The Great British Teacake

Inspired by the Great British bake off I decided to try my hand at making every recipe from the show. But after a while I got bored, but I have the book now so I can revisit this task at a later stage.

One of the recipes that I decided to tackle head on was the chocolate marshmallow teacake. A nice challenge to sink my teeth into and it tasted rather nice when I did.

The first challenge I faced was before any ingredients were even set on the counter and that was to get a silicone baking tray. Simple, I thought and head off to the nearest supermarket to find said tray. Alas the tray was nowhere in sight, nor was it at the next supermarket, or the next.  Not to be conquered we set off to a specialist bakery shop, it wasn’t there either. Getting  ready to tear my hair out at this point I quickly purchased some piping bags, I later learnt that these were the wrong kind but more on that later. 

Eventually we finally found what we were looking for, well sort of, this tray was a bun tray not rounded like I had hoped but if I had to settle for funny upside down bucket shaped teacakes, well I suppose that would just have to do. 

The Recipe used was from the wonderful Paul Hollywood and can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chocolate_marshmallow_60410 Or in fact here because I will post it too. (makes 6)

Ingredients

        400g/14oz dark chocolate with around 40% cocoa solids

        50g/1¾oz wholemeal flour

        50g/1¾oz plain flour

        pinch salt

        ½ tsp baking powder

        25g/1oz caster sugar

        25g/1oz butter

        1 tbsp milk

For the marshmallow:

        3 free-range eggs, whites only

        150g/5½oz caster sugar

        6 tsp golden syrup

        ½ tsp salt

        ½ vanilla pod, seeds only

Melt 300g of the chocolate in a bain marie and leave to cool slightly before evenly spreading the melted chocolate around the mould making sure that there aren’t any holes but you don’t want the chocolate to be too thick either. Leave to cool completely while you turn your attention to the biscuits but don’t put them in the fridge because that will spoil the chocolate and it will lose its shine.

Preheat the oven to 170C

To make the biscuits, put the flours, salt, baking powder and caster sugar into a bowl and rub in the butter with your fingertips. Add the milk and stir everything together to form a smooth ball. Roll out on a floured surface and roll out until an approximate thickness of 5 mm. Cut out six rounds with a diameter of approximately 7.5 cm or to cover the bottom of the mould. Leave the rounds to chill in the fridge for 10 minutes, the addition of a magazine or the TV remote control is optional. Baking the biscuits when they are well chilled helps them to keep their shape and stops them spreading in the oven. Bake for 10-12 minutes.

While the biscuits are cooling melt the rest of the chocolate before fully coating the cooled biscuits in chocolate, you could cover only the bottoms if you are running out but my philosophy on life is the more chocolate the better so slather the yummy stuff all over.

To make the marshmallow, place all of the ingredients in a large bowl over a bain marie and whisk with an electric whisk for 6-8 minutes, making sure it is smooth, silky and doubled in volume. Please note that for a bain marie the water has to be boiling, not just in a hot pan. Whisking the eggs over a hot but not boiling pan doesn’t actually get you anywhere, well apart from ending up hot and bothered with a pan of egg whites. Paul Hollywood recommends using the seeds of a vanilla pod but I didn’t have one of them so I put a few drops of peppermint essence in. This was a mistake because my marshmallow tasted rather like toothpaste.

When you eventually get the consistency you want, spoon the marshmallow mixture into a piping bag.  However you ideally want a large sturdy piping bag not a small flimsy thing because you will more often than not end up with your hand covered in hot marshmallow. Fill another piping bag with more melted chocolate, yes MORE chocolate, my mother wasn’t happy about the amount of chocolate involved in this recipe but as the well-known saying goes ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you fatter’

   Pipe the marshmallow into the chocolate covered moulds and place the biscuits on the top. Carefully pipe some chocolate to fill in any cracks between the rim of the chocolate and the biscuit. Leave the teacake to set completely before attempting to remove from the mould, if you try this before the teacakes has had the chance to seal properly things could get a bit messy- trust me I would know.