Well, here we are, week 2 (I'm a week behind!) and I've just tackled Paul Hollywood's Jammy Biscuits. When I told my husband that it was this biscuit this week he shouted 'Oh nooooo!' because I once made him a giant one, the size of a large dinner plate! It wasn't the healthiest week!
Anyway, I was looking forward to it and as usual I made do with what I already had so you'll have to forgive the presentation, all of my cutters happen to be heart shaped and I don't have one of those fancy biscuit stamps but neither of these things affect the taste.
The recipe can be found here: Paul Hollywood's Jammy Biscuits - The Great British Bake Off | The Great British Bake Off
As usual, I have kept as closely to the recipe as possible, just to show that most recipes can be veganised with just a few swaps. Here I swapped an egg for a cornflour and water mix. Simply mix 1 tbsp of cornflour with 2 tbsp of water. This is often a good swap when making biscuits.
INGREDIENTS
For the jam 100g raspberries 125g jam sugar
(I swapped these ingredients for....jam! Yes, I'm sorry, I cheated a little!)
For the biscuits: 120g very soft unsalted butter (there are many vegan brands that do this now. I used the Flora unsalted block) 120g caster sugar 1 large egg (I made a cornflour substitute, deducting 10g from the amount in the recipe and mixing with 2 tbsp of water) ½ tsp vanilla extract 215g plain flour 25g cornflour (as above, I used 15g and the other 10g was used to make an egg substitute)
For the filling: 50g unsalted butter, softened 100g icing sugar, plus extra for dusting ½ tsp vanilla extract
METHOD
This recipe went well by following the method given on the GBBO website, tweaked as described above to substitute the egg. I made a batch of 15 regular sized biscuits with this recipe and one big one for my husband (I couldn't resist! Although it was nowhere near as big as the last!)
You can see the cornflour egg mix in blue cup. The cornflour in the recipe I read was to add a light, crumbly texture to the biscuit so I thought, why not use the same ingredient to replace the egg.
Tips based on my experience (although this week my tips are more a list of mistakes that I made)
-Where the recipe calls for very soft butter, hard butter just will not do. I really mangled my whisk trying to whip up the butter and caster sugar! Oops!
-The recipe warns not to overwork the dough so I held back a bit and it was a bit crumbly and difficult to work with. I kneaded it in my hands until it stopped falling apart. It was much easier to work with and roll out then.
-Keep a close eye on them as they bake. Some were a little too brown and yet others on the same tray were very pale. I should have checked on them more often.
So far these have gone down well with everyone that has sampled them. They were light and crumbly and the vanilla and the jam worked very well together. I chose St Dalfour's Pomegranate and Raspberry. I'll be taking some jammy biscuits into the shop tomorrow for my lovely colleagues to try. They can always be counted on for an honest answer!
I hope you have enjoyed this blog entry and if you try these yourself then let me know how they went!
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