Finally a Bake Off Technical Challenge that is a little easier on the wallet and that I already had all the ingredient’s for: Paul Hollywood’s Caramel Biscuit Bars! It’s Week 7 of my GBBO 2021 bake-along so this is the Technical Challenge from Caramel Week! A crumbly and buttery shortbread biscuit, topped with a soft and chewy caramel and coated in chocolate – doesn’t seem too difficult, right?
I thought this recipe was quite easy and straightforward – until it came to assembling and decorating the caramel biscuit bars! For one, the caramel started running down the sides of the biscuits just as it did for the bakers – hopefully my tips below will help combat that though! Covering the biscuits evenly with the melted chocolate was also quite difficult – there is definitely a reason why people usually buy these caramel biscuit bars (aka Twix) in the shop! But at least these ones have more chocolate on them! Always a good thing! XD
Tips for making Paul’s Caramel Biscuit Bars
Like I said, these Caramel Biscuit Bars were harder to make than they might look! Making the individual components was straightforward enough, but I found it quite difficult to assemble these biscuits and still make them look good!
Caramel is becoming quite a familiar concept in my recipes recently, and I have had plenty of practice from making the Bake Off Box Passion Fruit Éclairs and Salted Caramel Mini Rolls, as well as the Sticky Toffee Pudding Technical Challenge from dessert week! However, Paul recommend plunging the pot into cold water to prevent the caramel from cooking further. But (and this has happened to me before) the caramel almost cooled too quickly and ended up becoming a big clump that the butter and cream couldn’t mix into properly! I luckily managed to save it by returning it to the heat, but I just wouldn’t bother with that step if I were you.
Despite the caramel setting quite firmly, it does start to run down the sides of the biscuit bars quite easily. However, I found that after placing the bars into the fridge for a while, the caramel became quite pliable, and I was able to mould it into shape again. So I would recommend filling the caramel into the piping bag once set, but then chilling it down completely in the fridge before piping. That should also make decorating the caramel biscuit fingers with chocolate easier!
What would I change about Paul’s Caramel Biscuit Bar recipe?
I usually try to stick to the recipe for the Technical Challenges as much as I can, but this time there were a few things I did (and would recommend to do) differently. For one, as the biscuit dough is very dry and crumbly, I would skip Paul’s step in the original recipe (found here) of rolling the dough in between two sheets of baking paper. It is a lot easier to just press the dough straight into the base of a lined loaf tin.
The other thing I would recommend doing, is (as already outlined above), not cooling the caramel before adding the butter and cream, and then chilling it in a piping bag in the fridge until completely firm before piping!
As you might know if you have looked at my recipes in the past, I absolutely LOVE dark chocolate. I much prefer it to milk chocolate, and hence opted for a 50:50 mix of dark and milk chocolate when making these caramel biscuit bars. You can of course use just milk chocolate if you prefer, but if you are a dark chocolate lover like myself – why not go dark?! 😉 I also used a quick tempering method below to ensure the chocolate had a nice shine to it.
More Technical Challenges from the Great British Bake Off
I am absolutely obsessed with the Great British Bake Off and have challenged myself to attempt all of (or at least the ones that are “realistic” – I won’t be making pitta breads on a camp fire in the back garden!) the technical challenges from the programme! I have tried quite a few already, so make sure you check out some of the other recipes and see how I got on!
- Mary Berry’s Religieuses
- Mary Berry’s Fraisier Cake
- Paul Hollywood’s Hand-raised Chicken, Bacon and Apricot Pies
- Mary Berry’s Bakewell Tart with feathered Icing
- Paul’s Mini Pineapple Upside Down Cakes
- Mary Berry’s Frosted Walnut Layer Cake
- Paul Hollywood’s Cottage Loaf
- Mary Berry’s Homemade Jaffa Cakes
- Paul Hollywood’s Wagon Wheel Biscuits
- Mary Berry’s Victoria Sponge Cake
- Paul Hollywood’s Mini Pork Pies
- Mary Berry’s Viennese Whirls
- Prue’s Vegan Chocolate and Raspberry Tarts (S2UC Special)
- Pizza Star Bread (Junior Bake Off)
- Mary Berry’s Coffee and Walnut Battenberg Cake
- Paul’s Crusty White Cob
- Paul Hollywood’s Rainbow Bagels
- Prue Leith’s Malt Loaf
- Paul’s Jammy Biscuits
- Paul Hollywood’s Olive Ciabatta Bread Sticks with Homemade Tzatziki
- Prue Leith’s Sticky Toffee Puddings with Sesame Tuiles
- Prue Leith’s Prinzregententorte
- Paul Hollywood’s Baklava (22cm)
- Paul’s Caramel Biscuit Bars (Twix)
- Prue Leith’s Vegan Sausage Rolls
- Prue’s Sablé Breton Cake
- Paul Hollywood’s Sticky Belgian Buns
- Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Icing
- Prue’s Garibaldi Biscuits with Feathered Chocolate Icing
- Paul Hollywood’s Pain au Raisins
- Paul’s Spicy Beef Tacos
- Paul Hollywood’s S’mores
- Prue Leith’s Pistachio Praline Ice Cream Cones
- Vegetable Spring Rolls
- Prue’s Vertical Chocolate, Hazelnut, and Raspberry Tarts
- Paul Hollywood’s Devonshire Splits
Paul Hollywood’s Caramel Biscuit Bars
Recipe
Ingredients:
FOR THE BISCUITS:
- 55g butter, softened
- 25g caster sugar
- 55g plain flour
- 25g cornflour
FOR THE CARAMEL:
- 90g caster sugar
- 15g liquid glucose
- 45ml double cream
- 50g butter
TO FINISH:
- 300g milk chocolate (or use mix of 150g milk and 150g dark chocolate)
YOU WILL ALSO NEED:
- 2lb/900g loaf tin
- Wire cooling rack
- Heatproof bowl
- Small saucepan
- 2 piping bags
- 1 medium and one small round nozzle (optional, you can just snip off a tiny or slightly larger corner of the piping bag)
Method:
- To make the biscuit dough, cream together the butter and caster sugar until the mixture is paler in colour. Then sift in the plain flour and cornflour and stir until everything is combined.
- Line the bottom of a 2lb/900g loaf tin with a long strip of baking paper that will overhang the short sides of the tin. Press the biscuit dough into the dough in an even layer and use the base of a glass to help flatten it. Chill the dough in the fridge for 20 minutes.
- In the meantime, make the caramel filling. Put the caster sugar and liquid glucose into a small saucepan and set over a low-medium. Gently melt the two together, swirling the pan every now and again to ensure everything is melting evenly. Do not stir the mixture! Cook until all the sugar has melted, and the caramel turns a light amber colour.
- Remove the caramel from the heat and add in the butter and double cream (careful as the mixture might splutter and spit) and stir until smooth. Set the caramel aside and leave to thicken and cool to room temperature. Once set, fill into a piping bag fitted with a medium-sized round nozzle and chill in the fridge until firm.
- Preheat the oven to 170°C/150°C fan.
- Prick the chilled biscuit dough all over with a fork and bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes until lightly golden brown.
- Cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then carefully lift the biscuit out of the tin using the baking paper as a “handle” and set onto a chopping board. While still warm, cut into 10 equally-sized biscuit fingers, about 1.5cm wide each. Set aside until needed.
- Once the caramel has chilled in the fridge for around 30 minutes, pipe a line of caramel over the top of each biscuit. Place the biscuit bars into the fridge whilst you prepare the chocolate.
- Roughly break up 200g of the chocolate into a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of gently simmering water. Carefully warm the chocolate, stirring occasionally, until fully melted. In the meantime, finely chop the remaining 100g of chocolate. Once melted, remove the bowl from the heat and stir in the 100g of chopped chocolate until melted. This will help cool the chocolate to the right temperature.
- Pour about a quarter of the melted chocolate into a shallow bowl or plate. Dip the base of the caramel biscuit bars into the chocolate, then place them onto a sheet of baking paper set on a baking tray. Chill the bars in the fridge for 5-10 minutes until the chocolate has set.
- In the meantime, pour about 2 tbsp of the melted chocolate into a piping bag and the remaining chocolate into a jug.
- Transfer the caramel biscuit bars to a wire rack and put the baking paper underneath. Pour the melted chocolate from the jug over the biscuit bars to coat. You might want to use a small palette knife or spoon to spread it out and cover the biscuits evenly.
- Wait 5-10 minutes for the chocolate to set, then snip off a small corner of the piping bag (if not using a nozzle) and drizzle the remaining chocolate in zig-zag lines over the caramel biscuit bars.
- Leave to set for at least 15 minutes before sitting down with a cup of tea/coffee and enjoying!
