I love Mary Berry, especially during her Great British Bake Off days, so I had pretty high hopes going into this recipe. Her bakes always look so elegant and effortless, and I was really excited to try these delicate little sandwich biscuits with the raspberry jam and buttercream.

Right away, the biscuit dough gave me trouble. It came out way too thick. Like, no chance it’s going through a piping bag thick. I kept adding vanilla and a splash of water here and there, trying to loosen it up just enough to pipe the swirls. Even when I thought I had it, nothing would come out, and I had to scoop it back into the bowl, stir in more liquid, and start again. I think all that mixing definitely worked against me, because the texture ended up a bit tough, not soft and short like you want for a biscuit like this. Plus because they were so tough to pipe out they ended up with the little “hat” you see in the picture.

Despite my frustrations with the biscuits, the jam turned out really well. I did not have jam sugar, but I found a conversion recipe for sugar and pectin (which I did happen to have in my pantry). It thickened nicely and had just the right amount of sweetness and consistency.

Since my biscuits didn’t really make the cut, I only made a small batch of the filling so you can see by the photo that it was probably a little runnier than I would have liked.

In the end, they tasted okay, but I was pretty disappointed, mostly because I still don’t totally know what went wrong. They had the consistency of shortbread and I just don’t know how I would have even piped that out. I’ll likely try again and maybe use another recipe, but if you have ideas on what went wrong please let me know.

Baking Ease	7
Time Spent	7
Taste	8
Visual	7

Recipe Used: Mary Berry