loveFOOD does Bake Off! Can we make tuile biscuits?

Last week, having made egg custard tarts without breaking sweat, loveFOOD’s Charlotte suggested that this year’s Bake Off contestants have it easy. But how did she get on with the latest technical challenge?

Every Tuesday we watch The Great British Bake Off contestants tackle a new ‘technical challenge’, which involves following a half-finished recipe written by one of the two blue-eyed judges. This week’s ‘biscuits and traybakes’ episode asked the remaining eight contestants to make 18 of Mary Berry’s delicate tuile biscuits, half of which should be shaped into a traditional arch, the rest moulded into cigars. A challenge far harder than a dozen egg custard tarts.

loveFOOD is attempting every Bake Off technical challenge from now until the end of the series, and unlike last week, when I oozed confidence, the prospect of baking tuiles gave me palpitations. These French delicacies should be paper thin; shaped straight from the oven whilst molten hot and bendy (ouch); and decorated either with piped chocolate circles or dipped chocolate ends. This was a fragile task, and one that had to be done in only an hour and a half.

Making the batter was easy enough (just butter, icing sugar, egg whites, flour and a little vanilla) and I had time to let it rest for 20 minutes in the fridge, while I made my piping bag in anticipation of the decoration staged. Given the absence of a snazzy tuile stencil (which the bakers did have), I used the back of a teaspoon to shape my biscuits – a mistake that marked the beginnings of a downward spiral.

The concentric circle piping went well (I hadn’t the shaky hands of the under-pressure Bake Off contestants), but I was worried about how thick the teaspoon method had made my tuiles – too chunky, and they’d never make a beautiful ‘snap’ sound. But there’s no time for fretting when attempting a Bake Off challenge, so into the oven they went for an anxious six minutes.

My tuiles looked beautiful upon first impression – golden around the edges, neat chocolate circles, and perfectly flat. And then I tried to lift them off their greaseproof paper base. The tuiles were stuck, as if by superglue, to the paper, and nothing I did eased them away. Disaster! Never again will I assume that greaseproof paper is a fine substitute for the ‘parchment or silicone sheet’ mentioned in a recipe.

I rushed a second batch, messing up my concentric circle decorations as I went, and this time I painted my greaseproof paper with lashings of butter. But although they didn’t stick, the resulting tuiles were still too thick, and so I had trouble moulding them around my rolling pin and wooden spoon handle. Plus that failed first batch left me lagging, and I only managed nine tuile discs and three droopy-looking cigars by the end of play. Comparing them to the attempts on Tuesday night’s Bake Off, they were nowhere near as good as Christine’s, but perhaps a slight improvement on poor Howard’s.

It was left to loveFOOD editor Andrew to judge my sad offering – “They’re edible,” he said. “But where’s the snap?” Where’s the snap indeed. That’s the last time I attempt a French biscuit, unless there are stencils, silicone paper, and a sous chef nearby.

Are you a Bake Off fan? Could you whip up a batch of tuiles in an hour and a half? Talk to us in the comments box below…

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