GBBO Translation: Wagon Wheels Biscuits

Hello, again! I hope you all survived the ridiculously cold temperatures of this past week! We had it relatively easy with the lowest temperature reaching about 9 degrees. I don't remember what the windchill was, but it was too cold to take Pippin for a walk, so he was fairly pouty all week, but we managed to stay warm.

After eating all that bread two weeks ago, I thought I would need a break from flour-based goodies for a while, but I dutifully checked my blog schedule and saw what I had previously picked to make next, and I got excited about baking all over again. Well, truth be told, I got excited about eating, but I knew that I would have to bake first, and immediately decided it was well worth it. 

Our lovely bake this week comes from the most recent series of the Great British Bake Off/Baking Show (series 9, or available on Netflix in the US as Collection 6), and was the technical challenge from the first week, Biscuits. This bake is Paul Hollywood's take on the British treat Wagon Wheels (which apparently is a trademarked name), but with a little twist. I have never had wagon wheels, but they look remarkably like the beloved treat popular across the American South known as Moon Pies (another trademarked name, neither of which belong to me, obviously). Both feature a marshmallow center sandwiched between plain biscuits/cookies and coated in chocolate. I love moon pies, and these wagon wheels also include a layer of raspberry jam, which I also love, so I am very excited to make these.

I'm also going to try something a little different with the layout this week. Rather than pasting the original recipe and then pasting it again with my changes, I'm going to try just putting my changes right into the original recipe, but in a different color. I'll paste the clean translated recipe at the end for easy reference. Hopefully this will make the post a little shorter and less repetitive. Let me know what you think of the new format (love it, hate it, suggestions for improvement, whatever) in the comments!

For the biscuits:

200g/7.05oz/1.5cups plain flour (all purpose flour)

pinch of salt

150g/5.3oz/10.5tbsp salted butter, diced

75g/2.65oz/0.33cup caster sugar (superfine or baker's sugar)

1 tbsp vanilla paste

1 egg yolk

225g/8oz/1cup 70% dark chocolate, melted, to coat

For the jam:

100g/3.5oz/0.75cup raspberries

125g/4.4oz/1.5cups +1 tbsp jam sugar* (gelling sugar)

For the marshmallow (this will make more than you need):

1 x 12g sachet powdered gelatine (0.42 oz plain gelatin powder**)

200g/7.05oz/ 0.75c+1Tbsp caster sugar (superfine or baker's sugar)

1 1/2 tsp glucose***

1 large egg white

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

You will also need:

Sugar thermometer (candy thermometer)

Medium piping bag fitted with a 1cm round nozzle

8cm/3inch round cutter

2 baking sheets lined with baking paper

Step 1 – To make the biscuits, tip the flour, salt and butter into a bowl. Rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in the sugar and vanilla paste, then add the egg yolk. Using your hands, bring the dough together. Wrap in cling film (plastic wrap) and chill for 30 minutes.

Step 2 – For the jam, place the raspberries in a small deep-sided pan and crush them with a wooden spoon. Add the sugar (or sugar and pectin) and bring to the boil over a low heat, until the sugar has melted. Increase the heat and boil for 4 minutes, until thickened. Remove from the heat and carefully pass through a sieve into a shallow container. Leave to cool and set.

Step 3 – For the marshmallow, pour 100ml (3.4 oz/0.4c) of water into a small bowl, then sprinkle the gelatine over the top to soften. Set aside. Tip the sugar into a pan, add the glucose and 100ml (3.4 oz/0.4c) of water and cook over a low heat to dissolve. Increase the heat and bring to the boil. Cook until the syrup reaches 120°C (248°F) on a sugar thermometer. 

Step 4 – While the syrup is cooking, whisk the egg white in the bowl of a stand mixer until firm but not dry. As soon as the syrup reaches 120°C (248°F), remove from the heat and stir in the gelatine. 

Step 5 – With the mixer on full speed, pour the sugar syrup over the egg white in a steady stream. Whisk for 5–8 minutes, until the mixture is thick and glossy. Whisk in the vanilla extract, then spoon the mixture into a medium piping bag fitted with a 1cm (0.5 inch) round nozzle.

Step 6 – Leave to cool to a perfect piping consistency – cool, but not completely set.

Step 7 – Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/350°F(355°F)/Gas 4. On a floured worktop, roll out the dough to 3mm (1/8 inch) thick. Cut out 16 circles with the 8cm (3 inch) cutter and place on the baking sheets. Freeze for 10 minutes, then bake for 10–12 minutes, until just golden. Remove from the oven, cool on the tray for 3–5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. 

Step 8 – To assemble, spread some of the melted chocolate over the bases of 8 biscuits. Leave to set. Pipe a layer of marshmallow over the remaining 8 biscuits.

Step 9 – Turn the chocolate-coated biscuits chocolate-side down. Spread the upper side with a layer of jam, then place a marshmallow-coated biscuit on top, marshmallow side facing downwards.

Step 10 – Place the biscuits on a wire rack over a tray and pour the remaining melted chocolate over the top. Spread with a palette knife to create a smooth layer, spreading the chocolate around the edges until the biscuits are covered. Leave to set before serving.

*As I mentioned when I tried to made the Victoria sandwich cake, gelling sugar (sugar with pectin added for thickening fruit preserves) can be tricky to find. You may need to use regular sugar and add pectin yourself, which is what I will do for this recipe. I'm going to reduce the amount of sugar by about 10% (to 113g/4.0oz/1 ⅓cup) and add one teaspoon of liquid pectin. The jam for this recipe is half the jam called for in the Victoria sandwich, so I'm sticking with the fairly successful ratio I used for that one.

**This recipe calls for a packet of gelatine, or gelatin, as we call it on this side of the pond. I am unfamiliar with the packaging of plain gelatin because gelatin grosses me out and I haven't used it since I jello-ed my neighbor's stapler (à la The Office) freshman year of college. If you choose to use gelatin, pay attention to the amount in the package before dumping it all in. I haven't eaten jell-o in almost 20 years (and red meat for about 3) and I only feign ignorance at gelatin's presence in marshmallows because I love marshmallows too much. For this recipe, I'm going to use vegetarian substitute agar-agar, which supposedly can be subbed for gelatin at a 1:1 ratio. I found mine at Natural Grocers and just subbed it in by weight. 12 grams of agar was about a half a cup.

***After doing a little research, glucose for use in baking and candy making does seem to be available in the United States, but my research led me to believe that I can probably use clear corn syrup for this, which will be much more readily available, and I'm trying to make this easier for all of us.

Are you ready? The bakers were given two hours and fifteen minutes for this bake, so I came home from work, got out my ingredients, started my timer and got to work. I diced up my butter and plunked it into my bowl of flour and salt. The instructions for this are to rub the butter into the flour. If you've never used this method, it's basically what it sounds like (and is the method often used for making traditional pie crusts and a few other pastries). You can sometimes use a pastry blender to achieve the same thing, but rubbing the butter in is kind of fun, especially if you like to get your hands into your work. All you do is make sure the butter is well coated in flour and sort of pinch it flat with your fingertips (and thumbtips?). The point of this method is to distribute the butter into the flour without activating the gluten in the flour too much. My butter (and fingers) were cold, and things seemed to be going smoothly so far.

Once the butter/flour mixture looked like "fine crumbs" (i.e. the biggest butter chunks are considerably smaller and the flour is less fine than before because its all clumped on tiny bits of butter), it was time for sugar, vanilla, and an egg yolk. This recipe does call for caster sugar, but this is the only part of the recipe where I actually blended my sugar down (for methodology and explanation, see the Victoria sandwich cake blog). In the other parts of the recipe the sugar is melted on the stove top, but here it will react a little differently, so I tried to stick with the instructions. Except that I didn't stick with the instructions: I didn't use vanilla paste. In theory, you can use vanilla extract and vanilla paste interchangeably at a 1:1 ratio. Vanilla paste will add the little black seed flecks that you sometimes see in things like vanilla bean ice cream, but that won't be particularly noticeable in a recipe like this. I saw some vanilla paste at the store, but it's not as readily available as extract, and it's fairly expensive (so is good vanilla extract, but since I already had extract, I didn't want to shell out for paste as well). And, like I've said before, I want to help you feel less intimidated so you might try this yourself, ergo I used extract.

After mixing in my sugar, extract, and egg yolk, I tried to bring the dough together. The tricky part, I knew, would be not overworking it. I smooshed it around a little and began to worry. The dough was pretty crumbly. The tablespoon of extract and single egg yolk was such a small amount of liquid to bind that much flour. I actually cheated a bit and added in about another tablespoon of vanilla extract. I reasoned that: 1) a little extra liquid would help pull everything together, 2) I've never thought anything was too vanilla-y, and 3) the dough was already very much like a pie dough. A tip I have often seen for making flaky pie crust is to use vodka in place of some of the water. I was using a homemade vanilla extract that consisted of a split vanilla bean that was soaked in vodka. The extra vanilla did seem to help bring the dough together a bit more, although I do recommend pouring your dough onto plastic wrap, and using the wrap to help bring the dough together. Then, I pulled the wrap tight around the dough and stuck it in the fridge. I also muttered to myself "This is gonna be a bitch to roll out..."

The next step was the jam. If I was feeling lazy and not particularly interested in testing my skills, I would say this recipe could easily be made with a good quality store bought jam. But that's not the Bake Off way, and I already had all the ingredients, and honestly, making the jam was the part I was least nervous about. I measured, washed, and mashed the strawberries, added the sugar and pectin, and set to cook. Once the sugar was melted, I turned up the heat to boil and double checked the recipe. After the jam had boiled for a few minutes, I poured it through a sieve (or fine-mesh strainer) into a bowl. If you're new to straining things (okay, that sounds idiotic, but I mean fairly chunky things with a pretty fine strainer, not your standard boiled-pasta-through-a-spaceman-helmet-colander), be prepared that you'll have to give the jam some help with a spoon or spatula. I stirred the jam around for several minutes until all that was left in the top was a clump of seeds that looked like they had barely survived an encounter with the pink slime monster from Ghostbusters 2. The strained jam (which looked more like that slime monster than I was comfortable with) was set aside to set (wait, is that really how that's supposed to be worded? Oh, English...)

Next up was the marshmallow filling. I was nervous about this. I measured out my water and agar agar. Ideally, I was hoping to use agar granules, but Natural Grocers only had the flakes. I really didn't want to use gelatine, though, so I  figured this was better than nothing. The agar soaked up the water pretty well and, I guess it started to soften, but I'm not totally sure. I measured my sugar and corn syrup into a pan with a little more water and started it cooking. While the syrup was getting up to temperature, I started whisking the egg white in my stand mixer, and bounced back and forth across the kitchen several times checking how each was progressing. I quickly found that I should have just washed the smaller pan that I used for the jam because the bigger pan meant that the syrup mixture was a little too shallow to easily read its temperature, even with my fancy thermometer spatula that my mother-in-law got me for Christmas. I did eventually get it up to temperature, and then I took it off the heat and stirred in the agar mixture. I think I should have stirred the agar in a little bit longer to help it dissolve better, or maybe I should have let it soak in considerably warmer water than I did.  Either way, when I poured the syrupy mixture into the egg white to make the marshmallow, there were still little chunks of agar. I added the vanilla anyway and continued to whip it.

After a couple of minutes the mixture did become fluffy and glossy. Because of the agar bits, it was not quite as pretty as it could have been, and I suspect that the inadequately dissolved agar may have contributed to the marshmallow not being as stiff as it should have been. It also smelled a little weird, but I couldn't tell if that was the agar or something in the dishwasher that needed to be washed away.... With great trepidation, I dipped a finger into the sticky white mass and tasted it.

It actually tasted great! The undissolved agar was definitely noticeable in the texture (almost like flaked coconut, but smaller and thinner), and I was a little disappointed with that, but it didn't seem to affect the taste, which was almost indistinguishable from store-bought marshmallow fluff. I was pretty excited, not to mention relieved. I scooped most of the marshmallow into a disposable piping bag. I decided that the marshmallow could just as well be piped from the snipped end of a bag as from a round nozzle, and I was already making a lot of dirty dishes, so I saved myself some work.

Next it was time to get the dough from the fridge to make the cookies, er, I mean, biscuits. One of the most common questions I hear about the differences in words from American English to British English is biscuits vs. cookies. If you haven't deciphered the nuanced differences from watching and rewatching the Great British Baking Show, I'll try to clarify, at least to as much as I understand. Things like chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodles are still called cookies. Biscuits tend to be more buttery and crunchy, and they can either sweet or savory. I think most Girl Scout cookies would probably be called biscuits by a Brit, as would spritz cookies, and shortbread definitely falls into the biscuit category. Anyway, I was ready for the part of the recipe where I make the baked component of the wagon wheel.

I retrieved the dough from the fridge, floured a rolling mat, and preheated the oven to 355F. 350 is a more common baking temperature, and probably would work fine, but 355 is technically a little bit closer to 180C, and since my oven does do 5 degree increments, I set it to that. I gritted my teeth and began unwrapping the chilled dough,  mentally lining up swear words that I was sure to need when the dough crumbled rather than rolled. I floured the rolling pin and got to work.  And I didn't need any curse words! The dough rolled out far more nicely than I expected, and even kept from sticking to the rolling mat enough that I could spin the whole batch 90 degrees and roll it the other direction. I think the only expletive I uttered was maybe "Daaaamn! That's some nice dough!"  I neatly arranged my 16 circles (and a couple of irregular trimmings to use for a taste test) and stuck them in the freezer for ten minutes. I briefly considered saving myself a little time and popping them directly in the oven, but with the high butter content of the biscuits, I didn't want to risk them spreading or doing anything weird.  So after ten minutes in the freezer, I put them in the oven. I checked them after 10 minutes of baking, but decided they weren't quite there yet, and gave them the extra two minutes that the recipe suggested.

While the biscuits cooled, I tasted one of the trimmed pieces that I had baked, unsure what to expect. I'm not a huge fan of pie crust, generally, but I knew this should be a little sweeter. And while it's true that I do love moon pies, I have found that the cookie part of the moon pie, if eaten in a hipster-esque deconstructed manner, is much less exciting than the whole moon pie eaten together. Recalling the bland flavor of those, I tasted the wagon wheel biscuit scrap. Similar to my only other experience with sampling deconstructed British biscuits, my initial reaction was "Bleurgh!!" After about four seconds, or so though, the primary flour and butter flavor melted into something warm and lovely with a mildly sweet hint of vanilla. It was nice! Much better than cardboard moon pie sandwiches! I snatched up the second tasting scrap and savored it, wishing I hadn't thrown the rest of the scrap (which really wasn't much) into the trash. I persuaded myself that it really was not acceptable to dig the scraps out of the trash and occupied myself with transferring the biscuits to the cooling rack.

As the biscuits cooled the rest of the way, I began melting the chocolate. Most of the time when I use any recipe requiring me to melt chocolate for dipping or drizzling or what-have-you, I just use semi-sweet chocolate chips, but since this recipe called for a specific cocoa content (70%), I decided to try and be a little more precise, as most chocolate chips don't say what their probably disappointingly low cocoa content is. I found some Baker's chocolate chunks (still appropriate for use in cookies, should you so choose) that were 60%, and figured that was close enough. I melted the chocolate over some boiling water and spread it over half the biscuits.

While the chocolate-covered biscuits were setting, I piped the marshmallow onto the other half. After I had piped the marshmallow, I realized that the chocolate I had already spread was nowhere near set. I put the chocolate biscuits in the fridge to speed them along and wondered why I couldn't have spread the jam on the remaining biscuits first and then piped the marshmallow on top of that. It would have saved a bit of time, and I don't think it would have made much of a difference. But once the chocolate coated biscuits were set, I brought them back out of the fridge, spread a little jam on each of them, and sandwiched them with the marshmallow biscuits.

From what I saw on the episode where they made these, getting the chocolate all the way down the sides of the sandwiches was the tricky bit, and also proved key to the integrity of the wagon wheels, so I took a little extra time on this, too. I found that the best method was to flood the top of the wagon wheel with more melted chocolate than I would need and then spread and coax it down and around the sides with a small offset spatula. Finally happy with the spread of the chocolate, I set the spatula down and stopped the timer: right at three hours.

Compared with the bakers' allotted two and a quarter hours, I took about 45 minutes too long. I was extra meticulous with spreading the chocolate at the end though, and I probably could have multi-tasked a bit more during the preparation of the jam and marshmallow filling. And obviously the final chocolate work hadn't set yet when I stopped the timer, but several of the bakers in the tent had chocolate that wasn't fully set when Prue and Paul began their evaluation, so I didn't count that as a major problem.

But how did the wagon wheels taste? Well, I'll tell you. They were delicious. But they were not quite what I had imagined they would be. The raspberry jam, while lovely and bright in flavor, sort of overpowered everything else that was going on. I think they could have stood a bit more marshmallow than what I did (but the amount I used looked about right based on what was shown in that episode, but I was pleased that once you took a bite with biscuit and chocolate in it, my unfortunate agar flakes were no longer noticeable at all. And speaking of not noticeable. you may have spotted that some of my biscuits had scalloped edges and others were smooth. The recipe didn't specify, but I thought the scalloped edges might be pretty. Once the chocolate was on, though, the scalloped edges weren't particularly noticeable, so don't feel bad if you only have smooth round cutters.

Most of all, the wagon wheels were very sweet. I wouldn't say no to them if offered again, but I do wonder how these aren't considered far too sweet for UK tastes when the most common feedback the British have of American anything is that it's "too sweet." For me, an American with a considerable sweet tooth, to eat this snack and say, "wow, it's really sweet!" it must be pretty sugary. Still, though, my husband and I ate all eight of them in just a couple of days, so they were definitely tasty! I probably will try these again in the near future to try and perfect my gelatin-free marshmallow making skills (and chocolate smoothing skills apparently, they look a little messier in the pictures than I thought they were!) and maybe see if the flavor is a little less intense without the jam.

Keep an eye peeled for next time when I try out Mary Berry's Tiramisu cake, perfect for an indulgent Valentine's day treat or your favorite baking blogger's birthday! 😉

Wagon Wheels Biscuits

For the biscuits: 

200g/7.05oz/1.5cups all purpose flour

pinch of salt

150g/5.3oz/10.5tbsp butter, diced

75g/2.65oz/0.33cup caster sugar

1 tbsp vanilla paste or extract

1 egg yolk

225g/8oz/1cup 70% dark chocolate, melted, to coat

For the jam:

100g/3.5oz/0.75cup raspberries

125g/4.4oz/1.5cup +1 tbsp gelling sugar

For the marshmallow (this will make more than you need):

12g/0.42oz powdered, unflavored gelatin or agar agar 

200g/7.05oz/0.75cup+1Tbsp sugar 

1 1/2 tsp clear corn syrup

1 large egg white

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Step 1 – To make the biscuits, combine the flour, salt and butter in a medium bowl. Rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in the sugar and vanilla, then add the egg yolk. Using your hands, bring the dough together. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes. 

Step 2 – For the jam, place the raspberries in a small, deep-sided pan and crush them with a wooden spoon. Add the gelling sugar (or sugar and pectin) and cook over a low heat until the sugar has melted. Increase the heat and boil for 4 minutes, until thickened. Remove from the heat and carefully  sieve into a shallow bowl. Leave to cool and set. 

Step 3 – For the marshmallow, pour 100ml (3.4 oz/0.4c) of warm water into a small bowl, and sprinkle the gelatin or agar agar over the top to soften. Set aside. Place the sugar into a pan with the corn syrup and 100ml (3.4 oz/0.4c) of water and cook over a low heat to dissolve. Increase the heat and bring to the boil. Cook until the syrup reaches 120°C/248°F on a candy thermometer. 

Step 4 – While the syrup is cooking, whisk the egg white in the bowl of a stand mixer until firm but not dry. As soon as the syrup reaches 120°C/248°F, remove from heat and stir in the gelatin or agar agar until fully dissolved. 

Step 5 – With the mixer on full speed, pour the sugar syrup over the egg white in a steady stream. Continue whisking for 5–8 minutes, until the mixture is thick and glossy. Whisk in the vanilla extract, then spoon the mixture into a medium piping bag fitted with a 1cm (0.5 inch) round nozzle, or into a plastic bag and snip off one corner. 

Step 6 – Leave to cool to a perfect piping consistency – cool, but not completely set. 

Step 7 – Preheat the oven to 350°F(355°F). On a floured worktop, roll out the dough to 1/8 inch thick. Cut out 16 circles with a 3 inch cutter and place on lined baking sheets. Freeze for 10 minutes, then bake for 10–12 minutes, until just golden. Remove from oven, cool on baking sheets for 3–5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. 

Step 8 – To assemble, spread some of the melted chocolate over the bases of 8 biscuits. Leave to set. Pipe a layer of marshmallow over the remaining 8 biscuits. 

Step 9 – Turn the chocolate-coated biscuits chocolate-side down. Spread the clean side with a layer of jam, then place a marshmallow-coated biscuit on top, marshmallow-side facing downwards. 

Step 10 – Place the biscuits on a wire rack over a tray and pour the remaining melted chocolate over the top. Spread with an offset spatula to create a smooth layer, spreading the chocolate around the edges until the biscuits are covered. Allow chocolate to set before serving.