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Hello and welcome to week 2 of our GBBO bake along! I don’t want to include any spoilers but what a dramatic week, what the hell was going on in the tent this week!? Biscuit week is always interesting, I love the 3D builds but sadly I did not have time to make a biscuit puppet theatre, I’m saving all of my biscuit building energy for Christmas (stay tuned). Instead I’m making a mash up of two of the tasks, Viennese whirls from the signature, flavoured with peppermint, inspired by the technical, I love chocolate and mint and I absolutely won’t let anyone tell me that it tastes like toothpaste. If mint isn't for you, just it leave out altogether or try infusing the ganache with orange zest or spices instead.
Ok let’s have a quick chat about the show before getting to the recipe…
Signature
For the signature the bakers had to make Viennese whirls, this is quite a nice task to test the bakers piping skills, I find that Viennese whirls can be tricky to get right, often the fillings all fall out before you’ve managed to get a mouthful so I’ve gone with a ganache filling that sets nice and firm to avoid this. Speaking of fillings I wasn’t feeling super inspired by anything I saw this week, there were some fun flavours but none of them were really my vibe, however I loved Nelly’s dogs, and I just love Nelly in general, she’s so fun!
Technical
I love a peppermint cream biscuit so I was really excited to see this challenge, I don’t think the bakers felt the same way. This task was filled with drama, I don’t think many of the bakers knew what was going on when it came to tempering and I did think it was a bit mean not to provide them with the temperatures, but in the end it didn’t matter because Paul and Prue didn’t seem to know the difference between in temper and out of temper chocolate (I’m sure they do know really but some of the comments were confusing to say the least). All in all a tough task when you have very few instructions!
Showstopper
I do love a biscuit build and this wasn’t the craziest build they’ve ever had on Bake Off (I still have nightmares about the biscuit chandelier of season 9) but I wish they’d just let them build a gingerbread house/structure, that’s already a difficult task without adding the whole puppet element. I thought the bakers did well on the whole, I loved Dylan’s Japanese themed theatre and the simplicity of Gill’s gingerbread man theatre. Pictured below is a gingerbread house that definitely took me longer than 4 hours! My favourite build to date.
Chocolate Peppermint Viennese Hearts
As luck would have it I’d actually already been testing a Viennese biscuit recipe for another project so I already had a pretty solid recipe, I’ve found that most recipes are similar with the exception of egg whites, I found that recipes that include egg white tend to spread less, and recipes that include cocoa spread even less still, this is worth noting when piping your hearts, you’ll need to pipe the plain hearts slightly smaller to allow for more spread.
Ingredients - Makes 15-20 biscuits
Ganache
100g double cream
70g dark chocolate
30g milk chocolate
2 drops peppermint extract
Butter Base Mix
215g very soft butter (microwave for 10-20 seconds before use)
80g icing sugar
30g egg white (1 egg white)
Pinch of salt
Plain Mix
120g plain flour
2tsp cornflour
Cocoa Mix
90g plain flour
25g cocoa powder
2tsp cornflour
To Dip
100g milk chocolate
10g neutral oil
Method - Ganache
First make the ganache by heating the cream and it pouring over the chocolate.
Stir until the chocolate is fully melted and then add the peppermint, taste and adjust as needed.
Cover with clingfilm touching the top and leave to set at room temperature.
Method - Viennese Whirls
Line 2 trays and pre-heat the oven to 160°C(fan)/320°F.
Make the base mix by beating the softened butter, icing sugar and salt together until pale and creamy.
Add the egg white and beat to incorporate.
Weigh out 1/2 of the base mix (it will be about 160g) and add the flour and cornflour for the plain mix, don’t add the cocoa mix to the other half yet or it will set and be too difficult to pipe!
Using a 10mm French star nozzle pipe hearts onto the lined baking tray (see gif below), if the mixture is quit stiff, use your hands to squish it around the piping bag, this will warm it up slightly.
Using greased fingers, pinch the bottom of the hearts so you have nice pointy bottoms and bake at 160°C(fan)/320°F for 15-17 minutes, until a light golden colour.
Repeat with the cocoa mix, remember to pipe the cocoa hearts slightly larger as they spread less!
If you’re really struggling to pipe the mixture, you can zap it in the microwave for no more than 10 seconds, this will result in the biscuits spreading slightly more so only do it if you have to.
Method - Assembly
Sort the baked hearts into matching pairs using biscuits that are as similar sized as possible.
Pipe ganache into each biscuit and sandwich together.
Set in the fridge or freezer for 10 minutes.
For the chocolate dip, gently melt the chocolate and oil together either over a Bain Marie (double boiler) or in the microwave (no more than 20 seconds at a time, until 70% of the chocolate is melted.
Stir until the rest of the chocolate is melted, this dip doesn’t need to be fully in temper but it works best if the chocolate is around 30°C/86°F, but don’t worry about it too much.
Dip the biscuits, leave to set for half an hour and enjoy!
These biscuits are best eaten within 2-3 days.
I hope you enjoy these biscuits! I’ll be back next week for another bake along, next week it’s bread week, I can’t wait to see what’s coming!