This weeks technical challenge was Tuiles, but I was met with an additional challenge, a physical one.  I have a badly sprained ankle with has been slowly turning into a kaleidoscope of colours from black/purple to yellow/green. Nice! The other challenge was where to buy the template at a reasonable price.  This was a lot more difficult to find than I first thought, there was only place I could find them online was, but I wouldn’t be able to get them in time.  Instead I decided to make my own, using  compass, stanley knife, scissors and a plastic clipboard from wilko! The end product resulted in a slighty less smooth edged template but one that still worked just as well as one priced nearly 5 times as much.  It just took 5 times longer to make!

Whisk it, beat it, cool it. With the template made to correct specifications (if a little rustic) it was onto the mix. This one is similar to a normal sponge mix, but is uses just the egg whites instead of the whole eggs.  This will I suppose, help make the tuiles crispy and light.  After a lot of whisking and beating, you need get another bowl pout in half the mix and add the cocoa powder to it. This not only leaves you with two bowls of mixture, but also a melee of bowls to wash up later.  Since I was a child and started baking, I liked to measure out all the ingredients into little bowls first, and pretend that I was Delia Smith (who mum used to watch regularly), which also meant I talked into an imaginary camera while explaining what I was doing! Unfortunately this little trait (the use of many bowls) has stayed with me, resulting in eye-rolling from my boyfriends when he see the stacks of washing up piled up by the sink! Anyway back to the important stuff, the two bowls filled with mixture.  These bowls now need to be chilled so that they thicken up,

Spread, spread, lift. Now for the tricky messy part. The template needed to be placed on top of the lined baking sheet so that you can spread the tuple paste over them.  I’d bought a new pallete knife for this one as  the one I had was going to be a little too large for the task.  Spreading the mix was a messy one, because you have make sure they are all even and not to thick, otherwise they won’t bake evenly. Perfecting this spreading took some time to perfect, sometimes I had to scrape it all off and start again!

Steady hand, shaky rings As stated at the start of the challenge, you have to create two types of tuiles, ones that were plain and others that were spiralled with chocolate. This meant putting the chocolate into a piping bag with a very fine nozzle and having a steady hand. This was easier said that done (the steady hand part) especially trying to balance with the bad ankle!

Hawk eye baking and heatproof fingers I’m really not kidding when I say hawk eye! Once the guiles were spread and piped, the template was peeled back and into the oven they went.  This was not the type of baking where I could go off and do something else while they do their thing in the oven.  I had to sit in front of the newly cleaned oven door, cleaned specifically so that I could eyeball the tuiles though their baking process. 5/6 minutes can feel like a long time, and it didn’t look like much was happening, so I left it for another few minutes.  In the end, with my oven, it took about 8 minutes for them to cook, and I had to turn the tray half way through the baking time. Once I took them out of the oven it was time to work fast! As soon as the tuiles come out of they oven they started to cool, obvious deduction I know, but this will was crucial.  I had to work fast to remove them and mould them

Rolled or rolls. Depending on whether they were plain or chocolate swirls was the determining factor to the burning pain that my finger tips were to experience next! The biscuits that had to cool on a rolling pin, to create the curved biscuits were the easier ones to manipulate.  I lifted them off the baking tray with the palette knife and laid them quickly onto the wedges rolling pin.  Grabbing a clean tea-towel, I laid it on top and gently pressed down not the biscuits, so that they would take the shape of the rolling pin and not break. The biscuits that need to be rolled presented were certainly more painful. Having removed them from the baking tray I flipped them over and had to start wrapping them around the handle of a wooden spoon, and roll gently so that they are tight enough to hold position and not break all without the aide of a tea-towel barrier! Needless to say with either technique I lost a few. Oh well chefs perks and all that! Once all the biscuits were cooked and cooled it was time for the more fun bit, melting chocolate and dipping in the end of the rolled up biscuits. A simple process that needs no further explanation.

I’ll be honest this whole challenge patience and practise.The first ones tuiles that were baked were definitely too think, and they were not easy to mould into the shapes. Others were too thin and cracked as soon as I touched them for moulded!

After this technical I’ve semi-acquired gained another skill and with a little more practise they would be more uniform. I don’t think I will be making these on a regular basis, my fingertips just wouldn’t cope!

Yummy yummy, custard tarts.  These were aways a cheeky treat when I was a kid.  After a days shopping in town with my sister and my mum, we’d pick some things up for dinner in M&S, because who wants to cook after a busy day walking round and shopping? Anyway we these were added to the basket and either nibbled on the way home or the first thing consumed once we got home and put our feet up. Either way a lovely memory of the little tart of eggy custard delicious!

So few ingredients, big flavour?
I don’t know why I was so surprised to see so few ingredient for this recipe, honestly what did I expect, it’s just pastry and custard.

The is made with a sweet pastry which needs to be worked a little more than usual. I was taught that the most important part about pastry is to use cold butter and get a good amount of height when rubbing it between your fingers.  This helps to keep the pastry light and short (biscuity). When you add the liquid it should be done so slowly so you can gage whether it is too little or too much.  Once the dough is formed it’s important to let it rest in the fridge before you use it.  This lets the butter harden up and makes it easier to roll out too. This was particularly important with tho particular pastry as at first it really did feel too wet. Oh well into the fridge it went.

How many eggs!?
I feel another angel cake is on the horizon, with this many leftover egg whites its that or meringues.  While the pastry rested in the fridge it was time to move onto the custard. This like the basic ingredients, was a simple process, almost too simple.  For a task that was meant to be a technical challenge, I was wondering where the challenge was.  Whisking the egg yolks with the sugar until pale and creamy took a little longer than expected. Pouring the milk slowly over the whisked eggs, was performed in a steady if somewhat cack-handed method.  I should point out that is could be the stage where things could go wrong, if your milk is too hot or you pour it too fast over the yolks you could end up with scrambled eggs.

Roll out, but how thick?
Once the custard was made, and was thankfully lump free, I had to start the second part of the prep for the cases.  After watching the programme there were a few tips I’d like to give.  To avoid the calamity that some some of the contestants encountered when in came to taking the tarts out of the baking tin, I thought it would be best to line the bottoms with some baking parchment. Is there a knack to putting it in the tin without a crimping the edges? When is came to rolling out the pastry there was no strict rule as to how thick the pastry needed to be rolled out,  so it was guess work for the next part. It needed to be thick enough to hole the shape once cooked, but not so thick that is was going to leave you with a soggy uncooked bottom. As stated it in the recipe I used the 11cm/4½in fluted cutter, but trying to out these into the cases crease free and no overlaps proved tricky.  Some ended up with a bigger lip over the side of the cases than others, definitely not uniform.  At this point its probably a good idea to put the tin with the pastry lined cases back into the fridge to harden up again, because after all the rolling and pfaffing to get them into the tin, the pastry had warmed up and softened. By cooling them down a bit you should get a crispy cases when you cook it

Oven temp gadget.
When I embarked on this project I wanted to make sure I was armed with the some of the vital tools that could help me to  at least attempt to make everything.  One of these purchases was an oven thermometer , bought from every bodies favourite kitchen store, Lakeland. Not having a fancy digital oven display  like they do on the show I have rely on a dial, that can be a little inaccurate. So armed with the new device I left it in the oven while I dealt with the last process of the tarts before putting them in the oven.

Pouring, balancing, grating fiasco!
Now I would just like to point out that I have made a quiche before, which requires a similar process of pouring  liquid into the paster case before cooking.  However with a quiche you usually have other ingredients sitting in the case before you fill it with a custard mixture, which helps to stabilise the liquid.  This was not the case with these tarts, which is why I only half filled them before getting ready to put them in the hot oven. The fun of the fiasco began not long after the oven was at temperature and the half filled tray was taken to the shelf.  Sadly I do not have the fancy telescopic shelved oven that features in the GBBO, much to my disappointment which meant that I had to balance the baking try on the shelf that pulled out half way, and then try to keep it flat while pouring in the rest of the custard. The last stage was to put the jug down, keep the try flat and then grate over the nutmeg.  Easier said than done, which meant there was a few puddles on the tin and some strong words vented.  In future, I must remember to grate or buy grated nutmeg first!

Slight dome, panic, remove.
Once the tarts were in the oven, it was not the time to relax.  I had to keep a close eye on them, sitting in front of the oven keeping a vigil on the process. The tarts needed to get a slight dome not them, anything bigger was dangerous, and meant that the custard was boiling instead, big no no. As soon as I saw this happening I turned the oven down, and with the  thermometer still in place I had to open the oven slightly in order to get the temperature down quicker. Once the time was up, and they were moved to a cooling rack with a good slight wobble. Pheww!

Wait and cool…benefit of not being in the bake off tent!
This is one of the many times, I have get grateful that a, I was not restricted on time or the  being in the bake of tent.  After watching the show, it seemed clear that the contestants did not have enough time for the tarts to cool, before having to remove them.  Thankfully I didn’t have this problem so I left them to cool for as long as possible, before attempted to remove them. When the time did come to the removal, I was thankful for the paper discs that I put in the bottom of each case.  Each tart did require a slight, delicate nudge with a blunt knife but nothing that caused too much damage.

Voila, cooked, and set.
The final result looked and tasted delicious.  Some could have done with a little more nutmeg, and some got more colour that others, but overall not bad for a first attempt. Other than trying to make them look more uniform, and not having custard bubbled over the case, they came out ok. Definitely best eaten on the same day, otherwise the pastry can get a little soft and soggy. When I make these again there will be a few things that I would do differently. The first being to use pre-grated nutmeg rather than go through the pain and heat of the balancing act with an oven venting out heat into you face. The second would be to cook with a baking sheet under the pastry tin.  This would better conduction of heat for the bottom of the tart, making doubly sure that you don’t get the dreaded soggy bottom.  The third and final thing would be to buy them from the shop after a hard day of retail therapy rather than trying to make them!

This week its time for a favourite, English muffins.  I like these much better than crumpets especially with some poached eggs and hollandaise sauce, but I have never made them. Bread is not one of my regular bakes, unlike my mum who makes it at least twice a week and has done since I was a child.

So hear with all my ingredients it was time to get messy.  Messy was an understatement and so was the recipe’s statement that once everything was mixed together it should form a soft dough.  It was so soft and wet it almost fell through my fingers

Oh my dough…
The do was so wet I wasn’t too sure how to knead it. I ended up just pushing, pulling and swirling it around the workspace in the vain hope that I was doing the right thing.  After about 5 minutes it’s was still so wet and stuck to my web my fingers so much that I couldn’t even even see my fingers! Seeing no end to this gunky mess I decided to add some more flour the hope that that would firm and dry things out a bit

Getting better….but more flour…done
After a period of time, a lot longer than the 10 minutes stated in the recipe, it eventually resembled a dough that was smooth and stretchy, and I felt it was ok to stop and put it back in the bowl to rise.

Now dough rising  in my house has always been somewhat varied.  I have tried various methods, putting it the airing cupboard, by a window and on top of a radiator.  But all of these produced slow if not no results.  The only methods that seems to work for me is sticking the bowl with the dough on a bench/chair in front of a hot oven (with the door closed)  the other one is turning the oven on the lowest heat while making the dough and turning it off when you have finished kneading, then placing the bowl in the oven, with the door slightly ajar.  You have to be careful with this last method as you don’t want the oven too hot, as it will cause the dough to over proof and potentially form a crust, a definite no no. Oh the dream of having a proving drawer like they do on GBBO!

Roll, cut and rise.
After about 1.5 hours of proving, it has risen but maybe not completely doubled in size. I tipped it out on to the polenta and flour dusted surface and started to roll it out.  To be honest there really didn’t seem like there was going to be enough dough to be able to get 8 muffins out of it, so I rolled it a little thinner than the 2.5cm stated in the recipe.  I think if i had had more success with the proving I would have had to do this.  It get exactly 8 muffins cut, it is important to use the 8cm ring, and use the straight edge.  I reckon it you used the fluted edge you’d a) not have a traditional English muffin and b) they probably wouldn’t rise as well on the second proof and cooking, similar to scones.

The remaining polenta was used for dusting the baking sheets and  the top of the cut muffins, which then needed to be left for the second proving. This time I used the bench in front of the oven technique!

No baking griddle so it’s the heavy based frying pan for me
Even thought they had risen a bit more with the second proove, I was hoping that they would improve on cooking, as bread does.  So on a super low heat I put four in the pan and hope for the best.

Woohoo they did rise! What was once semi airy dough discs was now turning into little puffed up rounds of yummy dough.As in the recipe I stuck to the 5-6 rule on each side, making sure not the touch them much int he process so that they would get the light brown colouring that you see on the traditional shop versions.

As I mentioned previously I think that they would have risen more if the first prove didn’t take so long and the rolled out dough was more thicker, closer to 2.5cm. But for a first attempt I’m pretty  pleased with how they turned out

Leftover lemon curd, butter and some little animals!
I had 8 nicely coloured and hot muffins, ready to be served wight the left over Lemon curd from last week, YUM! Needless to say, they didn’t last long, even without the aid of a poached egg and hollandaise.

One last note, don’t forget the leftover dough, after you have cut out your 8.  They make for great testers for the cooking times, plus they can end up looking like an odd giraffe shaped muffin!