So back to the baking, and I was very excited about having a go at Mary’s Florentines. Here is her recipe and the one that they used for the technical challenge on week 2 of the Great British Bake Off and it was a success – Hurray!http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/marys_florentines_49833

Top tips:

1) Be brave, if you fancy it, and disobey Queen Mary. I like a flaky almond in my Florentine and I also don’t like walnuts so I didn’t add any walnuts and simply added 50g of flaked (not crushed) almonds instead. It worked really well.

2) Don’t be overconfident and do remember that Queen Mary is ultimately Queen Mary for a reason. I initially thought to myself ‘Mary, you have advised using 3 baking sheets for 18 little balls of Florentines this seems a little excessive.  It really is going to make it difficult to fit it all in the oven, maybe I will squidge them all onto 2 baking sheets instead.’

Thankfully, after further consideration, I remembered my place and did use 3 baking sheets for my 18 little balls. This is entirely necessary, even if you do have to play baking sheet Tetris with your oven, as the Florentines really do spread during baking.

3) Don’t be greedy and put too much chocolate on the first 10 Florentines. It means that you will have to scrape some of the chocolate off the early Florentines to make sure that that later Florentines also have chocolate as well. I also suspect that had I not thinned out the chocolate layer on the early Florentines, it would have ultimately taken a ridiculously long period of time to dry.