What did I do wrong?

[karen99]

Hi girls, a bit of help please. I'm practicing all of my chosen Christmas biscuit/cookie recipes (first year trying to make my own much to dh's delight!). Last night I made some lovely no-bake butterscotch fingers (or atleast they were supposed to be!) which had crushed digestives, sugar, golden syrup, glace cherries and mixed rind, raisins and chopped hazelnuts. I followed the instructions to a tee and it all looked lovely. Popped them into the fridge (in swiss roll tin) for a couple of hours but instead of letting me cut them into long fingers it just crumbled. Still tasted lovely! I ended up leaving them in the fridge over night, but the same this morning...

What did I do wrong? Do I need to add more syrup or should I have left them in the fridge for longer? The only thing I changed was demerra sugar for the muscovado as I didn't have any.

Any tips appreciated. Poor dh.. he'll just have to suffer through sample after sample until I get it right!

was there no melted butter in the recipe? If not I can't see how it was supposed to set. Check your recipe! If there was butter, make sure you used proper butter,not something that stays soft in the fridge like clover as it won't work.

absolutely no idea .. but taking a wild stab in the dark it probably is not enough syrup as that's the only possible thing that can act as a binding agent

I would definitely not put it down to the sugar if anything muscovado is 'stickier'

could you post recipe though .. sounds yummy

CD makes more sense

Does sound like too many dry ingredients and not enough wet. Or maybe the digestives weren';t crushed enough (I'd imagine they'd sort of make a "cement" with the syrup so need to have a large proportion as crumbs)

hi girls! didn't expect so many replies so quickly!

Here is the recipe (yes, I did add butter!)

3oz butter
3oz light muscovado sugar
1tbsp golden syrup
3oz raisins
2oz hazelnuts (chopped)
4oz digestive biscuits (lightly crushed)
2oz glace cherries (shopped)
1oz mixed peel

Put butter, sugar & syrup into a pan, heat gently until sugar dissolves, stirring all the time. Simmer for 2mins.
Stir in the remaining ingredients and mix well.
Turn into a greased 7in shallow sq tin and refrigerate to set.
Cut into fingers to serve.

Hmmm.. did crush the digestives a bit more than I thought I was supposed to. It was quite a 'dry' looking mixture at the end of it but still sticky. My tin wasn't square but oblong so maybe it wasn't a thick enough layer?

Enjoy

Add some melted chocolate, that'll make it set

I would think the sugar needs a proper simmering (?) to get kind of caramelly and that they'd have to be thick enough to hold together. But I think Soup's suggestion is the best. You could melt the chocolate with just a bit of butter (to make it cut better) and pour it under the cookie mixture -- smoosh the cookie stuff into it a bit and then let harden and cut.

I will hold this thread responsible if tonight I eat the chocolate I have hidden away for a pie.

chocolate pie, JJ??

Thanks Girls! I think a bit of chocolate would just do the job too! Will try that with round two. It may also have been the sugar, it took forever for the demerra to dissolve. Bought some muscovado today so will replace that correctly too.

Will let you know how they go!