I really, really wanted to try and bake something from the technical or showstopper challenges this week. Unfortunately, I've ended up baking something from the signature bake challenge, as I don't have a mixer strong enough to attempt a Viennese Whirl, nor do I have 4+ hours to make a Gingerbread sculpture, much as I would like to!
WEEK 2: Biscuit Week
SIGNATURE BAKE: Iced Biscuits
As soon as I saw what the Signature Bake was last Wednesday, the idea popped into my mind to make Pina Colada iced biscuits. I love a good Pina Colada, so coconut biscuits with a pineapple (and possibly rum) flavoured icing are right up my street.
I started by trying to find a recipe for a coconut biscuit, as this is a flavour I absolutely adore. I settled upon this recipe, as it seemed fairly straight forward, and I love a chewy biscuit, which you would inevitably end up with when including that quantity of dessicated coconut.
After some difficulty, I managed to purchase the dessicated coconut. The method for these biscuits is super simple, so after about ten minutes, I was looking at the finished biscuit mixture. So far so good.
Only then I realised that in order to use the cookie cutter I'd bought from Looses in Norwich, I'd need to roll the mixture out. Now, let's get this straight, I don't bake often, and when I do bake, it's usually a cake, or the type of biscuit which you just roll into a ball and let the oven do its thang. I therefore do not own a rolling pin...
A couple of minutes later, after looking through every cupboard and kitchen implement we own, I decided that the only way to roll the mix out was to cover a can of beer in cling film, and use that. Ingenious, right? It actually worked really well, and I was so surprised at how many biscuits the mix made.
So the first batch went into the oven, and I'd clearly put too many on the first tray, as they expanded so much that some of them merged into each other. Clearly, I am a baking novice, because I then tried to (using the biscuit cutter) re-cut the biscuits, so they were the right size. Anyway, because of the quantity of dessicated coconut that didn't work, and they looked an absolute state. Thankfully I had another tray of biscuits, so those were swiftly confined to a bowl, never to be photographed or shared.
Second batch was better, and then came the fun task of actually icing the biscuits. I decided not to put rum into the icing, and just went for pineapple juice, which tasted great when the icing was first made, but seemed to get lost in the flavour of the icing sugar once the icing had set. I used gel food colouring, and whilst I think the pastel shades the icing ended up as looked nice, I was really hoping for a really vibrant shade of both yellow and green. Next time, I think I'd try and look for a darker or more pigmented food colouring, and possibly pineapple extract, if such a thing exists.
After some very useful assistance from Harvey, who it turns out is quite the dab hand at icing, the biscuits were done! I think if I was to put the biscuits in front of Paul and Mary, these are exactly the type of biscuits that Mary would suggest are 'informally' iced. However, I love the taste and texture of them, and so far all the feedback has been very positive!
Apparently it's bread week next week, and I'm feeling very nervous about it as I've never made bread from scratch before.
If you're watching the Great British Bake Off, enjoy!!
Laura xx
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