I'm not doing the technical bakes in any order. I have decided that number two is the iced finger. I remember having these when I was growing up, yummy doughy fingers with sweet icing. These Paul Hollywood fingers have the addition of fresh cream and strawberry jam and I have to say their addition makes for a great afternoon sweet treat.
I started to make these last Sunday morning and I made the full amount, 12 iced fingers. Might as well go the whole hog. With all the ingredients surrounding me I added all the dough ingredients to a bowl, holding back about a third of the water. I put my bowl on the scales so that I could add the rest of the water but for some reason I just added all the water in my jug rather than weighing it and got a very, very watery dough. I know it's supposed to be watery but this was too much. So I had to throw it away and start over. Second time around I got it right.
The dough was still very wet and kneading was almost impossible, I had more on my fingers than on the surface. In the end I just gave up and put in back in the bowl to rise and hoped for the best. An hour later and it had risen beautifully and after knocking it back I divided into 12 balls which I then rolled into finger shapes and placed on a greased tray. These are covered and left to prove for 45 minutes until doubled in size and all touching. They then went into a preheated oven (200 degrees) for ten minutes. These were left to cool and I made the icing. I followed Paul's instructions to dip the roll in the icing and then smooth it with your fingers, it worked a treat. I then piped the cream and tried to pipe the jam but I bought jam with fruit bits in (I know!) so a spoon did the trick.
One of the things that Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry looked for in the 12 iced fingers was a consistent size. On that, I'm afraid I failed. But I think Paul would have been happy with my "bake". They were soft, sweet and moreish (I had two, I confess). The extras came into work with me on Monday and got an office thumbs up.
