S1E2 Signature: Biscuits

Week two, and I am still on a high from that showstopping cake. Though, it might just be a sugar high.

It's biscuit week! For all you non-Brits, a biscuit is essentially a cookie. I can't say that they are the same, because from what I could tell in my time there, a "cookie" to a Brit is soft and chewy, like a traditional chocolate chip cookie, for example. In the UK, biscuits are almost always served with tea, and thus they must be crisp and dunkable, like a digestive biscuit. That being said, the term "biscuit" in the UK encompasses cookies as well. My point is, I will be calling them biscuits. Just... go with it.

The instructions for the signature bake this week were that the bakers had to produce a full batch of their signature biscuits. The judges were looking for something original that has a history, so I decided to make Swedish Rings. These biscuits are special to me because the recipe has been in my family for generations, and I have vivid memories of my grandma teaching me how to make them when I was very young. I have never seen these biscuits anywhere else, which makes them feel very special.

Swedish Rings are essentially a rolled shortbread, but the secret is that they are made with hard-boiled egg yolks! I read somewhere that adding cooked egg yolks to the mixture hinders the gluten from getting over-worked, resulting in a delicate, melt-in-your-mouth biscuit. To be ~creative~ I am adding lemon zest. I know this is not a very adventurous flavour in shortbread, but I really want to keep these as true to the original recipe as possible. I love these biscuits and I miss my Grammy.

So, with 2 hours on the clock, let's get started!

The first step in this bake is boiling the eggs. Only two of the three yolks in this recipe need to be boiled, so one little lonely egg just had to wait his turn. The eggs went into a pot of cold water with this nifty little egg timer, which enables me to get perfect eggs with the least effort possible. If you don't have one, I highly recommend it.

While my eggs were boiling, I got all my other ingredients prepared. I measured out my flour and sugar, separated my last egg yolk, cubed my margarine, zested my lemon, and lined my baking tray. 

I did all my prep way too fast, and still ended up waiting several minutes for my eggs, but finally...

They were ready! I peeled my eggs and removed the yolks, salted the cooked egg whites and delivered them to Evie, who had been complaining that I hadn't made her any eggs. The cooked yolks were added to the sugar and mixed until thoroughly combined.

I added the raw yolk, mixed, and then added the flour, butter and lemon zest. I used two knives to cut the butter and flour into the mixture, then used my fingertips to achieve a fine crumb texture, and then delicately brought it together with my hands. Shortbread needs to be worked as little as possible to retain its delicate texture.

With the mixture just barely combined, I rolled a small amount of dough into a ball, then into a small log, and then twisted it into its final shape.

I repeated with the rest of the tray, and then applied an egg wash. I mixed a little lemon zest in with some sugar and then sprinkled that on top of the biscuits.

The recipe that I have instructs to bake "until done", so once the biscuits went in the oven, I turned the oven light on and sat in front to watch them bake.

After about 12 minutes, the texture on the top of the biscuits seemed right (baker's intuition?), so I took them out and moved them to a cooling rack. 

And with that, I was done? This felt very anticlimactic after the stress of assembling cakes last week. Also, I still had 53 minutes left. So... I guess I should have chosen a more difficult recipe. One of the bakers on the show did a shortbread, how did she not have all this time left?

I used up my extra time taking pictures of the cookies and also whipping up a batch of meringues, which I won't show you a) because that's not part of the challenge, and b) because I overbaked them.

So:

I'm pretty happy with them. They really do melt in your mouth, and the lemon does a nice job of lifting the flavour. The lemon sugar was not properly blended, causing those little sugar clumps that you can see here. In the future, I might try to blitz the sugar quickly in a food processor and dip the biscuits into the sugar to give them a more even finish.

My judge (Evie) says: "They are light and crumbly, and the lemon sugar on top is a really nice addition. The lemon in the cookies isn't overpowering, it is a nice, light flavour and works really well! The only critique is that the overall look was a bit messy, and maybe a different shape would have been more attractive."

If I had practised this one beforehand, I might have known how much time I would have had left, and could have spent more time on their presentation!

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