This weeks technical challenge was Tuiles, but I was met with an additional challenge, a physical one. I have a badly sprained ankle with has been slowly turning into a kaleidoscope of colours from black/purple to yellow/green. Nice! The other challenge was where to buy the template at a reasonable price. This was a lot more difficult to find than I first thought, there was only place I could find them online was, but I wouldn’t be able to get them in time. Instead I decided to make my own, using compass, stanley knife, scissors and a plastic clipboard from wilko! The end product resulted in a slighty less smooth edged template but one that still worked just as well as one priced nearly 5 times as much. It just took 5 times longer to make! 
Whisk it, beat it, cool it. With the template made to correct specifications (if a little rustic) it was onto the mix. This one is similar to a normal sponge mix, but is uses just the egg whites instead of the whole eggs. This will I suppose, help make the tuiles crispy and light. After a lot of whisking and beating, you need get another bowl pout in half the mix and add the cocoa powder to it. This not only leaves you with two bowls of mixture, but also a melee of bowls to wash up later. Since I was a child and started baking, I liked to measure out all the ingredients into little bowls first, and pretend that I was Delia Smith (who mum used to watch regularly), which also meant I talked into an imaginary camera while explaining what I was doing! Unfortunately this little trait (the use of many bowls) has stayed with me, resulting in eye-rolling from my boyfriends when he see the stacks of washing up piled up by the sink! Anyway back to the important stuff, the two bowls filled with mixture. These bowls now need to be chilled so that they thicken up,
Spread, spread, lift. Now for the tricky messy part. The template needed to be placed on top of the lined baking sheet so that you can spread the tuple paste over them. I’d bought a new pallete knife for this one as the one I had was going to be a little too large for the task. Spreading the mix was a messy one, because you have make sure they are all even and not to thick, otherwise they won’t bake evenly. Perfecting this spreading took some time to perfect, sometimes I had to scrape it all off and start again!
Steady hand, shaky rings As stated at the start of the challenge, you have to create two types of tuiles, ones that were plain and others that were spiralled with chocolate. This meant putting the chocolate into a piping bag with a very fine nozzle and having a steady hand. This was easier said that done (the steady hand part) especially trying to balance with the bad ankle!
Hawk eye baking and heatproof fingers I’m really not kidding when I say hawk eye! Once the guiles were spread and piped, the template was peeled back and into the oven they went. This was not the type of baking where I could go off and do something else while they do their thing in the oven. I had to sit in front of the newly cleaned oven door, cleaned specifically so that I could eyeball the tuiles though their baking process. 5/6 minutes can feel like a long time, and it didn’t look like much was happening, so I left it for another few minutes. In the end, with my oven, it took about 8 minutes for them to cook, and I had to turn the tray half way through the baking time. Once I took them out of the oven it was time to work fast! As soon as the tuiles come out of they oven they started to cool, obvious deduction I know, but this will was crucial. I had to work fast to remove them and mould them
Rolled or rolls. Depending on whether they were plain or chocolate swirls was the determining factor to the burning pain that my finger tips were to experience next! The biscuits that had to cool on a rolling pin, to create the curved biscuits were the easier ones to manipulate. I lifted them off the baking tray with the palette knife and laid them quickly onto the wedges rolling pin. Grabbing a clean tea-towel, I laid it on top and gently pressed down not the biscuits, so that they would take the shape of the rolling pin and not break. The biscuits that need to be rolled presented were certainly more painful. Having removed them from the baking tray I flipped them over and had to start wrapping them around the handle of a wooden spoon, and roll gently so that they are tight enough to hold position and not break all without the aide of a tea-towel barrier! Needless to say with either technique I lost a few. Oh well chefs perks and all that! Once all the biscuits were cooked and cooled it was time for the more fun bit, melting chocolate and dipping in the end of the rolled up biscuits. A simple process that needs no further explanation.
I’ll be honest this whole challenge patience and practise.The first ones tuiles that were baked were definitely too think, and they were not easy to mould into the shapes. Others were too thin and cracked as soon as I touched them for moulded!
After this technical I’ve semi-acquired gained another skill and with a little more practise they would be more uniform. I don’t think I will be making these on a regular basis, my fingertips just wouldn’t cope!