Great British Bake Off Teacakes

I love a Tunnocks Teacake. Probably too much. So when I saw the episode of Great British Bake Off where they were making teacakes I couldn’t wait to have a go myself. And when my favourite baking supply site Baked By Me started stocking the moulds I did a little dance then ordered some straight away.

Now for the uninitiated this ain’t no dried fruit laden bread roll – of toasted teacake fame. This is a gorgeous mix of digestive biscuit, marshmallow and chocolate. If you are from over the pond I think it’s like a s’mores but the chocolate is on the outside.

I got the recipe from the BBC website, see here and after a quick dash round Tesco to get the ingredients, I was ready to rock ‘n’ roll.

I followed the recipe quantities closely, and the first thing I will say is that the measures for the biscuit and marshmallow make twice as much as the recipe is supposed to (6 teacakes), so I advise buying more chocolate! I intended to double the recipe, so bought dark and milk chocolate and doubled the quantities of the entire recipe, but I ended up going out and buying more chocolate and making four times the quantity because there was so much biscuit and marshmallow.

The recipe starts with melting the chocolate, but if I did it again I would make the biscuits first as they need time to cool before you cover them in chocolate.

It says to melt the chocolate over hot water, but I use the microwave. As long as you are careful and do it in short blasts its fine. I also kept some of the chocolate back and chopped it up then added it after I had melted the rest this cools and thickens it more quickly than just leaving it to cool.

Once the chocolate has thickened you can line the moulds. It takes about a dessert spoon of chocolate for each mould. Take care to cover all of the inside of the moulds. I found leaving them for a few minutes once I had done it them going back and pushing it up the sides helped.

It says to not put them in the fridge, but sod that, I did, and they were fine.

If you haven’t already made the biscuits do it now. I found I needed quite a bit more milk than the recipe.

This is double the recipe and I got 24 biscuits out of it. I have a natty little set of biscuit cutters which meant I had the perfect size cutter for the job.

They’re quite pale when baked.

At first I just covers both sides in chocolate, but after my first half dozen I realised the edges need covering in chocolate too.

They can take a while to set, which is why I recommend making them before melting the chocolate.

Making the marshmallow is fun. It’s basically an Italian meringue with golden syrup and vanilla added. I used vanilla bean paste as I didn’t have any vanilla pods, and it tastes amazing! Make sure you have a big enough bowl as it doubles in size. From this…

To this…

Make sure it’s really firm.

Pipe the cooled meringue into the set cases.

In the recipe it says to fill them but I found 3/4 full was best, leaving room for the biscuit.

Then melt some more chocolate, or re-heat any you have that is spare (yes you can do that in the microwave!) and pipe round the top edge of each mould. I made my own greaseproof paper icing bags, but that’s because I’m a show-off and a cheap-skate.

Pop in a biscuit and pipe round again to seal the edges.

Stick the whole lot back in the fridge and wait till its properly set. Then carefully turn out. Look at these beauties!

Update: I made baby ones!!! Mould from the same place as the big ones. These are bite size and went down a storm at work today.

A bit more fiddly than making the big ones, but for the same amount of ingredients you get loads more.

Make lots of cases (press them out of the mould and keep them in the fridge) until you’ve made the biscuits and filling.