GBBO 2014 Challenge - Week 2 - Florentines

Week 2 of the Great British Bake off Free From Technical challenge looked fairly straight forward, and I love Florentines! The basic recipe only has 2tsp (yes you read that right), about 10g, of flour, so really easy to just do a straight swap to wheat free if needed. As with any recipe using butter, just swap for dairy and soya free spread. Seemed to work fine just using milk substitute instead of crème fraîche too. 

I liked Jamie's recipe because it used nuts and seeds. Remember, you can swap the nuts and fruit for any combination your child can tolerate. On Twitter @Angelscout used coconut instead of almonds to give beautiful lacy florentines. I added pine nuts, pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds to mine for added flavour.

20g Dairy and Soya Fee Spread

70g Sugar

2tsp Plain Flour (or Wheat free plain flour)

60mls Milk Substitute

80g Mixed Nuts and Seeds (I used flaked almonds, pine nuts, pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds)

40g Mixed dried fruit - chopped (I used glace cherries, candy peel and dried apricots)

Preheat oven to 180ºC

Slowly melt the spread , sugar and flour in a pan, stirring constantly. If the sugar isn't dissolving, add a little of the milk substitute.

Add the nuts/seeds/fruit and stir well.

Place teaspoonfuls on a greased baking sheet (or greaseproof paper - I had run out).

Flatten slightly and bake for 12-15mins until just browning on the edges.

Cool for a minute before trying to remove from the tray.

If you're making chocolate coated ones, melt 100g suitable dairy and soya free chocolate.

Leave to chocolate to cool  until beginning to thicken, then spread on the back of the florentines and decorate using a fork. I prefer mine 'naked' so didn't bother with the chocolate this time (I did put chocolate on a token on for the photo, but then had to go out and didn't manage to get the wavy lines in it, so I cheated and hid the back…).

GBBO 2014 Challenge - Week 1 - Cherry Cake

GBBO 2014 Challenge - Week 1 - Cherry Cake

Well, it's that time of year again. On Wednesday night's I will be unavailable between 8 and 9pm for the coming months as I'm glued to this season of The Great British Bake off. For those of you new to the site, last year I was challenged to try milk, egg, wheat and soya free versions of all the technical challenges. I think I got as far as week 5 last time, I did complete some of the others, but didn't get round to writing them up. Lets see if we can do better this year…

Not off to a great start though, I was on holiday the week it started so I'm already behind. And I hate glacé cherries… Good excuse to buy a new shape cake tin though… Also for those of you who watched it, you may have spotted them saying you need a good thick batter or the cherries drop to the bottom. Anyone who has made wheat free cake, knows it needs more liquid and tends to be a thinner batter. Oh well… We managed Angel Cake, Floating Islands, and Tuilles last year without a single egg, so how much harder can this year be…

The sponge is a lot lighter than it looks in the picture, you can get
a more open texture using water instead of milk substitute,
but then you miss out on the added calcium.

So, which recipe to use… Do I try to adapt Mary's recipe,  or my fail safe cake recipe from Gemma McFarlane's 'Celebration Cakes' book? Mary's has ground almonds in, which would normally give a great texture to a wheat free cake, but I want to make this as accessible to as many people as possible. Gemma's recipe is quite a loose mix using vegetable oil as the fat, so I swapped that for dairy and soya free spread. This is what happened…

Cake

510g (Wheat free) Self Raising Flour 

165g Dairy and Soya Free Spread

220g Caster Sugar (original recipe 330 if you prefer it sweeter)

Juice (about 50mls) and Zest of 1 lemon

1tsp Vanilla Paste (or extract)

550mls Milk Substitute (500mls if not using wheat free flour)

150g Glace Cherries - Rinsed, Dried and Chopped

Decoration

160g Icing Sugar

Juice of 1 lemon

4 Glace Cherries - chopped in half

Flaked Almonds - toasted (optional)

Preheat oven to 180ºC and grease a ring tin.

Put spread, sugar, vanilla and lemon zest into a bowl and whisk until light and fluffy.

Add the lemon juice to the milk substitute.

Slowly whisk about 200mls of this into the sugar and spread mix (about 50mls at a time) - it might look a bit like scrambled egg, but keep whisking, it will be fine.

Fold in the flour and the rest of the milk substitute until well combined.

Fold in the cherries.

You might want to make sure your bowl is big enough...

Spoon into the tin and smooth the top.

Bake for 50-60minutes, until just coming away from the sides of the tin.

Turn out of the tin to cool.

Note the even distribution of cherries...

Mix the lemon juice with the icing sugar to form a thick smooth paste.

Spoon over the cake.

Sprinkle on the almond (if using) and decorate with the remaining cherries.