Mary Berry's Florentines from the Great British Baking Show

This was a week of baking. 

I baked some scrumptious zucchini bread from my homegrown zucchini. 

Then I baked 3 homegrown spaghetti squash. 

Then I tackled another British Baking show recipe. 

This time, Mary Berry's Florentines. 

What is a Florentine you ask? It is a fruit and nut cookie with chocolate on the underside. It called for Golden Syrup (which I substituted with light corn syrup), Demerara sugar (which I substituted with turbinado sugar), almonds, walnuts, cranberry, and orange candied peel (which I made from scratch!). 

I didn't even know candied peel was a thing. 

First I peeled 2 oranges and sliced them up. 

Then I boiled the peels in cold water, once it came to a boil I drained it and repeated 2 more times. 

Then I mixed 2 cups of sugar with 2 cups of water and simmered the peels for an hour! 

After an hour of simmering, I let the candied peel cool in the syrup, then put them on a rack and cool for another 30 minutes. After wards, I chopped them up. 

Now time for the Florentines...

Mix turbinado sugar, light corn syrup, and butter in a sauce pan until just melted. 

 

Add in finely chopped nuts, dried cranberries, candied peel, and flour. 

(I admit I bought these cute little bowls and put each ingredient in it just for the aesthetics of this blog)

Spoon out up to 18 small spoonfuls (less them tablespoon size would have been better) on to 2-3 cookie sheets. 

The really will spread, so lots of space needed between. 

See, they spread...

While these thin and delicate little cookies cool, start melting the chocolate. I've never tempered chocolate over a simmering bath. As instructed I melted half the chocolate in the heatproof bowl then removed from heat and added the rests to melt. I think it really did give it a shiny look! 

Mary Berry's secret to putting the chocolate on is using a pastry brush.  So I did! I painted the cookies, holding them in my hand, with chocolate (on the underside) with a pastry brush. Then you take a fork and make the squiggle lines... 

I painted the chocolate on pretty thick. It took awhile to cool. I admit, I ate one before they were all cooled and set and I wasn't very impressed last night. HOWEVER...

I put them overnight in the fridge and had one today and it is magical!   Last night I thought I might not make them again, but now I definitely think I will!  Besides, I have tons of candied peel in syrup in my fridge that will only last another 3 weeks. 

Thank you Mary Berry! 

http://www.pbs.org/food/recipes/florentines/

http://www.marthastewart.com/313211/candied-citrus-peels