Sachertorte

Well here it is, the very last technical bake of the Great British Bake Off, I will miss the series greatly and miss my own bake off challenge.  Sachertorte was given as the final, and what they called the hardest, technical bake.  Perhaps when they said it was the hardest they meant in terms of how much pressure was on the contestants because, if you ask me, Sachertorte is one of the easiest they have given, though maybe I just think that because I am much more comfortable making cakes than bread or pastry.  I did, at any rate, watch the technical bake with a certain amount of arrogance, knowing very well how to melt chocolate, whisk and fold in egg whites, and make ganache, though I do know that I would struggle if I was under the same amount of stress as the contestants in the bake off, so I do feel sympathy for them.

Anyway, I made the cake mixture without any mishap, melting the chocolate, separating the eggs and combining it all together.  I think I could have managed it without the recipe because I have made similar things many times.  I was still pleased with my work when I took it out of the oven, since it was quite flat and had not cracked, though I may not have done so well if I had not been given the cooking time for it. After letting it cool I sieved the apricot jam (a very bothersome and, in my opinion, pointless process) then heated it and brushed it over the cake.  This is what it looked like at this point.

It is nice and shiny and pretty looking, that is why I took a photo at this point; in case the ganache and decoration went wrong and it didn't look pretty any more.  I was not too worried about the ganache though because I have made it many times before, I was more worried about actually getting the decoration to look nice.  As I have said before, I never really used to focus on the appearance of food that I made, only the taste, so my decorating skills are not what they should be.

The only fault I made in making the ganache was in not breaking the chocolate into small enough pieces and so it had some lumps in it.  I did sort of know this would happen when I was doing it though so it is my own fault, I just was too tired to break the chocolate up more.  This is why there is a quite distinctive lump in the icing, so sorry about that.  I was still more concerned about writing 'sacher' on the top of the cake in milk chocolate; this is the part which I considered to be the hardest and I do not think I was very successful, my writing is a little wobbly.  Anyway, here is what it looked like after completing the decoration.

I think perhaps if I was a master cake maker I would get somebody else to do the writing on the top.  My whole decoration on this cake is not up to the standard it should be, though I tried to take as nice a photo as possible, I thought the rose added a nice touch of colour, the last one still blooming in our garden, well not any more.  My mother was very kind in giving it to me to use for this photo, she also very kindly gave me her last blooming african violet for the next photo; the only two edible flowers we had.

I am quite pleased with the outcome of this photograph, and the cake itself, which I ate directly after taking the picture (just ignore the fingerprint which I left on the top by accident, ganache is very easily markable.)  Overall, however, I was a little disappointed with Sachertorte, I had never eaten it before and I thought it was a little bit bland, though it was still nice and the ganache was tasty.

If you want the recipe to make Sachertorte yourself here is the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/sachertorte_59630

Iced Fingers

This is the penultimate technical bake, the last challenge before the final, very tense and exciting stuff.  This week's challenge was iced buns, something which I have never been that fussed about, I have always found them to be rather boring and they would be my last choice if I was in a bakery.  I hoped that doing this challenge would change my mind about iced buns and that I would come out loving them like I did with the tarte au citron, unfortunately this was not the case.

Bread is not my strong suit and, though iced buns are not exactly bread, the mixture is more of a bread than anything else.  I did find it very strange making them, the mix was a sort of cross between bread and cake mix, using both yeast and eggs and flour.  I did everything the recipe said but found it fairly difficult; the dough was very wet and subsequently hard to knead, then it did not rise well when I left it - altogether a very bad start.  After I had left it to rise (or not) I attempted to make it into finger shapes, this also failed - my bread shaping ability is absolutely appalling and these fingers would have been considered bad even against a short, fat, arthritic hand.  Anyway I stuck with them and this is what they looked like when they had proven and been cooked in the oven.

I give myself one thing, they did smell very nice when they came out and, though not quite perfectly shaped, to say the least, they looked OK.  I thought that perhaps, once they had been finished up with jam, cream and icing they would look much better and taste alright so I made up three, one each for my parents and myself.

I don't know if my taste was influenced by the excessively large meal I had just eaten or by my longstanding dislike of iced fingers, but I did not like them, I thought they were much too big, dry, boring and, what is much worse, I think they were not baked fully.  They had that horrible doughy taste about them which you get when bread is not baked to perfection.  My mum agreed with me that they were underbaked though my dad liked them, so at least I had one happy customer.  Anyway, this is a picture of the final product, I did not do them all up together to avoid a lot of waste so I'm afraid you cannot judge me on the full dozen.

Yes my icing was a little too thin and that is why it dribbled, so sorry Paul Hollywood, though to be honest, I thought that your iced buns looked quite messy with the method of icing that you used, I'm not saying that mine are better, just that they could have been a little neater.

Well, I haven't exactly sold these iced buns but, if you are good at baking bread and you like iced buns then here is the link to the recipe so you can try for yourself, I hope you do better than I did.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/iced_fingers_34133

Chocolate Roulade

The technical challenge for the quarter finals of the Great British Bake Off last week was Mary Berry's chocolate roulade, which I was very happy about because I was thinking of making one anyway after I had come across the recipe.  I was glad as well that this recipe did not require any expensive or hard to find ingredients like last week's pork pies and I therefore had no trouble in locating all of the ingredients, most of which I had already.

From watching the episode it looked as though the recipe for the actual cake part of the roulade would be pretty easy, just lots of melting, whipping and folding and those are easy enough if you know how to do them.  The challenging part looked like the rolling up after the cake had baked and cooled down, since none of the contestants on the Bake Off seemed to get a roll that reached Mary Berry's high standards.  So, because I was worried that I would not get a good roll I took a picture of my roulade just before I rolled it.

Then for the challenging part.  To make sure my roulade did not stick to the greaseproof paper I put it on I had sprinkled it with icing sugar to make the rolling easier.  I then did what Mary suggested and cut a slit into the cake at the end nearest to me where I would start the rolling from.  I began to roll it up and, although it was cracking a bit on the top, this did not worry me because roulade is supposed to be a bit cracked.  When I finished the rolling, still holding my breath in anticipation, I lifted the roulade onto a chopping board and this is what it looked like.

At this point I was slightly disheartened because it looked a bit square and no cream had squeezed out of the ends but I was pleased that it at least had a sort of spiral shape.  I then thought that I should cut off the end so that you could see the cream coming through.

When I had done this I was crazily pleased and announced my victory over the roulade to both twitter and facebook because (though I had cut it quite badly and a bit is sort of falling off the right hand side) I had made what looked to me like a perfect spiral.  I also got to eat the end that I had cut off so I was pretty happy about that too.  I did take a picture before scoffing it though.

If you are someone like me who gets much too excited over baking and want to have your own victory over the chocolate roulade then here is a link for the recipe. http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chocolate_roulade_79152

Mini Pork Pies with Quails' Eggs

OK this post is two days later than I had intended because it took me quite a long time to locate and buy any quails' eggs, especially since I had been away for a week just before I was going to make them and because I had no idea where quails' eggs can be purchased seeing as I had never eaten them before.  Eventually I did manage to come across some, after much searching, and bought a dozen, finding when I got home that my mother had also bought me a dozen from a nearby farm shop and, having only needed six, I then had twenty-four, typical.

Anyway to get onto the making of the pork pies.  I had thought, after watching the fifth episode of the Great British Bake Off, that the pork pies looked like the hardest task so far as they used hot water crust pastry which I have always been afraid to make since I thought that it would burn my hands when I rolled it out straight after adding boiling water.  This did not actually happen though the pastry was very strange to deal with, it did not at all have the same consistency as normal pastry; it was very greasy and soft to begin with and got hard as soon as it cooled down.  The pastry was, however, fairly easy to make and I found no difficulties with that.

After making the pastry I chopped up all of the pork, bacon, onion and parsley (I found out then that I was supposed to have done this before making the pastry but it doesn't seem to have made any difference).  This was quite uncomfortable because it took quite a long time to cut them all as finely as I wanted them and the bending over gave me back-ache for the rest of the day.  The things you do for baking eh...  Anyway I got all of the ingredients finely chopped and I boiled the quails' eggs and put all of the filling in the pastry cases that I had prepared, making sure that the eggs were directly in the centre.

The baking of the pies all went fine and they smelled delicious as they were cooking.  They did look a little messy when I got them out of the oven, with streaks where the filling had bubbled out whilst they cooked but, since I had seen this happen to the contestants in the Great British Bake Off, I was not worried.  After taking the pies out of the oven the only thing left to do was to pour the jelly in through the hole in the lid of the pies and then leave them to cool in the fridge over night.  This I did and was very excited to see what the pies looked like inside the next day.

This is a photo showing both the inside and outside of my pork pies.

Personally I think they went pretty well, the egg is right in the middle and the jelly got all the way through to the bottom; the pastry is quite thin and the pork pieces inside are really small and tightly packed.  The pies were also delicious which is the main thing, they were the nicest pork pies I have ever eaten (and that is saying something because I love pork pies) and I haven't eaten any recently since I found out how much saturated fat was in them so making my own was a very good excuse to eat some.

If you feel like you want to make your own this is the link to Paul Hollywood's recipe: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/small_pork_pies_with_11074

Brandy Snaps

On to week four of the Great British Bake Off and the theme for this week's episode was biscuits.  I was not so worried about making biscuits as about making bread because I have done it before and it has always turned out alright; that was until I found out that they were making brandy snaps.  I have eaten brandy snaps before but I suppose it never really struck my incredibly slow mind that people might actually make them in their own homes and I wouldn't even have a clue how to begin.  I watched the episode and all of the contestants making their brandy snaps and I was not much appeased, it looked very difficult and somebody even said that it was like torture having to wrap up with your bare fingers the burning hot biscuits that had just come out of the oven.  It did not for a second put me off making them however.

I began by putting the butter, sugar and syrup in a pan to melt together, I don't think anyone could say that that part was difficult.

I stirred the mixture over a low heat, making sure that all of the sugar granules dissolved before taking it off the heat and stirring in the other ingredients.  Then I spooned four teaspoons of the mixture onto a lined baking tray and put it in the oven.  So far so good.

The next part of the process was the most, in fact the only, difficult part.  Once I had taken the unformed brandy snaps out of the oven I had to wait for them to cool long enough that I could lift them up with a pallet knife but not so long that they were too hard to bend.  With the pallet knife I picked up the brandy snaps one at a time, draping them over the oiled handle of a wooden spoon, I then had to very quickly roll the biscuit around the spoon, trying to make it as even as possible and still not burn my fingers.

I did four trays of brandy snaps, making sixteen altogether, so not as many as they did on the bake off but as many as it said to do in the version of the recipe I was using.  They were remarkably easy to make considering how hard they looked, the main difficulty was in not having heat retardant fingers and also in making the brandy snaps all the same size and colour, I did not quite manage in that respect.  They were not too much of a disgrace however.

In the Great British Bake Off the contestants were told to fill their brandy snaps with cream and, not wanting to miss out a step, I wanted to do this too.  I thought however, and was later proved right, that brandy snaps would not last long when filled with cream, so I did not want to risk putting it in all of them and only put it in three in order to take a nice photo with the finished product.  After a lot of trying here is the final photo.

If you want the recipe to try out Mary Berry's brandy snaps here is the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/brandy_snaps_47363

Focaccia

The technical bake for the third week of the Great British Bake Off was focaccia.  I was fairly concerned about this because I know that bread making requires a lot of skill and I haven't made bread since I was about 12 and I would not say that I was exactly a child prodigy in bread making.  I was particularly concerned by how much more difficult focaccia seemed to be to make than other sorts of bread on the program, none of the contestants were confident of exactly how to do it.

When I was making the dough for my focaccia it went well for the first part when I had only added half of the water, then it just went downhill from there.  Paul was very clear in the program that if you did not add the water a little at a time then the dough would turn into a mush.  Well I added my water a little at a time and my dough still turned into a mush, so I have no idea what I was doing wrong to make that happen, never mind.  Even with my mushy dough I carried on, trying not to be off-put, thinking that it was ok because some of the bake off contestants had had very wet, mushy dough like mine and it was not a terrible disaster.

After kneading my dough (if you can call it that; it was more like repeatedly scooping it into a pile to stop it from escaping off the edge of the counter) I put in back in the bowl to rise for an hour.  There was no problem with this part of the proceedings, it rose to double the size, according to plan.  I then poured the dough into two lined baking trays and flattened it out, ready to prove for another hour.  However I made the mistake of trusting my treacherous dough to treat me well and not do anything I wouldn't want it to, very bad call.  When I put a damp tea towel on the top of the tray, the dough was so wet that it stuck itself to the towel and I couldn't get it off without losing a substantial amount.  After that I decided to leave the dough to prove without a towel, I don't know if that is wrong, but that is what I did, it seemed to prove fine anyway, so no worries.

After proving I attempted to put some dimples into the bread, managed to get my fingers covered in dough and gave up.  Who needs dimples anyway?  Then I drizzled it with oil and ground some salt on the top (I had no fancy flaked salt to put on) then put it in the oven for 20 minutes.  This is what my bread looked like when it came out.

It was not dimpled but I would not say it was a complete disaster, it was brown and bread-like and it certainly smelled very nice.  I don't really know the exact texture that focaccia is supposed to have so I am not a very good judge of whether it was right or not, I was just very pleased that it seemed to come out of the oven with no major mishaps.  The only thing left was to cut it open to look at its insides and to taste it.  This is what the bread looked like inside.

When I did this I was very, very excited because my focaccia had irregular air holes, which seemed to be the most important defining factor when Paul was judging them on the program so yay for me.  The focaccia was mostly a success, so the dough was mushy, I covered two tea towels in bread dough and didn't manage to make any dimples, I still got some pretty tasty bread with irregular air holes in it and that is the most important thing.

If you want the recipe for the focaccia, here is the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/focaccia_08389

Tarte au Citron

Continuing with the challenge I set myself of making each item which is set as a technical bake on the Great British Bake Off, this is what was set in the second week.  This episode was all about pastry, which is something I have always tried to avoid except in its ready-rolled form for putting on top of pies.  I have made short crust pastry before but not since I studied food technology in school, which feels like a very long time ago so this was a bit of a challenge for me.  I also don't really like lemon flavoured desserts, so an extra challenge.

As in the program, I started off by making the pastry and blind baking it, this seemed to go fine as far as I am aware, though it may have been overcooked around the edges.

I did notice however a very unfortunate crack in the edge of the base which meant that when I added the filling some of it seeped out.  This was very upsetting but it was my first time making this sort of thing and so I will let myself off.

When I had finished making the base I decided I would try and attempt to take some arty photos to go on this blog because I am trying to improve my photography, I'm not sure how well it worked but this is the result of that little experiment.  It is made up of all the ingredients used in the filling apart from the sugar.

OK so after I had baked the base, messed around taking photos and prepared the filling I had to try and pour it into the base as carefully as possible so that it didn't spill (a bit of a futile mission since the base had a crack in it anyway but never mind) and cook it for exactly the right amount of time.  Both of which I failed in if you go by the way the contestants were judged on the Great British Bake Off.  This is what my tart looked like when I had taken it out of the oven and dusted it with icing sugar.

As you can see it has all of the things wrong with it that were pointed out in the program, it has been overcooked and come away from the edges of the base, it has bubbles on the surface, there is even also a crack on the top of the tart.  It would not have got a good review from Mary and Paul if they had seen it. However, this is the first time I have ever made a tarte au citron and it tasted really good, even to me who doesn't like lemon desserts, so therefore I am pleased with my attempt.

This is a link to the recipe if you want to make it yourself http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/tarte_au_citron_94480

Coffee and Walnut Battenburg

A new season of the Great British Bake Off started last week and it is one of my favourite  tv programs.  Several of my friends have told me before that I should apply to go on it, but making a fool of myself in front of thousands of viewers does not sound like my idea of fun.  Instead I thought that, in order to test my skill and improve my baking, I would try a much safer option and just bake at home and then post on here. So what I am going to do is the technical bake which they do each week.  The first week's technical bake was Mary Berry's coffee and walnut battenburg and so that is this post is about.

I had never previously made a battenburg cake before, always sticking to more simple styles of cake, so this was a bit of a challenge.  The part of the recipe which I found the most strange was the lining of the tin so that it was separated into two halves in order to cook both cakes at once.  It was not as difficult as I thought however and I managed.  This is a picture of the cakes in the tin having just come out of the oven.

I was very stressed out at this point because, not only were my cakes very thin, but one was also bigger than the other.  I think that part of the thinness was due to my cake tin being a tiny bit bigger than the one Mary Berry recommends and so I'm going to blame that and not my own incompetence *cough*.  Anyway it is not too big a deal with battenburg because they need to have bits trimmed off anyway to make them exactly the right size and shape.

After I had trimmed the cakes to size the rest went fine, I cut them in half and stuck them together with buttercream then wrapped it in marzipan and decorated the top, all went fine.  This is the finished product.

I realize that the front of the cake is still slightly more rectangular than square but I am still blaming the tin for that, at any rate I am proud of my efforts, I usually don't bother with making my cakes look pretty, just as long as they taste nice, something which I have to change now that I have a blog with pictures on it.  I don't have Mary and Paul to judge my cake and tell me all of its faults but I don't think it is too bad an effort.  I do realise though that I am at a very great advantage compared to the contestants on the Great British Bake Off since I had the full recipe and no time pressure but shh.

I'm not one for wastage and so I was quite unhappy about the poor discarded strips of cake that I had to trim off.  My sister and I came up with a very cunning plan to deal with this however and, along with a few scraps of leftover marzipan and a tiny bit of coffee buttercream, we decided to make a baby battenburg.  My sister made it while I directed her, I think she did a very good job with the resources she had and I have named her work the 'baby Frankenstein's monster battenburg' because it was made using the pieces of other battenburg.

If you want the recipe for this cake this is the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/coffee_and_walnut_88342