Hello Everyone!
This week's blog post was composed over an entire week as it's Biscuit Week! There were two main things that inspired me to make this post and partake in Biscuit Week:
1. The Great British Bake Off has returned to TV screens for its sixth season and week two was Biscuit Week for the contestants. As a fan of GBBO and biscuits I felt it was only right to have my own Biscuit Week.
2. At the beginning of the year I went through the majority of my recipe books and bookmarked everything that I hoped to bake before the year is over. Looking at the amount things I had bookmarked I thought the only way that I could complete a reasonable chunk in a short space of times was to set aside a week dedicated to baking a certain category. Hence I decided to start with a Biscuit Week.
So let's get started with 7 days, 7 biscuits...
This Biscuit Weeks involved a lot of chocolate-y recipes so if you don't like chocolate I recommend skipping to Sunday.
Monday:
Biscuit week started off with one slight problem, I had no eggs. *facepalm* After searching online for appropriate substitutes I decided to use half of a medium banana. I was of course quite sceptical about this but I decided that if it was a total mess I could begin again the next day.
The banana worked in terms of the dough's texture but it did have a banana-y scent. The finished biscuit had a strange taste however. It was edible and it wasn't really a bad taste but it was definitely an unusual taste. So if you ever find yourself really stuck I would suggest to use a banana but I wouldn't recommend using a banana over an egg.
Anyway, Monday's biscuits were 'Chocolate
Tuesday was a much more successful day for biscuit week as I had all of the required ingredients! Tuesday's biscuits were 'Chocolate & Hazelnut Drops' that were once again from "1001 Cupcakes, Cookies & Other Tempting Treats". I also made some small alterations to this recipe. The recipes calls for 55g ground hazelnuts, but as my family aren't the biggest fans of nuts I left these out and I also left out the 55g of plain chocolate chips as I felt these would be too much with the Nutella on top.
This recipe said I would make about 30 biscuits, I made 17 biscuits but I do think that I made mine slightly bigger than the recipe suggests.
These were also nice biscuits as the biscuit was soft and crumbly but the Nutella added a nice and smooth creaminess. If you're making these for someone who is a fan of nuts I would recommend leaving the ground hazelnuts in the recipe.
For Wednesday's mid week treat I made 'Chocolate Fudge Squares'. I had a bit of concern when making these biscuits as the recipe for the fudge topping says "8 chocolate-coated fudge fingers, broken into pieces". I assumed this meant Cadbury's Fudge bars but once in the shop I could only find a party pack of bars that included mini Fudge bars. I bought this and returned home to find that the pack only had three mini Fudges! Knowing this wouldn't be enough I also added five mini Curly Wurly bars and two mini Chomp bars. This concoction of bars did make a fudge topping but I thought it lacked taste. The biscuits were nice but I just couldn't really taste the fudge on top.
This recipe said it would make about 30, my cookie cutter was about an inch bigger than the recommended size so I only made 14 squares and a little circle with the left-over dough.
On Thursday I branched out from my "1001 Cupcakes, Cookies & Other Tempting Treats" and made 'Chococlate Dipped Viennese Fingers' from the weekly baking magazine 'Something Sweet'. I didn't make any alterations to the ingredients for this recipe. However the recipe instructs to pipe the dough onto the tray and whenever I have tried to do this my piping bag as always burst because it either isn't strong enough or my dough is too dense or a bit of both. Instead I rolled little dough-balls into a rectangle shape and pressed a fork onto the top of each biscuits to give the illusion that it was piped. This worked quite well and these biscuits tasted absolutely delicious, perfect with a cup of tea.
The recipe claimed to make about 20 and I made 13.
After spending Mondays-Fridays in school/college/work, I think we can all agree that Fridays are the most exhausting day of the week. For this reason I decided to bake a quick, easy and classic; 'The Gooiest Chocolate Cookies' and I went back to "1001 Cupcakes, Cookies & Other Tempting Treats for this recipe. For the chocolate chips I replaced the suggested dark and milk chocolate with milk and white chocolate. The recipe said I would make about 12 and I made 11. These cookies were okay, I've definitely made and bought nicer. But if you want to try make these I would say go for it as I think it's just my personal preference to have a sweeter dough.
Saturday's biscuits were 'Chocolate & Orange Cookie Sandwiches' from "1001 Cupcakes, Cookies & Other Tempting Treats". The same flavour combination as Monday but this time I didn't replace the orange with lemon. For this recipe I once again left out the chocolate chips from the dough. The filling for these biscuits calls for orange extract and as I don't have this I decided to just use some orange juice from the same orange that I used to get the rind from. The recipe said it makes about 15, whereas I only made eight sandwiches and I'm pretty sure I made them the suggested size.
As I feel that most people spend Sunday as a relaxing stay at home day I decided to make biscuits that would take slightly longer. I chose these 'Russian Dolls Biscuits' from "Something Sweet". To make these I made a batch of the dough that I always use when making decorative biscuits (this will be a future "Go-To blog post so stay tuned) and made the icing according to the recipe in the magazine. To get the Russian doll shape I used the cutter that came with the magazine but I found a similar one for you if you're interested in making these. This was my first time flooding biscuits and I must say that I found it quite relaxing, but it was definitely very time-consuming. However I definitely think that all the time that goes into them is worth it as the end result is just too cute! These biscuits were really fun to make as you can let your creativity run wild when designing the dolls and you can also have endless variations of hairstyles.Though I was told that the colours I selected made them look like swaddled babies so it's up to you what you want to call these biscuits!
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| Here's some of the different hairstyles I chose |
I hope you enjoyed my version of Biscuit Week and I'll be back again next week! Bye :)
Those baby biscuits are so cute
ReplyDeleteThanks so much :) They were very soothing to ice
DeleteSaturday's biscuits remind me of mini victoria sponges
ReplyDeleteHaha they do look a bit like them :)
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