Technical Bake Part ii: Florentines/ Ain't Nobody Got Time To Temper Chocolate

Welcome back to the new series of 'Oh Crap, What Has Kirsty Got Herself Into?'!

I won't lie, when I watched this week's episode I thought about sacking this project in. Florentines? Really? Has anyone in the history of anything found any time to make Florentines ever?

I would guess at no. However, today was a particularly sleepy Sunday and I don't wanna quit this until at least episode 6. So here you are: my attempt at Florentines. Brace yourself. 

The Ingredients:

- 50g butter

- 50g demerara sugar 

- 50g golden syrup

- 50g plain flour

- 25g of glacé cherries or dried cranberries, finely chopped

- 50g candied peel, finely chopped

- 25g almonds, finely chopped

- 25g walnut pieces, finely chopped

- 150g plain chocolate

The Recipe:

- Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line a baking tray with with baking parchment.

- Carefully weigh out the butter, sugar and syrup into a small pan and heat gently until the melts. 

- Take the pan off the heat and add the flour, cherries (or cranberries), candied peel and walnuts to the pan and stir everything together. It'll form a pretty sticky (and reeeeeeeally tasty) mixture. 

- So, this recipe is meant to make 18... Mine made 15 of varying sizes. The easiest way to do it is to do one baking tray at a time, I reckon. Spoon out 6 or so dollops onto your lined baking tray, pop in oven, bake for 8-10 mins, take out, leave to cool for a fews minutes, transfer to a cooling rack, rinse, repeat until you run out of mixture. Make sure you leave lots of space between the mixture on the tray. 

Beautiful! If I do say so myself.

Let's take some time out for a second.

We need to talk about tempering the chocolate. If you're not aware, tempering chocolate is when you use a thermometer and other bits of kit to precisely measure the temperature of your chocolate as you melt it and then cool it down again.

It's meant to keep your chocolate shiny and give it a nice 'Snap'. 

Six words:

Ain't. Nobody. Got. Time. For. That. 

Maybe I'll have a go at it one day. But today was not that day, even though Lady Mary Berry's recipe specified it. Guess what I did, reader?! I melted the chocolate, I spread it on the cooled biscuits, did the funny cute zigzag thing with a fork, and that was it. AND THEY STILL LOOK GOOD. 

So yes, if you find a recipe for these things that demands you get tempering, sack it off and do the lazy thing. They will be just as good and people will be just as impressed and everything will be fine. FINE. 

I'd never eaten a Florentine before. They're pretty good! A bit weird - they're like biscuits for grown ups. If you eat one with a brew, you feel a bit fancy, ya know? I'd recommend making them, too. You'll impress your pals and probably yourself and they're not even that difficult.

I have no idea when I'll get time to make next week's Technical Bake but it's bread week and I l-o-v-e making bread, so I'll find the time, for sure. Until then, happy Florentine-making!

Technical Bake Part i:- The Cherry Cake/An Array of Excuses

Oh god, it's been a year. To the two of you who used to read this: I am sorry. 

In the past year I:

- Applied (and got!) the job of my dreams 

- Moved from Manchester to the middle of ruddy nowhere in Cumbria

- (for the new jobs, obvs)

- Learned to drive and got a little car

- Fell 4 inches off a step (TWICE) and broke my foot (TWICE!)

Those are my excuses and I am sticking to them. 

Now I am working in a job where I don't come home and want to crawl under a rock and am also pretty housebound (see broken foot, above). 

AND THE BAKE OFF IS BACK!!!! So I, too, am back with a vengeance.

Some of you may know that I had a go at applying for this year's Bake Off. I got nowhere. 

It's fine. It's fine. I have my new, crazy Cumbrian life to throw myself into. I'm not bitter. 

HOWEVER. To prove those miserable so-and-so's at the BBC wrong, I have given myself the challenge of having a go at the technical bake each week. And blogging it. It'll be like I'm living the Bake Off. The only difference is that I'll have a proper recipe. And no time limit. Or pressure. 

IT'S BASICALLY THE SAME THING OKAY. 

Okay. 

Right to it. 

The ingredients:

- 200g glacé cherries (actually - a few extras for decoration)

- 225g self-raising flour

- 175g softened butter

- 175g caster sugar

- 1 lemon, 

- 50g ground almonds

- 3 large eggs

- 175g icing sugar

- 15g flaked almonds, toasted

The recipe:

- Preheat your oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Grease a 23cm bundt tin or savarin mould with butter. (I don't own one if these things. I used a loaf tin. But then, I'm a bit of a wild card.)

- Chop your cherries into quarters, rinse them, drain them, then coat them in two tablespoons of the flour. Just...trust me. 

- Put your dry, flour-y cherries to one side

- In a big bowl, mix the flour, sugar, butter, lemon zest, eggs and ground almonds together until they're well combined. 

- Fold in the cherries carefully

- Tip it all into your greased tin. The recipe recommends 30-40 mins in the oven. Mine took more like 60. You know the drill. Bake it till it looks nice and golden and a knife comes out clean.

- Leave it to cool in its tin and then on a wire rack.

- When it's cool, mix together the icing sugar and juice from the lemon to a thick paste. Drizzle over the cake and top with the toasted flaked almonds and your extra cherries. 

Voila!

Eat your heart out, Berry. One cherry cake made by: reading the full instructions, obeying no time limit, and using the wrong kind of pan. You can stick your savarin. Roll on biscuit week.