Bake Along With GBBO: Ex-Contestant's Bake

Saturday 1 August 2015



I am so excited that the Great British Bake Off is back with a vengeance next week, we all know how much I love that show right? Also how Mary Berry is literally my complete idol... Anyhow... I announced a few weeks ago that myself and a few other bloggers were going to be baking along to the bake off, putting up a new post every week after the airing of an episode of bake off, you can read that post here. If you would like to take part you can join at any time, just check out our Facebook group.

So myself and the other bloggers taking part decided that we were far too excited about the bake off to wait until next week to bake, so we thought we'd do one in the lead up to the bake off. The prompt for this week was to recreate a bake made by one of the Ex-Contestants of GBBO.


I decided to recreate a bake from the one and only, 'King Louis' from last year's batch of bakers. Louis was an amazing baker on the show and he always seemed to know what he was doing, and I honestly don't remember ever seeing him getting in a fluster. His calm and organised baking style clearly paid off as he made it all the way to the final! I'll admit Louis wasn't my favourite on the show and I actually wanted Richard to win last year, BUT I really like Louis' recipes, and finally settled on his Pain au chocolat blanc with raspberries that he made during the final. Mainly because as the moment I am facing a serious White Chocolate addiction... Also because I wanted to finally give dough lamination a go, because no doubt I'll face again during the 10 weeks of GBBO right? You can find Louis' recipe on the BBC website here.


Here is how they turned out, admittedly they are probably a little under baked, but I am beyond chuffed that you can see the layers of dough, considering this was the first time I had done the lamination technique! I can confirm that they are delicious, and very unique from your standard Pain au Chocolat... 

For the dough mix you will need:


For the filling you will need:



Firstly place all the ingredients apart from the water and butter in a free stand mixer, with a dough hook attachment. It's really important that you keep the salt and the yeast on separate sides of the bowl for this part.


Then add 3/4 of your milk (lukewarm), and mix until combined, then turn up the speed and mix for seven minutes.


At that point your dough should look beautiful like this! wrap it in cling film and place it in the freezer.


Roll your butter out into a rectangle between two pieces of parchment paper, then place it in the freezer with the dough for fifteen minutes!


This is the part of the recipe where you do a lot of fancy 'turns' so that you laminate the dough... oooo fancy!


Combine the cream cheese and lemon zest and then place into a piping bag (look at me getting all fancy again!)


You also want to prep your chocolate by making sure the squares are only 1cm wide, but the length doesn't matter.


Once you are done laminating the dough, you need to cut it in half and then roll each half into a rectangle.


This is where it gets fun, and a little messy! You start by placing a line of white chocolate along the dough about 2cm down from the edge, then you roll the dough to encase it. Next you pipe a couple of lines of your cream cheese mixture right next to that, then place a row of raspberries on top. Then you simply roll it up to encase it all! Once that's done trim the ends of your sausage and then measure six equal pieces.


Cut the pieces out and place them onto a baking tray lined with baking paper, and then cover them with clingfilm and leave them to rise for 40 mins. Then simply bake them for 25 minutes!

I hope you've enjoyed my adventure in baking this week, and I'll see you again next week for the first challenge week of the Bake Along!

Don't forget to check out the bakes from the other bloggers taking part in the challenge below! The challenge runs until next Wednesday so keep checking back to see new recipes...


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