Week 10: Ginger Biscuits

GBBO 2017 has finally ended, with (spoiler alert!) Sophie being crowned the winner! This week's technical challenge was Prue's Ginger Bisuits. Perhaps more simplistic that one might expect for the series' final technical challenge, however, the complex design the bakers were expected to produce within the short space of time given upped the difficulty level quite considerably.

I got my recipe from the GBBO website this week. It took roughly 45mins of hands on time, 1 hour of cooling time, and 10 mins of cooking time.

...and then about 2 hours to decorate!

Ingredients

150g butter

100g light muscovado sugar

2 tsp molasses

3 tbsp beaten egg

225g plain flour

¾ tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp ground cloves

3 large egg whites

750g icing sugar

1 tsp lemon juice

Blue, yellow, green, red colour paste 

Ginger Biscuits
1) Lightly grease 2 baking sheets with butter

2) Beat the butter, sugar and molasses in a bowl until fluffy

(TOP TIP: I couldn't find molasses, so I substituted this with maple syrup)

3) Gradually add the egg, beating well between each addition.

4) Sift all the remaining ingredients into a bowl. Stir into the butter mixture.

(TOP TIP: I found that whilst the mixture smelled quite strong when mixing and cooking, the flavour didn't come through as much when it came to actually eating the biscuits. I would therefore suggest adding 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon and 1/2 tsp ground ginger if you prefer a stronger tasting ginger biscuit)

5) Press the dough into a flat layer between 2 sheets of greaseproof paper. Chill for 1 hour until firm. Heat the oven to 190C/fan 170C/gas 5.

6) On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to 5mm thick. Cut out 20 circles and place on the baking sheets. Chill until firm.

7) Bake in the middle of the oven for 8-12 minutes or until the edge of the biscuits are lightly browned. Cool for 1 minute, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Icing

8) For the royal icing, mix the egg whites with 3 tbsp of the icing sugar in a large bowl and add the glycerine and lemon juice. Add the remaining icing sugar gradually and mix very well until the icing holds its shape. 

9) Divide the icing into 5 bowls. Colour 4 of the bowls, blue, yellow, green and red. Decorate the biscuits as per the templates below, loosening or thickening the icings with water or icing sugar to the correct consistency.

(TOP TIP: I found it was quite difficult to do the coloured decorations using a piping bag. I don't have special icing painting equipment, so I used a skewer!)

10) Tuck in!

https://thegreatbritishbakeoff.co.uk/prues-iced-ginger-biscuits/