I baked the bake off!

There is a show here in the UK called the Great British Bake Off. It’s a baking competition taking some of the best amateur bakers in the UK and making them perform three different challenges each week:

A signature bake which generally takes two hours

A technical challenge where they are given a partial recipe and asked to make whatever it is. Usually these are things that not many people would have heard of - let alone baked!

A showstopper which generally takes between three and four hours.

The only real difference between the showstopped and the signature is the amount of time sunk into and the level of fanciness.

So, long story short - I set myself the challenge of doing every single challenge from the latest series of the Bake Off in almost the same time they did. I finished about a week after the series did - and fit a week in New York City in whilst I was at it :)

This write-up is being done way after the baking. Writing is never as fun as baking!

What follows is a brief overview of everything I baked and my thoughts on it.

Week 1 - Cake

A relatively safe start. The challenges were:

Signature: A drizzle cake

Technical: 12 jaffa cakes

Showstopper: A mirror glaze cake

For this I baked a pineapple drizzle cake, 12 jaffa cakes and a raspberry and chocolate mirror glaze cake (filled with raspberry and chocolate ganache).

I enjoyed this start to the bake off. I tried making some things I had never done before:

Fat free sponge

Genoise sponge

Jelly

Mirror glaze

I learnt a few things the hard way: crumb coating shouldn’t be skipped and jelly should be brought to room temperature before trying to pour chocolate on it otherwise the chocolate sets. Overall though, a successful and fun week!

Week 2 - Biscuits

This excited me - these are things I’ve wanted to make, but, hadn’t actually done before.

Signature: 24 identical iced biscuits

Technical: 12 viennese whirls

Showstopper: Gingerbread 3D scene (at least 30cm high and at least eight objects)

For this I made 24 strawberry and rosemary biscuits, 12 viennese whirls (with strawberry curd though rather than jam as I happened to have curd to use up) and a scene from “when gingerbread builders go rogue”.

This was a fun - but stressful and back breaking week. Icing identical biscuits is backbreaking and tedious work! Making a gingerbread house is challenging and it all fell apart overnight as the gingerbread absorbed moisture from the air and went soft.

Viennese whirls though - home made ones are amazing. Shop bought ones are nothing compared to these. I would happily make these time and time again!

Learnings for this week: gingerbread for house building is quite different to normal gingerbread and needs different baking times, viennese whirls are awesome.

Week 3 - Bread

Bread week was the first week that I got nervous about. My previous bread making experience was limited to three or four sourdough loaves. From past seasons I expected that this would be a week of making elaborate bread sculptures and failing miserably. Here’s what the challenges were:

Signature: Chocolate loaf

Technical: 12 dampfnudel with plum sauce

Showstopper: Savoury plaited centrepiece with three different flours

For the chocolate loaf I made a chocolate, orange and pistachio couronne. For the showerstopper I attempted to make a breakfast/lunch/dinner centrepiece: maple candied bacon and pecan rye loaf, wholemeal olive and rosemary loaf, curry bread with sultanas and coconut. All with plaits of some description.

I was pleasantly surprised with my results this week. The couronne tasted fantastic (it got devoured at work). The dampfnudel were easier than expected and tasted great - I would definitely make these again, especially with the plum sauce. I was disappointed with my centrepiece - it didn’t flow together, the bacon bread wasn’t that tasty. The curry bread tasted better than it looks though :)

Learnings for this week: couronnes should not be overfilled as they leak quite messily if they are, dampfnudel are awesome, bread is more fun to make than I thought.

Week 4 - Batter

This week was rubbish. Although I like pancakes, yorkshire puddings and churros I really felt this wasn’t a great week from the perspective of making interesting things and actually baking. Hohum, the challenge is what it is:

Signature: Filled yorkshire puddings

Technical: 12 heart-shaped lace pancakes

Showstopper: Churros

For the yorkshires, I filled them with slow cooked chorizo in a red wine sauce with spring onions, peas and topped with parmesan - sadly, I did this at a dinner party and failed to take a photo of the finished product as I was too busy getting it served. For the churros, I made standard churros with a raspberry sauce, a chocolate sauce and a pistachio dip. Again, I didn’t get any good photos of these as I was busy feeding people.

I had never had yorkshire puddings with a filling before (toad in the hole doesn’t count as it’s all baked together rather than filled afterwards) - it’s a nice way to make them more interesting.

The lace pancakes were the biggest waste of time in this series. These are a great example of food where making it look better actually detracts from the final product. There’s less pancake to hold all the goodness of lemon and sugar and it’s not as pleasant to eat due to the increased faff. I almost didn’t bother making these, but, I’m a completionist.

I was glad to have this week done with.

Learnings for this week: trying to make lace pancakes requires a proper sized squeezy bottle and not a sandwich bag with a hole cut out.

Week 5 - Pastry

I love eating pastry. It’s not one of my strong suits though and until this week I had yet to be able to roll pastry into a nice tidy rectangle. This week the challenges were:

Signature: 24 breakfast pastries, 2 different types

Technical challenge: Bakewell tart

Showstopper: 48 filo amuse bouch, 2 different types

My immediate reaction to the showstopper was a jawdropping “I can’t do that, I’ve never even made filo before”. I soldiered on and made:

12 maple and pecan plaits

12 chocolate orange twists

24 pumpkin, rosemary and parmesan filo parcels

24 filo cups filled with pumpkin and pecan mix topped with maple buttercream

I’ve only just realised I had a recurring theme of maple here. However, I made these nearly two weeks apart (including recipe creation) as I was in New York with work for a week which limited my baking time somewhat.

As you can probably guess the bakewell tart was not a success. It was underbaked as I had to run off for a meeting which meant pulling it out of the oven sooner than I would have liked. I also did not have a deep enough tin for it which meant I couldn’t ice it how I wanted to. This is one I will redo as I love bakewell tarts.

I was pleasantly surprised with the breakfast pastries that I made. Good breakfast pastries are special and having that in my repertoire makes me happy.

Filo was a pain to work with. I stretched all my filo by hand (I wish I had a pasta machine now). I was pleased with the flavour combinations, but, I think that the pastry could have been neater. Not bad for my first ever go at filo though!

Learnings for this week: good danish pastry recipes are hard to find, filo is a pain to work with, underbaked bakewell tart is both amusing and sad.

Week 6 - Botanical

When this was first mentioned as the title I was puzzled as to what it could mean. I was very excited by the challenges though:

Signature: Citrus meringue pie

Technical: 2 herb fougasse

Showstopper: 3-tier floral cake

I was also intimidated. A 3-tier floral cake. Wow. Ouch. Wow. Ouch.

For the merginue pie I went for a dark chocolate and lemon meringue pie (a dark chocolate ganache was placed on the pastry and then the curd placed on top). For the showstopper I made three tiers:

Top tier: lemon and elderflower with elderflower frosting

Middle tier: pistachio and saffron with a white chocolate ganache filling

Bottom tier: orange blossom and honey polenta cake

On the face of it, this seems like the most difficult week so far, but, it was mostly straightforward stuff… just a lot of it to balance and manage.

I was pleased with my lemon merginue pie, but, it needed more curd - who doesn’t love curd?!

The fougasse was way tastier than I expected. I’ve never had fougasse before, so, I was happy with the results. This is also going on to my list of things I’d happily bake again (and might never have tried without doing a bake along).

The three tier cake was a delight. The folks at work loved it and everyone had their own favourite layer (each layer was loved by someone!). Personally, I wasn’t too bothered by the polenta cake - the taste was good, but, the texture felt wrong to me. I don’t think the grainy texture belongs here. I would use polenta again, but, in a nutty recipe where the grain and crunch would cohabit happily.

Learnings for this week: floral icing needs to be done from the bottom to the top so that the ends of the roses can be tucked under each other, swiss meringue is fun to pipe with, tiered cakes should have layers of equal height.

Week 7 - Desserts

In case you haven’t figured it out, I have a horrible sweet tooth. This week made me drool. The challenges:

Signature: a roulade

Technical: a marjolaine

Showstopper: 24 mini-mousse cakes in two different flavours

I was giddy about this. I had so many ideas about what I wanted to do. In the end I went for: a toffee and pear roulade, 6 chocolate and beetroot mini-mousses, 6 mango and blueberry mini-mousses (I didn’t make the full 24 as I didn’t want to waste a lot of mousses as they wouldn’t transport easily and they had raw egg white in).

Disaster! My roulade didn’t crack - it completely split. I ate it anyway. It was very tasty despite looking a mess. I’ve since attempted a few more roulades and have had the same result. Roulades and I do not get along. One day I will crack it, or, not crack it ;)

The Marjolaine. Oh, the Marjolaine! I would make this again, happily. It took three hours, but, the results are a delight. It’s not a particularly hard recipe, it just has a lot of steps and components and any one of them could go wrong.

Having never made mousse before, I was pleased with the results. The mango and blueberry mousse suffered a slight setback in that the blueberries browned despite a healthy glug of lemon juice as I blended them. The flavour was retained and they still tasted good. The chocolate and beetroot mousse was my favourite. I attempted to candy some beetroot to place on top, however, I did not slice the beetroot thin enough and they were not as crisp as I would have liked.

A really fun week in my book. A stressful week too - so many opportunties for splits, cracks and mousse pouring everywhere.

Learnings for this week: roulade sponge needs to be thin to roll it, mousse is easier to make than I expected (but, the setup with the acetate is more faff than is ideal), pralines are tricky (I crystallised my first attempt).

Week 8 - Tudor

Tudor? Ehm… ?!

Signature: Shaped savoury pies

Technical: 12 jumbles (a savoury knotted biscuit)

Showstopper: 3D marchpane cake

Once I discovered what needed to be made I was intimidated by the amount of work involved. That said, everybody loves pie, biscuits are good and marzipan is nom. I had an amazing (in my head) idea for the marchpane cake. Marchpane was the forerunner to marzipan and the challenge allowed either to be used. What I went for was:

8 “mini” slow-roasted duck, plum and walnut pies

12 jumbles

A battenburg chess board with marzipan chess pieces

Sadly, it turns out I’m not so great at shaping with marzipan (I think I needed to use a more finely ground almond as well). This was one of the first challenges where I stopped before completion - after several hours of trying to make marzipan chess pieces I realised that I was taking far longer than the contestants would have. Despite the appearance, it tasted good :)

I learnt a valuable lesson with the pies - if you pre-cook your meat then it will not shrink during baking and you’ll have very little room left to add your nice sauce bits in after cooking. The taste of these was good, they just didn’t have as much plum as I would have liked. For my first time making proper meat pies, I was pleased.

The jumbles were a pleasant surprise after a few mishaps. I hope the contestants partial recipe was better than the one on the bake off site which has several amounts wrong. For example, the total weight of all the ingredients is less than the total weight of dough that the recipe asks to roll. I’ve never baked with aniseed, mace or caraway before. I was pleased with the final taste and would make these again.

Week 9 - Pâtisserie

Signature: 24 Savoury Palmiers (two flavours)

Technical: Savarin

Showstopper: 36 fondant fancies (two flavours)

This was another of those weeks of instant joy. I’ve always loved fondant fancies and having seen the difference between home made jaffa cakes and store bought ones…I couldn’t wait to see the difference that home baking fondant fancies would bring. This week I made:

12 date, walnut and ham palmiers

12 candided bacon and parmesan palmiers

A savarin

18 lemon fondant fancies

18 chocolate and raspberry surprise fondant fancies (it wasn’t that much of a surprise, the raspberry was the lump on top)

This was a lot of fun. The fondant fancies took a lot longer and was more fiddly than I realised - putting a crumb coat on 36 fancies and then pouring fondant over each one. My back was particularly sore after being hunched over these. I must admit, although they tasted amazing, I am not sure if I would sink the time into making these again. I think there are better things to make if you want a challenge.

I had never even heard of a savarin before this. It’s definitely on my list of things I would make again. It almost feels healthy too with all the fruit on top. You can definitely justify the third slice.

Week 10 - Royal

The home stretch! The last week! Before the episode aired I was feeling very intimidated about what I would have to make. Normally, the showstopper for the final is something absolutely spectacular and I did not believe I had the skills to make something truly beautiful. I think I got off “lightly”:

Signature: meringue crowns

Technical: victoria sandwich (without any recipe at all)

Showstopper: picnic consisting of 12 sausage rolls, 12 mini quiches, 12 savoury scones, 12 fruit and custard tarts and a chocolate celebration cake

I say lightly because I felt comfortable making all the elements of the showstopper (despite having never made sausage rolls or quiches). It was more about making and managing lots of things rather than making a single beautiful thing. I ended up making:

Mango, macadamia and white chocolate pavlova with passion fruit coulis

A victoria sandwich (from memory, including the jam)

12 strawberry and custard tarts

~20 sausage rolls (had leftover filling)

12 leek, mushroom and gouda quiches

~16 orange and date scones (leftover mix)

A standard chocolate cake

I took 7 hours to make the picnic. I think I could have done it in 5 hours had I not had a shortage of baking trays and not had to do so much washing up to keep myself in supply of tools.

I was TIRED after this. I recorded the baking day on video and am going to make a time lapse at some point. Things I learnt from this week: sausage rolls are easy and fun to make (plus tasty), mass baking requires a lot of juggling of different things and is a very different skill to just baking one thing well.

Conclusions

This was a hard challenge that I set myself and I’m very proud of myself for finishing it with only a few mishaps. In general, I did better than I expected. I learnt a lot of skills (I’m way more comfortable rolling and shaping pastry). I tried a few new recipes I would never have tried before.

Things that I would glady bake again that I might never have tried:

Marjolaine

Savarin

Jaffa cakes (I made a jumbo two-tier cake version of this for a friend)

Mirror glaze cakes

Viennese whirls

Dampfnudel

Danish pastries

Fougasse

Mousse

Sausage rolls

Quiche

If anyone wants recipes to anything I’ve baked - just ask and I’ll share what I can (I lost some of my notes).

Would I do this again? Yes. This was a great way to push my skills, get out of my comfort zone and try some things I would never have tried. Maybe I’d do it over a longer period of time though rather than trying to keep up with the show!

About me

I have a baking problem. An addiction some might say. I'm not a professional baker as I like to bake what I want to bake and I get bored of making the same thing over and over. I love creating new recipes and trying new ingredient combinations. I'm constantly trying to improve my craft.

I can be found on Instagram where I post pictures of things that I bake, not just my own recipes. I frequent the baking subreddit and occassionally give advice if I have some.

More recipes that I have created can be found here.

Discussion

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.