Pimp That Snack

Great-Baldi

by Lee Cooper 7 photos Rated 81% 199 votes when voting closed

What shall I pimp?

After two days of trying to find a suitable snack to start my pimping career, I settled on an eternal favourite – a Garibaldi – or by it’s colloquial name… ‘the fly biscuit’

Having settled on the snack, I gathered the kit…

After measuring it all out, I was worried that the pimped biscuit wouldn’t be big enough… I needn’t have worried!

Ingredients lined up on the worktop: milk, Homepride flour, caster sugar, currants, butter and baking powder

Ingredients:

150g Currents
6 tbsps Milk
75g Butter
300g Self Raising Flour
Pinch of Salt
75g Caster Sugar

First I mixed all the dry ingredients together in a bowl – I then got really worried that the pimp would be too small! (Maybe I shouldn’t have used such a big bowl!)

A block of butter sitting in flour in a large white mixing bowl, before rubbing in

Then added the butter and milk to form a firm(ish) dough…

The pale biscuit dough gathered into a single cracked ball in the floury bowl

Then I divided the dough in two and started rolling… I decided to stop when:

A) It started to get quite thin, and perhaps more importantly…
B) If I’d made it any bigger, it wouldn’t have gone in the oven!

After worrying for about five minutes on how to pick it up without breaking it, I simply push it to the other end of the work surface (I’ll ignore that issue for a while) and repeated with the other half of the dough.

After measuring a lot of ‘flies’, I spread them on the first layer of dough…

Dough rolled out on a floured worktop and scattered thickly with currants

… then VERY carefully picked up the second piece and lay it over the top – using the ‘roll around a rolling pin technique!.

I then re-rolled the two pieces together until the currents started to show through to give that authentic squashed fly look. Sprinkle with some caster sugar for extra tastiness!

The dough folded over the currants and rolled flat into a large square sheet

Now getting excited and re-assured by the reinforced thickness of the two combined layers plus fruit, I transferred the creation to a suitably sized baking tray… unfortunately, I didn’t have one, so some hung over the edge!

The recipe instructed to bake at 190C, Gas Mark 5 for 15 minutes… obviously, that was for a normal sized biscuit! 25 minutes later and Voila! The creation is complete…

The baked square biscuit cooling on a wire rack, a normal Garibaldi beside it for scale

Some stats…

A run-of-the-mill Garibaldi…
Dimensions: 3.5cm x 6.5cm x 0.7cm
Volume: 15.9cm3
Nutritional Information: 39 calories, 0.9g fat (per biscuit)

A Great-baldi…
Dimensions: 30cm x 33cm x 1.5cm
Volume: 1485cm3
Nutritional Information: approx. 1500 calories, approx. 36.4 g fat (per biscuit)

Two more final tests…

A) The dunk test… but could it be picked up without falling apart?

Of course… in fact, it was surprisingly robust! Need a bigger mug though!

B) What did it taste like?

Scrumptious!

The finished giant Garibaldi held up by one corner above a mug of tea for scale

Planning my next pimp now… watch this space!

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