As you might remember from last Monday, I’ve started my new series of baking along with the contestants of the Great British Bake Off Season 5. This week the theme was biscuits. I decided to take part in the technical challenge, so I made Mary Berry’s Florentines. Although, I tip my hat to Mary Berry I made some changes to her recipe (the ones the contestants used) to reflect my personal flavour preferences. I have to say, no wonder it was the technical challenge. Making florentines proved quite tricky! I made mine a bit big, so next time I know- smaller teaspoons!
Keep an eye peeled for the guest judge in today’s post and catch up with last week’s instalment if you missed the winner. (Spoiler: it was me.)
Ingredients:
1/2 cup of flour (about 55 g)
3 1/2 tablespoons of butter (50 g)
1/4 cup of packed light brown sugar (50 g)
2 1/2 tablespoons of golden syrup (50g)
1/3 cup of glace cherries, finely chopped (50g)
1/2 cup of almonds, finely chopped (50 g)
1 (heaping) cup of plain chocolate chunks (200 g)
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line your cookie sheets with baking paper.
Add your butter, sugar and syrup into a small pan and stir until the butter is melted. Be careful not to burn your sugar. Remove it from the heat and add in the flour, cherries and almonds. Stir until evenly mixed.
This dough should make about 18 florentines, so you might want to spread them across a few cookie sheets as the cookie will spread as it is baking. Place spoonfuls of about a teaspoon full on your sheets.
Bake for 8-10 minutes. The cookies should be golden brown. Let them cool on the tray before attempting to remove them.
While the cookies are cooling, melt your chocolate bain marie. Spread a light layer of chocolate of the bottom of each cookie and allow them to cool slightly before making the signature zig-zag markings with a fork. Leave them on a cooling rack, chocolate side up until they are set.
Trying to convince Sam to eat some cookie dough.
My long-time family friend Mary Berry. (She’s been to the salon since last week.)
Pretty disappointed, but there’s still time to get back up to the top.
Florentines are good!
Stay tuned next week for the Not So British Bake Off: Week 3 (Bread)
