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. 

Orange & Cinnamon Shortbread

Last week was my turn on the rota for cake at work. We have a big team briefing every Friday known affectionately as the “Friday cake meeting” – there’s a rota with each week assigned to a member of the team! It’s taken very seriously! Unfortunately, I have set a rather strong precedent and so I had people telling me all week that they were excited about what I was going to produce on Friday – talk about pressure!

The trouble with the Friday cake meeting is that it is on a Friday! This means that you have to bake on a week night after work and as it had been a long week, I wasn’t up for making anything fancy! To complicate things further, we have one person who is gluten-intolerant and one person who is allergic to nuts and eggs! They always insist that they don’t want people to go to extra effort for them but I wanted to ensure that I catered for them both.

I decided to go with the gluten-free lemon polenta cake that I made earlier in the week (which was a bit of a disaster as I miscalculated and used too few eggs – having drowned the resulting cake in lots of lemon syrup, it was edible but nowhere near perfect – fail!) and two new recipes: toffee apple crumble cake and these orange and cinnamon shortbread biscuits.

I’d seen this Cookie’s cakes and Bakes recipe on Pinterest a little while ago and had pinned it onto my Christmas Baking board. It seemed a nice simple recipe that would work well as little baked Christmas presents, or as part as a Christmas hamper. It’s also conveniently egg-free and so this seemed like a great opportunity to try it out.

It’s a great simple and speedy recipe and would be great for making with kids. I used my favourite teapot cookie cutter and simply dusted the cooked biscuits with icing sugar, but you could drizzle with chocolate, or an orange blossom flavoured water icing. You could also vary the flavouring – adding lemon zest, or vanilla essence, or other spices. Or you could add chopped chocolate, or dried fruit, or anything else you fancy!  

The resulting biscuits are short and crispy. They will lose their crisp crunch after a day but they will last fine for at least a week. I actually prefer them once they are a day old and are a bit softer, but that’s probably a matter of taste!

Orange & Cinnamon Shortbread

Ingredients

1. 200g soft butter
2. 100g icing sugar
3. 100g cornflour
4. 250g Plain flour
5. Zest of one orange
6. 1 tsp cinnamon

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C.
2. Line 2 baking trays with baking parchment.
3. Beat the butter until very light and creamy.
4. Add the orange zest and beat.
5. Slowly add the icing sugar, cornflour, plain flour and cinnamon, stirring gently until combined.
6. Use your hands to bring the mixture together to make a dough. Try not to handle the dough too much – it will affect the texture of the shortbread.
7. Roll the dough out between two sheets of baking parchment until 10mm thick.
8. Use cookie cutters to cut out desired shapes.
9. Re-roll any off-cuts and cut out more shapes.
10. Place on baking trays and bake for 12-15 minutes or until pale golden around the edges.
11. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes on the baking tray.
12. Tip onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Christmas Spice Biscuits

Merry Christmas! Sorry it’s a little late – I’ve been having a lovely relaxing time back at home over Christmas. Time to catch up on writing up a few of the things that I made before Christmas.

At work, we have a Christmas Breakfast: everyone takes in a food contribution and we have a bit of a party, including handing out the Secret Santa gifts. I decided to buy the Really Good biscuit tin (as in my list of great gifts for bakers) as my Secret Santa gift and so felt that it really needed to be filled with biscuits! Biscuits are great as they can be prepared a few days in advance, so very useful at this time of year when evenings and weekends tend to be busy.

I wanted to make use of some of my Christmas cookie cutters, so decided on the Biscuiteers’ Treacle Spice biscuits – as the Biscuiteers’ biscuits are brilliant for using with cutters. I hadn’t baked these ones before but they sounded suitably festive! They are easy to make, although slightly hard to judge when they are cooked as they are a fairly dark colour.  They held their shape beautifully, even the delicate thin bits of the shapes. However, for me, they were a little too treacly and slightly bitter. Therefore, when I made a second batch to take home, I substituted half of the treacle for golden syrup and also added the zest of half an orange, which really improved them for me. Don’t worry if the dough seems very marbled when it comes together– this doesn’t matter and it is important not to over-work the dough as this will make the biscuits tough.

Here’s the adapted recipe (makes about 24 biscuits, I usually double the recipe):

Christmas Spice Biscuits

Ingredients

1. 200g plain flour
2. ½ tsp baking powder
3. ½ tsp ground ginger
4. ½ tsp cinnamon
5. ½ tsp mixed spice
6. Zest of ½ an orange
7. 50g dark brown sugar
8. 100g salted butter, diced (at room temp)
9. 25g black treacle
10. 25g golden syrup

Method

1. Sift the flour, baking powder and all the spices into a mixing bowl. Add the sugar and stir well.
2. Rub in the butter, using just the tips of your fingers, until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
3. Make a well in the centre of your mix and add the golden syrup, treacle and orange zest.
4. Use a knife to stir the mixture until it begins to come together as a dough.
5. Use your hands to bring the dough together.
6. Divide the dough into two and shape into two flat disks.
7. Place the first piece of dough between two sheets of baking parchments. (This means that you do not have to add extra flour when rolling.)
8. Roll the dough out evenly until it is approximately 5-6mm thick all over (you can buy rolling guides, but I have this rolling pin, which is brilliant!). If the top or bottom sheets of parchment crinkle at any time, peel it off and smooth out.
9. When rolled to the correct thickness, move the dough (still sandwiched between parchment) onto a baking tray and then into the fridge to chill for at least 20-30 minutes.
10. After chilling, use your selected cutters to cut out the biscuits, cutting each one as close to the last as possible, in order to use the dough efficiently. Re-roll the dough as necessary, but try to work the dough as little as possible.  
11. Place each biscuit onto a lined baking tray, allowing space between as the biscuits will spread a little.
12. Bake the biscuits for 14 – 18 minutes. When cooked, the biscuits will be firm around the edges but still slightly soft on top.
13. Remove the baking trays from the oven and carefully remove each biscuit from the tray, placing them gently onto a wire cooling rack. The biscuits will still be very delicate at this stage.  
14. Allow biscuits to cool totally before storing or icing.

To decorate:

Snowflakes

I used the two smallest cutters from this set.

Ingredients

1. 20ml orange juice or water
2. 150g royal icing sugar
3. Ice blue food colour
4. Edible silver balls

Method

1. Add the orange juice to the royal icing sugar.
2. Use an electric mixer to beat the mix (starting on low and increasing to high speed) for about 5 minutes. You are looking for the mix to be a toothpaste-like consistency.
3. Spoon the icing into a piping bag with a very small round tip.
4. Ice the biscuits with a variety of swirling patterns, decorating with silver balls as required.

Baubles

I used the cutters from this set.

Ingredients

1. Ready-to-roll fondant icing
2. Water
3. Paste food colours
4. Edible gold leaf
5. Lustre dusts
6. Clear alcohol (eg vodka/gin)

Method 

You can use either pre-coloured ready-to roll fondant or colour the fondant yourself – or I guess you could make your own fondant – but this seems like a lot of effort!

1. Roll the coloured fondant out to approximately 2mm thick.
2. If desired, roll the icing carefully over an embossing plate.
3. Using the same cutters as used for the biscuits, cut out the fondant.
4. Use a clean brush to brush each biscuit with water before carefully placing the fondant shapes onto the biscuits.
5. Mix a sprinkling of lustre dust with a drop of the alcohol to create a paint.
6. Use a fine paint brush to decorate the biscuits.
7. Use another brush to gently lift fragments of the gold leaf and carefully place to form the top of the bauble.

Polar animals

I bought this set of polar animal cutters from TK Maxx just before Christmas – worth a look in there, they had lots of sets for bargain prices!

Ingredients

1. Ready-to-roll fondant icing
2. Water
3. Paste food colours

Method

You can use either pre-coloured ready-to roll fondant or colour the fondant yourself – or I guess you could make your own fondant – but this seems like a lot of effort!

1. Roll the coloured fondant out to approximately 2mm thick.
2. Using the same cutters as used for the biscuits, cut out the fondant.
3. Use a clean brush to brush each biscuit with water before carefully placing the fondant shapes onto the biscuits.
4. Use different colours of fondant to add details like the penguins’ feet and beaks, and scarves for the penguins and bears.    

 

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!