I’m sure a lot of people who read this are also avid viewers of The Great British Bake Off. If so, you will have seen last week’s episode where the bakers had to make Tuiles. I didn’t feel brave enough to bake the tuiles that they had to bake, but was pleased to come across this recipe under the Fancy Biscuits section of The Bible. After baking this recipe I will have baked all the biscuits under this section in the book. There aren’t many sections left now.
Having never baked tuiles before and seeing how the bakers in GBBO had trouble with making them, I wasn’t holding up much hope for my effort.
The oven was put on to preheat at Fan 180°C and 2 baking trays were lightly greased.
Into a bowl I measured out 75g butter (softened) and 75g caster sugar. This was beaten together until pale and fluffy. I had forgotten to take my butter out of the fridge beforehand, so it had to have a quick blast in the microwave to soften it.
In another bowl I put one large egg white and sieved 50g plain flour over the top of it. This was mixed together (by now it resembled wallpaper paste) and then stirred it into the butter mixture together with 75g of finely chopped blanched almonds. The almonds I blitzed up very quickly in my mini-food processor. That was it – this part appeared to be very simple, it was the next bit I was dreading.
Mary says to place teaspoonfuls of the mixture on to the prepared baking trays – about 4 at a time and to leave ample room for the biscuits to spread. I think my initial ‘teaspoons’ were more heaped – you should make about 20 biscuits – I made 18. They did indeed spread out quite a lot.
The biscuits were popped into the oven for 6-8 minutes. Mine took the full 8 minutes. Once they were browned at the edges (but not in the middle) you had to remove them from the oven and leave them to stand for a second or two. After this they had to be removed with a palette knife and curled over a rolling-pin until set. The first one I did completely wrong. As the ones in the photograph in the book looked a lovely golden brown all over, I thought I needed to flip the tuile over to put it onto the rolling-pin. How wrong was I – the tuile literally fell apart as I flipped it over, so with the remaining tuiles I carefully took them off the tray with the palette knife and carefully put them onto the rolling-pin and very gently with my fingers pressed them around the curve. If they started to split, I found by holding them for a few seconds to cool seemed to do the trick and they didn’t break.
Mary does say to serve them with a dusting of icing sugar, but mine didn’t get that far, they disappeared very quickly. If you do manage to keep them, then store them in an airtight tin or freeze them! They were very moreish indeed and I must admit not that difficult – perhaps I’ll be brave enough now to try the two tone tuiles that they made on the GBBO. If I do, I’ll let you know how they turn out – I doubt it will be a successful as these.
Will I make them again – I think I will, they were very dainty and looked quite special. My apologies for the photo, I had to take it quickly!
Self Raising Flower 