I was looking forward to this biscuit episode of the Bake Off, but actually when we got to it, it wasn’t all that biscuity after all. The options this week were as follows:

• Signature dish - Crackers
• Technical challenge - Chocolate teacakes
• Showstopper - Gingerbread construction

I’m not really a massive fan of gingerbread - I don’t mind the occasional biscuit or nibble but an entire house was a bit too much for me! The crackers were interesting and I’ve stored some ideas for the future, but there’s a sweet tooth in the house that likes things a bit less savoury. So, it was the chocolate teacakes or nothing. Even Paul Hollywood said they were difficult to make, so I lowered my expectations about as far as they could go. I told Mr C I was baking chocolate marshmallow mess, just to make sure we were all on the same page.

It’s also worth saying that I had no silicone baking trays in the house. I knew it was going to be a tough ask to find the half sphere ones they used on the Bake Off itself (do they actually exist? I couldn’t see them on the internets in my brief search) so I settled for a muffin one instead. Okay, the teacakes would have flat tops (if they worked) but I thought that was a compromise I could live with.

Step 1 - Ingredients!

Step 2 - The first job was to melt the chocolate and then leave it to cool to get a bit thicker. Then make the biscuits. I have never used wholemeal flour before, so this was something new. I had to use a lot more fluid to get the dough to stick together than the recipe instructed said, though, and that was with the knowledge that everyone on the TV show talked of how crumbly the biscuit dough was.

Step 3 - The biscuits were left to cool and then baked and left to cool again. Interestingly, this was the only baking involved in the whole process, so I’m not 100% sure it counts as a Bake Off! Then, spreading the melted chocolate into the silicone tray. That was quite a lot of fun!

Step 4 - More leaving things to cool, then dipping the biscuits into melted chocolate.

Step 5 - Making the marshmallow involved throwing all the ingredients into a bowl, putting over simmering water and whisking. My whisk wouldn’t reach to the cooker top, so I got the water boiling and then moved it off the heat. I was also a bit paranoid about the whisking process, having overdone it the last time I tried, so I think I stopped when it was a bit too runny. More on that later.

Step 6 - Then the process of putting everything together. Marshmallow into the chocolate bases, then putting the biscuit on top of that and sealing it up with more chocolate. It was all a bit of a mess, but seemed to be working okay. Then… wait for it… leave to set!

Step 7 - Eat! Unfolding them out of the silicone was probably about as much fun as baking can be. This one was almost perfect.

They were not all so neat, mind you.

Conclusion - I was totally impressed with the look of them, even the ones that leaked out a little bit. We tried them when they were a bit too cold, so the chocolate was hard to eat and it all made a bit of a mess in the bowl. However, it all tasted good - if very, very, very sickly. My personal favourite was the biscuit bases covered in chocolate. Would it be wrong just to make chocolate digestives in the future?

The marshmallow tasted exactly like it should, just like the ones that you would buy in the shops. It wasn’t the right consistency though, not enough air bubbles, much too runny, and messy. You would never be able to eat them with your hands. But it tasted good, and really, that’s all that matters because I have no Paul Hollywood peering over my shoulder. Just a Mr C who likes nothing better than a bowl of sugar.