Take On A Bake - (Off!) / Arlettes

Arlette's. They are something I had never baked, eaten or even heard of before! But I love cinnamon so they had to be the task I chose to bake this week! (I ended up regretting this halfway through making them as they are so faffy! - but we persevere in the face of annoying recipes! ... right guys? *yeah*)

This week I chose to follow the recipe set out by the Hollywood himself - and my gosh was it frustrating. Not through anything he had done in the recipe, just because of how many steps where actually needed to make the biscuits. I had probably underestimated the amount of work needed for these biscuits... like - really underestimated! But hey ho, here we go!

It looks like pop art!

So for the Arlette's you will need:

• Strong white bread flour (I didn't even know this was a thing?)
• Plain flour
• 1 tsp salt
• Unsalted Butter
• Granulated Sugar 
• Ground Cinnamon 
• Icing Sugar

Lets get started with Paul Hollywood's recipe; (like last week I will place images of each step to help give you a idea of what it should look like)

1. Put the flours, salt, butter and 50ml/2fl oz cold water in a bowl and gently mix to form a dough.

So in the bowl is 60g of strong white bread flour and 60g of plain flour, alongside 1 tsp salt and 40g unsalted butter (which needs to be slightly melted) this was just before I mixed it all and got it into a dough form! 

DOUGH FORM

2. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface and knead for 5 minutes until smooth. Shape the dough into a square, wrap in cling film and chill for an hour (or freeze for 20-30 minutes).

Before kneading. 

After kneading - I wasn't sure of the size the square needed to be so I took a guess. Once this is done plop it into the fridge and start on the butter layer - dun dun dun. 

3. For the butter layer, cream the butter and flours together using an electric mixer. Sandwich the mixture between two sheets of cling film and roll out to a rectangle the same width as the square of dough, but twice as long. Chill in the fridge for 25 minutes.

 So this is after I mixed the 125g of unsalted butter and 25g of strong white bread flour and 25g of plain flour. It took maybe a good 2 minutes to get it nice and creamy.

I got a little confused by this step - I'm not really sure why I was just a bit unsure on how I could shape the butter. The clingfilm kept splitting on me so this was the best shape I could get! But anyway, once you have something like a rectangle, plop it in the fridge like the dough.

4. Unwrap the chilled dough and butter layer. Place the chilled butter layer, short end facing towards you on a lightly floured surface and place the square of dough in the centre of the butter sheet. Make sure it is positioned neatly and covers almost to the edges. Lift the exposed butter sheet at the top and fold it down over the dough, then fold the exposed butter sheet at the bottom up over the top, so the dough is completely enclosed in the butter sheet.

So this is what happened when I did this step.. I don't even know what happened. It was just a mess, butter was everywhere and well I really don't know how I fixed it. A lot of flour I guess. But I wanted to share it because retrospectively it was kinda funny. But don't worry if yours goes wrong either, its nothing flour wont fix! #TeamFlour

5. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface, short end towards you. Roll out to a rectangle, keeping the edges as even as possible. Fold the top quarter down and the bottom quarter up so they meet neatly in the centre. Then fold the dough in half along the centre line. This is called a book turn. Wrap the dough in cling film and chill for 25 minutes.

See? Flour is the hero for your dough problems! From here it went back into the fridge for.. you guessed, another 25 minutes.................................

6. Remove the dough from the fridge and make another book turn. Wrap the dough in cling film and chill for 25 minutes.

ANOTHER BOOK TURN GUYS - DO THE BOOK TURN.

Original photo found here!, but that masterpiece was edited by yours truly! (sorry Paul) 

7. For the filling, mix the granulated sugar and the cinnamon together in a bowl. On a lightly floured surface roll out the pastry to a rectangle as before and sprinkle over the sugar.

 So here is the 50g of granulated sugar mixed in with the 2 tsp of ground cinnamon

8. Make another book turn to incorporate the sugar, then roll out the pastry 1cm/½in thick, to a rectangle 12x20cm/4½x8in. Roll up the pastry from the short end like a Swiss roll. Wrap in cling film and chill for 25 minutes.

So above is how my pastry looked with the cinnamon all 'book turned' in and before I rolled into a tight swiss roll shape. As you can see its not a perfect rectangle shape but it really doesn't matter as in the next step we will chop the wonky ends of the swiss roll! So don't worry too much. Also so I can give credit, the second photo of Hollywood before I edited it was found here!

9. Preheat the oven to 200C/180C Fan/Gas 6. Line 2 baking trays lines with silicon sheets or non-stick baking paper.

Easy step! We can do that!

10. Trim the ends of the roll and cut into 8 x 1cm/½in thick slices. Dust the work surface heavily with icing sugar and roll each piece of dough out very thinly, turning to coat in the sugar and to prevent sticking. Place the biscuits on the prepared trays and bake for 5 minutes. Remove from the oven, carefully turn the biscuits and cook for a further 3-4 minutes, or until golden-brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

This is the Arlette before being chopped up! As you can see the ends have been cut off so no matter what each section will be near enough equal! So like I said don't worry too much about forming a perfect rectangle.

Unfortunately I was engrossed in rolling out each biscuit that I forgot to take a picture of this step! Sorry!

This is what my Arlette's looked like before going into the oven! I made some smaller ones too out as I was able to make more than eight! I ended up using three different baking trays as I didn't have one that fitted them all in! They went in the oven for 5 minutes, and then what I had to do was flip them over and wait either another 3-4 minutes or until they were golden brown! I must add here that they smelt, delicious!

And here are the finished Arlette's -

They don't look too shabby do they? I am so happy with how they turned out as I have never attempted something as time consuming as this. I love how you can still see the swirl and the layers of cinnamon. I think its safe to say the frustration was worth it in the end!




And that's it for this weeks 'Take on A Bake - (Off!)', I hope you enjoyed this post and if you attempt this bake yourself be sure to let me know! I hope you all are enjoying The Great British Bake Off too, I know I am. Thank you again for reading and have a lovely day. (Sorry if there were any mistakes)

Ricicle x

P.S. I'm also sorry this post was up pretty much at the last minute, with tomorrow being the third episode of 'TGBBO', I've had a pretty busy and stressful few days so today was pretty much the first chance I've had to make them. But I did and I'm so glad I had time to do them as it was a great experience and learning curve baking wise! Hooray! ♥