook for 20-25 minutes, until risen and golden.
11. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes.
12. Move pies onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

Christmas cupcakes

Ok – so it was just about still November, but I decided it was close enough to Christmas to start Christmas-themed baking. Last Thursday was the last day of a management course that I had been taking at work and so I decided to make Christmas cupcakes for my coursemates. As there were 16 of us on the course, I needed to do a double batch of cupcakes. Never one to do things the easy way, I was keen to do two different flavours – however, on a school night, two lots of cupcakes is a big ask. I decided on a compromise – a lemon cupcake batter that I then add additional flavourings to make a second batch of Christmas flavoured cakes!

So the base cupcake batter is my lemon Primrose Bakery cupcakes. I made a double batch of this batter up and filled 12 cupcake cases. I then added orange zest, half a teaspoon of nutmeg, ginger, mixed spice and cinnamon, a teaspoon of orange flavouring and approximately 5 tablespoons of alcohol-soaked dried fruit (leftovers from my Christmas Cake). I stirred these ingredients into the remaining lemon cupcake batter and then filled another 12 cupcake cases.

To decorate, I made a lemon buttercream for the lemon cupcakes, tinted it a Christmas green and swirled it onto the cupcakes with a Wilton 2D nozzle. A few silver balls, mini candy cane sprinkles and a gold star complete the cakes.

For the Christmas cupcakes, I topped them with a circle of marzipan and a circle of ready-to-roll icing. I embossed the icing with a snowflake embossing plate (like this one), sprayed them with pearlising spray and topped the cakes with shapes cut with my new Christmas plunger cutters.     

If you fancy just making a single batch of 12 Christmas cutters, this is the recipe I would follow:

Christmas cupcakes

Ingredients (single batch of 12 cupcakes)

1. 110g butter, at room temperature
2. 225g golden castor sugar
3. 2 large eggs
4. 150g self-raising flour, sifted
5. 125g plain flour, sifted
6. 60ml semi-skimmed milk
7. 2 tblsp lemon juice
8. 2 tblsp orange juice
9. 1 tblsp sour cream
10. Grated zest of a lemon
11. Grated zest of an orange
12. ½ tsp cinnamon
13. ½ tsp nutmeg
14. ½ tsp ginger
15. ½ tsp mixed spice
16. Approx. 5 tblsp alcohol-soaked dried fruit or mincemeat

Decoration

1. 2 tblsp apricot jam, sieved
2. White and coloured ready-to-roll icing
3. Marzipan
4. Other decorations as required

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160C/350F/GM4.
2. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcake cases.
3. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy this will take at least 5 minutes with an electric hand mixer – don’t rush this stage).
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing for a few minutes after each addition. It should result in a lovely light mousse-like mixture.
5. Combine the two flours and all the spices in a separate bowl.
6. Combine the milk, sour cream, orange and lemon juice in a jug.
7. Add one third of the flour mix to the creamed mixture and stir gently to combine.
8. Pour in one third of the milk mixture and stir gently.
9. Continue to add flour mix and then milk mixture alternately, stirring gently after each addition, until all have been added.
10. Gently stir in the dried fruit and the orange and lemon zest.
11. Spoon mixture into the cupcake cases, filling to about 2/3 full.
12. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes until lightly golden brown. The cakes will spring back lightly when touched, if cooked.
13. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in tin for about 10 minutes, before carefully placing on a wire rack to finish cooling.

To decorate:

1. Use a round cookie cutter to cut out 12 circles of marzipan and 12 circles of ready-to-roll icing.
2. Brush each cooled cake with the sieved jam.
3. Stick a marzipan circle on each cake.
4. Brush the top of each marzipan circle with water and then stick a circle of icing onto each cake.
5. Use additional coloured icing as decorations – using water to stick on.