Continuing my trial of a different recipe each week, I've chosen this week's technical challenge of my family's favourite biscuit to enjoy with a cup of tea at grandma's house... florentines. Many of the bakers were a bit stumped with this one and I'll admit that although I've eaten them many a time I've never actually baked them before this week. I used Mary Berry's Florentine recipe, surely you can't go wrong following Bezza's instructions... let's hope!
Ingredients
- 50g butter
- 50g caster sugar
- 50g golden syrup
- 50g plain flour
- 25g glacé cherries
- 50g candied peel
- 25g almonds
- 25g walnut pieces
- 200g plain chocolate
Start by preheating your oven to 180˚C and lining 2 or 3 trays with greaseproof paper. Measure out the butter, sugar and golden syrup into a saucepan and lightly heat on the hob until the butter has completely melted, stirring occasionally. When melted, turn the hob off and stir in the flour and chopped cherries, peel, almonds and walnuts. It can be your choice how finely to chop the ingredients as this will determine the texture of your florentines (FYI I opted to chop mine quite finely to create a more gooey biscuit).
Once your ingredients have been combined, you are ready to spoon out your mixture. This was one area I, as did some of the bakers on this week's show, fell down. As I was rushing, I didn't measure out my mixture, ending up with some florentines larger than others. This didn't bother me too much but if you want uniformed biscuits you should get 18 equal sized florentines from this recipe. So once you have decided on quantity, spoon your mixture onto your prepared trays and then flatten into an appealing circular shape. It is important to note that you have to leave quite a lot of space between each biscuit as they do spread out a lot during baking.
Bake for approximately 8 minutes or until the outsides start to go a darker brown. If you want an even colouring I would suggest baking each tray one at a time so that they are on the same shelf. Now leave them to cool on the tray (don't try to remove them from the tray to a cooling rack as they remain soft whilst still warm) before transferring them to a plate or rack ready for decorating.
The traditional decoration for florentines is a covering of zigzagged dark chocolate on the bottom of each biscuit, unlike what some of the bakers provided this week on GBBO. Again because I was rushing, this part didn't work out exactly to plan as I completely melted all of the chocolate and then immediately spread onto my biscuits, making it almost impossible to create a nice zigzag. As Mary suggests, you should temper the chocolate (melt half then add the rest before leaving to cool slightly) before spreading onto your florentines and next time that's exactly what I will do as the zigzag does give it a lovely finish.
And that's it. I'll admit it was a much simpler recipe than I was expecting. I still need to see if they get my grandma's approval for the next family afternoon tea but so far they've had the thumbs up from myself and my mum! Let me know if you've had a go at making Mary's florentines or any of the other recipes from this week.
Next week, bread week!
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