The Great Bloggers Bake Off - Week Six - Paul Hollywood's Fougasse

Paul Hollywood's Herb Fougasse

We're over half way there everyone! Can you even believe it? This week was yet another first in Bake Off history, Botanical Week. Now when I first heard about the theme for the week I was a little sceptical, but then I got very excited. I had originally wanted to make a lemon and lavender cake inspired by my favourite Yankee Candle, but I couldn't get hold of culinary lavender in time, so I had to quickly come up with a plan B. Sorry Paul but yes, your Fougasse wasn't my first choice bake... Having said that, now I've finally eaten some Fougasse I can confirm that it is very tasty indeed.

The Great Bloggers Bake Off - Week Four: Cinnamon Sugar Churros

Cinnamon Sugar Churros w/ Plain Chocolate Dipping Sauce

 Few this week has flown by and once again I didn't have very much time to get a bake done. However I am adamant that I will take part in this Bake off for the whole 10 weeks, so I persevered and ended up making Cinnamon Sugar Churros with a Plain Chocolate Dipping Sauce. It's no secret that I am a massive fan of cinnamon sugar, actually it might be because I don't think I have ever mentioned it on my blog before... Oh well, the point is I LOVE cinnamon sugar, so it was a no-brainer for me that I would do Churros. If you would like to know how to make these beauties then keep reading!

The Great Bloggers Bake Off - Week Three: Nutella Star Bread

Nutella Star Bread

How is it already week three of the Great Bloggers Bake Off? Time seems to be moving really quickly at the moment, every time I blink another week is gone. As always week three on the bake off was Paul Hollywood's domain, bread week. This is always a week that I dread, normally my bread bakes don't go too well, this week however everything seemed to fall into place!

The Great Bloggers Bake Off: Week Two - Galaxy Iced Biscuits

Galaxy Iced Biscuits

Welcome back to The Great Bloggers Bake Off, this week we got to tackle something that I rarely bake, biscuits. The three challenges in the tent this week were, iced biscuits, viennese swirls, and gingerbread structures. As much as I wanted to take on a Gingerbread structure to challenge myself, I don't have a good track record of making Gingerbread structures (last year I had a meltdown when making a gingerbread house). So instead I decided to push myself in the decorating department, and made some iced biscuits instead!

Bloggers Bake Along to GBBO: FINAL WEEK: Classically British Cake

As mentioned in my previous post, I decided to make TWO bakes for the final week, instead of my usual one. This of course meant I set myself far too much work, raised the bar far too high, and ended up getting myself stressed. However something decent actually came out of it!

As soon as I hear the term Classic British Cake, I immediately think Victoria Sponge cake. It's so quintessentially British to me, that I just knew I had to make one. I also didn't just want to make your bog standard sponge cake, so I thought to myself... 'What is the most British thing I can think of in relation to cake?'. The answer of course, was tea... Tea and cakes, afternoon tea, what could be more British. So I set myself the (what I thought was easy) task of making a Teapot Cake! So here's how it all came into being...

It all started with a sponge. I mixed all the ingredients together in my mixer, and then used some Hemisphere tins that I got from Lakeland to make to half sphere cakes. This was probably the easiest part of the whole process truth be told...

Then I moved onto making a jam... this was the first time I had ever attempted a jam, and considering I didn't have a fancy sugar thermometer I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I think I'm going to be making this often because it tastes so much better than supermarket cheap jam, and it only took me about 30 minutes to make!

Then I made a simple butter-cream icing which simply involves creaming butter and then slowly bit by bit adding icing sugar. This is probably the simplest of all icings to make, so still didn't run into any issues here!

Then came the putting together of the cake... WOW was this a flipping nightmare. So I crumb coated the sphere halves with the butter-cream icing so that my fondant would stick. and then I made one of the spheres flat on the bottom so it would stand. Then I topped that with butter-cream and jam, before putting the final sphere on top. Next I rolled out my fondant, which I happened to colour myself, which just took such a freaking long time that I wanted to cry. Then the WORST step of all... putting the fondant onto the cake. This was my first time covering a cake with fondant, so picking to do it on a sphere cake was probably a bad move on my part. It just didn't go smoothly... literally. Once I was relatively happy I moved on to the other decoration. So I made a little lid by rolling out white fondant and using a cookie cutter. Then I rolled a small ball for the little lid handle. For some unknown reason I decided to make a polkadot tea pot, so I also spent half an hour piping little dots onto my teapot, before using toothpicks to add a handle, and spout. Finally adding gold accents with a brush and gold edible paint.

There we have it, my classically British victoria sponge cake! I am so happy that it turned out OK, considering the blood, sweat and tears (figuratively) that went into this.

What have you baked this week?

Bloggers Bake Along to GBBO: FINAL WEEK: St. Clements Iced Buns

The Bake Off is all over, and I am super upset to see it go. There's something about sitting down to watch it each week, and getting excited about baking, that I love. I can honestly say this year has been my favourite bake off, as I have not only been watching, but as you my lovely readers know I have also been baking every week! I remember right bake to my first bake, and I was so worried as to whether I would be able to keep up, and my confidence has just soared since then, and I really feel like I kind of know what I am doing now. So much so that I hope to keep up my one bake a week on my blog, and I hope you will all enjoy reading them.

So onto the final bakes. Originally I decided I was going to make all three of the final challenges, but after I decided what I was going to make for two of them, I just knew I would be setting myself too much work. One bake I knew I couldn't go without making was the iced buns. These have been a favourite of mine ever since I was a kid, I'm used to a plain bun topped with gorgeous water icing, but with my recipe I have gone all out! I decided to go with two of my favourite flavours, orange, and lemon. Hence the name of the bake (I tried so hard to be clever with).

For the bun and icing parts I decided to go with Paul Hollywood's recipe which can be found on the BBC website here.

This involved putting all the ingredients into a bowl and mixing them by hand. We all know how much Mr. Hollywood likes to get his hands dirty. This ended up with my hands being glued to the dough, but with a little extra flour, and a lot of kneading it turned out pretty well! This then had to prove for one hour until doubled in size. Then I had the rather difficult task of shaping my buns... Honestly I blame the cheap Ikea table I was trying to shape them on! Once they are shaped you place them onto a greased baking tray and leave to prove for 40 minutes more. By which time (if you are doing a batch bake) they should be touching. After that all that's left is for them to go in the oven. I was shocked to find they only needed a mere 10 minutes in the oven, until they came out looking brown and lovely, or so I thought! I let these beauties cool, got all nice and ready to decorate them and they were RAW underneath! Never again shall I take the word of Paul Hollywood. So in they went again for another 10 minutes upside down. Low and behold when they came out there were still doughy... Needless to say I was fuming... I don't know exactly how long there were in for in the end, but I kept having to put them back in every time I thought they were done!

Whilst my buns were proving I started making my fillings, starting with one of my all time favourites, Lemon curd. To make this I followed this recipe also from the BBC website. This involves melting butter and sugar into lemon juice and zest over a pan of simmering water. Once this was all melted I then added whisked eggs to the mix, stirring quickly until combined. Then you cook this slowly stirring occasionally until it coats the back of a spoon. Once at this stage simply remove from the heat to leave to cool, and thicken.

Once my curd was out of the way I moved onto a marmalade. When researching a recipe for this I was disheartened to see a tonne of recipes that involved leaving things overnight, as I am impatient and wanted it to be done fast. So I found this recipe for fast marmalade that only takes 20 minutes to cook, and I can confirm it turned out really well. The recipe called for a blender, but as I don't have one I simply zested my oranges, chopped down the flesh as small as possible, and then chopped the skin into strips. All that's left to do is add the sugar and boil the mix. Once boiled for 20 minutes, leave the mix to cool and it begins to thicken!

When the buns were FINALLY done, I moved on to filling and decorating them. I whipped up some cream to go in the middle, and then made up some water icing in Orange and Yellow colours. Then I simply cut the buns in half, spread the filling on, piped on the cream, and carefully (a.k.a messily) placed the water icing on the top. Which as you can see from the photos didn't go so well... I had originally intended to pipe this on, but I only had one piping bag left...

So here's the finished article! I'll admit they aren't the prettiest iced buns I've ever seen, but I have honestly never eaten any tastier ones! The lemon curd is so tart, and just works perfectly in the bun, and the marmalade is just sweet enough to add something new to the classic iced bun. I will definitely be making these again soon, but next time I'll be ignoring Paul Hollywood's directions!

Have you managed to bake anything this week?

Bloggers Bake Along to GBBO: Salted Caramel Chocolate Tart

I know... I know... another salted caramel recipe... I just can't help myself because it tastes so good! Plus it was honestly the first thing that popped into my head once I decided to make a chocolate tart.

As I sat watching the Bake Off on Wednesday, listening to the bakers say how difficult it is to work with chocolate pastry, I almost laughed. 'How difficult can it really be?' I thought to myself. The answer to that question is of course very difficult. I can honestly say I will never underestimate chocolate pastry again. It was just difficult to combine, difficult to roll, and then difficult to tell when baked...

One I had my pastry case in the oven I set about making my salted caramel sauce, which involved boiling brown sugar, cream, and butter together until it looked vaguely like caramel. Then once my case was baked I poured a little of the caramel sauce right into the base of the case and left it to set slightly. Then I got to work on the chocolate filling, the process of which is very similar to the making of chocolate ganache. I boiled cream, sugar and vanilla essence over the hob and then poured them over chocolate and butter, whisking until smooth. I then simply spooned the mixture over the top of my caramel and smoothed it over. This then went into the fridge to set for two hours.

For some reason I decided that my decoration hasn't really been up to scratch and us such I decided to attempt to pipe an intricate design onto my tart. I did this using left over white chocolate I had from last week's bake, which I then piped into a swirling pattern.

Overall I am very happy with my tart, and even happy with my piping! Considering is was my first attempt at free-hand piping a design from my head (rather than a picture), I'm very pleased! Trust me when I say it tastes as good as it looks, already can't wait to have another slice...

What have you baked this week?

Bloggers Bake A Long to GBBO: Salted Caramel and Raspberry Eclairs

I'm not ashamed to admit that something went a tad bit wrong this week. Considering that this is the eighth week in a row that I have baked, and this is the first time I have encounter a serious problem, I'm pretty happy!

I had planned to make the whole grand Religieuse a l'ancienne, and have the magnificent three tiers all stuck together and standing up. It just didn't turn out that way, in a nut shell my eclairs were not strong enough, and had I attempted the tower it would have sunken and ruined all of the eclairs. Personally after tasting one of my spares I wasn't willing to let that happen!

I had made Choux pastry before so I wasn't at all worried about the way that would turn out, and I didn't need to be either, because all was well! However Creme Patissiere was something that I had yet to attempt, so I was very worried about how it would turn out. Thankfully it turned out really well, and my creme patissiere was lovely an thick. I decided to half it and flavour one half with salted caramel, and the other half with fresh raspberries. These flavour choices turned out to be a great hit with my boyfriend. Piping these into the eclairs proved to be a fairly fiddly task, although I'll admit it's really fun watching the pastries slowly fill up with the creme patissiere.

Then I simply made a White chocolate and then a Dark Chocolate Ganache to dip my eclairs in, again both proved popular and it was a mission to keep my boyfriend away from the bowl!

In the end I'm fairly happy with how they turned out. They taste delicious, and the flavour combo's are winners. I honestly just wish I had been able to make the full religieuse a l'ancienne. I have been pushing myself more and more each week, and this week part of me feels like I gave up... I guess I have the next two weeks to really redeem myself don't I!

Bloggers Bake Along to GBBO: Mary Berry's Tennis Cake

I'm so pleased that I have gotten to week seven and have manage not to miss a single bake so far! Although I had been looking through all my other bakes fior this challenge and I realised that I hadn't managed to tackle a single technical challenge... So this week I remedied that by making Mary Berry's Tennis Cake from this week.

Making the cake mix involved preparing a whole bunch of fruit, I have literally never seen so much fruit in a cake... like ever... In fact when I first started mixing the fruit into the cake batter I was convinced that it was about 90% fruit!

Making my own Marzipan was surprisingly easy, although I didn't think it was going to come together at first because of the tiny amount of wet ingredients involved... Also have to mention that I didn't make my own fondant, I had to buy white fondant and colour it myself! It wasn't that I didn't want to, in fact I had all the ingredients in my basket ready to go, but Tesco had sold out of Glycerin, and as I was running out of time to get my bake done before I start my new job next week, I admitted defeat. Having said that, colouring shop bought fondant is no easy task! Cutting both into rectangles and getting them on top of the cake without breaking them was a challenge... The royal icing was something I have made several times before, so I had no problems here. Piping the Tennis court was an absolute nightmare... and as you may be able to see I was a little bit wobbly. Although it was fine once I got the hang of it!

 Then all I had to do was pipe my pink and yellow border, which after doing the tennis court was really easy. Then I piped myself some little tennis rackets and a net, which I left overnight to dry. Despite this however I still managed to break my net... you can see the damage above! So my tennis cake is unfortunately net-less, and I have no idea how some of the bakers managed to get a completed net on their cakes...

So there we have my Tennis cake! Overall I was pretty happy, and I'd like to think that if I was on the Bake Off this week that my cake would have been in the middle, judging wise.

Let me know in the comments what you think of the cake, and what you thought of this weeks episode...

Bloggers Bake Along to GBBO: Mary Berry's Apricot Frangipane Tart

Before we start with the recipe by my absolute baking idol, Mrs Berry herself, I have to announce that we got Star Baker again last week in the Great Bloggers Bake Off 2015 as hosted by Jenny of Mummy Mishaps for our Bzzzzy Bee Dairy Free Ice Cream Roll! Granted it was because no one else attempted the ice cream roll, but I like to think we would have gotten it anyway!

I was very surprised that no one else attempted the ice cream roll as it seemed the obvious choice for me, but was very happy to see my name in the Star Bakers round up post again...

This week I decided to make a Frangipane tart. Ever since the Bake Off began and I first saw this mysterious tart I have wanted to try my hand at one, so when I saw it was in this weeks episode I knew without a doubt I would make one. As mentioned above this apricot frangipane tart is from the great Mary Berry herself, and I found this recipe here. 

I was surprised to see that for this week's bake there were only a few ingredients, much less than I have used in the past few weeks...

I started by making the short crust pastry, which thankfully I have made several times before, so I wasn't at all stressed about. For some reason this recipe doesn't say anything about chilling the pastry before rolling it out, so I didn't bother. It also doesn't say anything about blind baking it, so again I just did as I was told and didn't bother.

Once that was done I moved onto the frangipane, which is made by creaming butter and sugar together, then mixing in beaten egg, before finally stirring in the ground almonds and almond extract. This honestly smelt amazing, and I just wanted to stuff it into my face, however I just about managed to restrain myself!

Next I drained my two tins of apricot halves and then dried them individually with paper towels. Then I careful placed them onto my pastry base, before carefully spooning on the frangipane and smoothing it out. Then I popped it into the oven for 45 minutes. I check it at 30 mins to make sure it wasn't browning too much, and to pop some foil on top to ensure the pastry didn't burn.

Once it was baked I made up a quick icing using icing sugar and some of the syrup I saved from the drained apricots and dripped it on in a zig zag pattern.

There we have it my Apricot Frangipane Tart, I must say considering it was the first frangipane tart that I had ever tried, it was seriously yummy, and I already can't wait to make another!

Bloggers Bake Along to GBBO: Bzzzzzy Bee Dairy Free Ice-cream Roll

Before we kick off with this week's bake I just wanted to announce that I got Star Baker in the Great Bloggers Bake Off 2015 hosted by Jenny of Mummy Mishaps, for our Week Four Trio of Cheesecakes!!! 

I was so pleased when I saw that Jenny had picked me on her round-up post, considering how hard I worked on those cheesecakes too! Anyway on to this weeks bake...

How is it Week FIVE already? It feels like I was just settling down to watch the first episode of the new series yesterday... This week in the tent the bakers tackled 'free-from' baking in the form of sugar-free cakes, gluten free pitta's and dairy free ice-cream rolls. You may have already guessed from the title that I picked the latter of the three... Mainly because since #bingate last year I have been dying to make a bake with ice-cream, and I can confirm it is surprisingly tricky! Before I go ahead to the recipe I must admit that I forgot to take a lot of the photos this week so there are some steps missing... in the panic of trying to get my ice-cream set... I just forgot about taking pictures for the blog.

So I started out by making my ice-cream base, which I forgot to take pictures of *slaps face* but it was a basic dairy free vanilla ice-cream and the recipe I used can be found here.

I'm not sure if you can tell by the title but the theme of my bake was Honey, so I decided to flavour my ice-cream with honey comb, so I made this by boiling sugar and golden syrup until caramel coloured, and then quickly whisking in Bicarbonate of Soda, and then pouring it onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper to set. The recipe I used for this is here. Then once my honeycomb was set, and my ice cream was just set and not runny, I combined the two together in a bowl, and then poured it onto a clingfilm covered baking tray, rolling it up in a sausage shape before putting it in the freezer to set. This was honestly the hardest part of the entire bake... and it took a couple of attempts and some added tin foil for support, but I got it in the freezer...

Whilst that was chilling I got on with my honey flavoured dairy free sponge, the recipe for which you can find here. This involved whisking together egg yolks, honey and sugar, adding flour gradually, then whisking the egg whites until they formed peaks, before carefully combining the two mixtures bit by bit. I've never made a sponge in my life that required so much elbow grease! Then I took 1/3 of the mixture and coloured it black with gel food colour, and then popped a little yellow gel food colour into the rest of the mixture to make it a little brighter. Then I put the black mixture in a piping bag, and piped diagonal stripes onto a baking paper lined tray, then taking the yellow mixture and pouring it evenly over the top. I'm not going to lie, at this point it looked a mess and I was hoping and praying that it came out edible... this then went into the oven for 30 mins. When I turned it out I was very pleased to see my striped pattern had turned out quite well! (have you guessed why I did the stripes yet?)

Whilst the sponge was still hot I sandwiched it between two sheets of baking paper, and then rolled it up over a rolling pin, ensuring that my design was on the outside of the roll! Then I had to leave this to cool completely...

Once the sponge was cool and my ice-cream sausage had completely set, I unrolled the sponge, placing the ice-cream on one edge. Then I rolled it up in the sponge, transferred it to my serving board, and decorated it with some beautiful fresh roses, because we all know how much bees love flowers right! So there is my HONEY BEE inspired ice-cream roll... We all had a slice immediately and were delighted by how subtle but delicious the honey flavour was in the cake. Admittedly this cake is a lot denser than your standard sponge, but I attribute that to it being fatless, it was still amazingly delicious!

Bloggers Bake Along to GBBO: A Trio of Baked Cheesecakes

From left to right: Lemon, Peanut Butter and chocolate, Vanilla Honeycomb

I can't believe I have been baking for #Bloggersbakealong for 4 weeks now! I haven't missed a single week, that's a serious achievement for me... This week the bakers had to make a show-stopping three baked cheesecakes, and I decided to go ahead and baked three too, and I'm not going to lie, all in all it took me about five hours of baking to churn these babies out. Two of these recipes came from my GBBO Celebrations book, and one from BBC good food which you can find here.

I started by making the Peanut Butter cheesecake which has a pastry base, which I baked before mixing the filling ingredients together. Then I threw the chocolate chips in there, which were supposed to sink to the bottom, but for some reason they didn't.

Then I started on the Honeycomb cheesecake, for which I first made my own honeycomb, which took two attempts. Making caramel on a Gas stove is seriously difficult, even a millisecond and it can be burned. My second attempt turned out pretty well though! This cheesecake had the same base as the Peanut Butter one so I made another batch and baked it. With this one I mixed most of the filling ingredients together, then took a third of the mixture out, before adding crushed honeycomb to the other 2/3 remaining. This was then poured onto the based, followed by the plain cheesecake mix, before baking.

Finally I moved onto the Lemon Cheesecake, which had a more traditional biscuit base, made from digestive biscuits and melted butter, giving that yummy crunch on the bottom. Then it was as simple as mixing the filling ingredients together, pouring it over the base and then baking.

These were the finished cheesecakes! Some of them didn't turn out so pretty to be honest, but they tasted absolutely amazing. My favourite had to be the lemon one, but that could also be because lemon cheesecake is literally my favourite dessert!