Pass the Salt

A couple of weeks ago I received a box full of Fairtrade and Trade Aid food products as part of the Big Fair Bake campaign. I was surprised at the range of ingredients, given that it wasn’t so long ago that Fairtrade was limited to coffee, chocolate and bananas. My box contained Palestinian almonds, Medjoul dates (the best kind), cocoa, chocolate, coconut milk, raw sugar, bananas and cinnamon. My mission was to bake something that included some of those ingredients.

Fairtrade Florentines

I decided to experiment with Florentines, partly because I’d never made them before and also because I wanted to make use of the dates, chocolate and almonds I’d received. I spent a morning devising a recipe and discovered that these delicious Italian biscuits deserve their reputation for trickiness. Florentines should spread themselves thinly; they should be chewy in the middle with lacy edges that are crisp to the bite. My first batch resembled flat rock cakes with too many nuts and not enough fruit, so I cut back on the flour, reduced the almonds and added more candied orange peel. This second batch was really good – my family scoffed the lot before I could get them into the tin. Just as well – Florentines should be eaten fresh before they lose their crunch.

My recipe is on the blogger page of The Big Fair Bake website, click here. I recommend making your own candied orange peel; it’s not difficult and it tastes so much fresher than those packets of mixed peel that gather dust in the back of the pantry. I’ve included the instructions with the recipe and I’ve also explained how to blanch and skin the whole almonds. You could, of course, buy them already skinned and slivered but then they wouldn’t be Fairtrade and that would defeat the whole purpose of the bake off. I think as consumers we should make the ethical choice and buy fairtrade ingredients where we can. By doing so we return a larger profit to the farmers who generally get paid less than anyone else in the value chain. It’s the least we can do.

Visit the Fairtrade Facebook page to win prizes in the Fair Bake competition.