GBBO 2018 - Week 1 biscuit week - Cornish Fairings

I'm so thrilled that GBBO is back! It's the one time of year I really try to get back into baking and blogging again in an attempt to join in with a few of the bakes over the coming months. 

This year, week 1 was biscuit week. With the first challenge being a regional biscuit with your own signature twist. The technical was wagon wheels which I wouldn't have a clue where to start! And the show-stopper 'a biscuit selfie set in a place special to you - involving layers of biscuit to make a 3D effect' - eek - I wasn't going to try that either.

So I stuck with the first challenge of a regional biscuit. I decided to make Cornish Fairings because we loved them so much when we first came across them on holiday in Cornwall several years ago. We fell in love with Cornwall so much that we were back again the following year  - twice in fact - staying at the wonderful Sands Hotel.

As I'd never baked these before, I wasn't brave enough to give them a personal twist of my own but did think that they would be great partly dunked in dark chocolate? or perhaps with a layer of custard cream sandwiched between them, or possibly even coffee liquer cream sandwiched inside??? So although I didn't add these twists, it gave me something to think about for next time I make them.

I used the Cornish Fairings recipe from Paul Hollywood's British Baking recipe book. I haven't written the recipe here as I haven't asked permission to and don't want to infringe any copyright but I have found it online elsewhere in case you do want to see the recipe.

I stuck closely to the recipe and even though the mixture looked dry like it might not come together, I resisted the temptation to add more milk and it did hold together just fine. The only exception to following the recipe that I made was by using my trusty Kenwood chef to blitz the dry ingredients together with the butter into a mixture resembling breadcrumbs rather than to do it by hand.

I also got very 'gbbo-ocd' with ensuring that they looked uniform in size by weighing the pieces of dough. My dough weighed 490g and so that made 25 Cornish Fairings of 20g each! (well technically it was 19 point something but I rounded to 20g) Get me - doing Maths for the sake of baking!!! (I hate maths!)

I have to admit that this is my kind of biscuit baking. Apart from getting a bit precise over making them equal (which I wouldn't normally bother to do), they are a really easy biscuit to make. There's no faffing about with chilling the dough or rolling it out or cutting shapes. Just simply roll pieces of the dough into balls and place on a baking tray and 10 minutes in the oven and they're done!

They turned out slightly thicker than I expected and slightly less crunchy. I think that by either flattening the balls slightly and/or using less golden syrup should help make them more crunchy in future.

I was really please I got the cracked-top effect which apparently is from using baking powder in the recipe.

Overall I was really pleased with them and I think they'd make a fab little gift too - just imagine them in little stacks wrapped with cellophane and ribbon. 

I'd love to try them with variations in future - I love the sound of these ones with lemon and orange peel in from the Happy Foodie or how about these ones on Great British Chefs with a gorgeous cream cheese mousse sandwiched between them. 

Massive thanks to Mummy Mishaps and Casa Costello for hosting this years GBBO Bloggers Linky! I'm so happy to see this linky back.