Savoury palmiers, my penultimate Great British Bake-off challenge…
If I’d gone to the effort of making my own puff pastry like the contestants did, these would have been a challenge. Using store-bought puff pastry, they’re a doddle. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Great British Bake-off
Pork, chicken and cranberry pie
29 May
In the excitement of last year’s Great British Bake-off, I rashly committed to baking all of the signature bakes.
Each week, I watched with growing dread to see what overambitious baking project I’d have to tackle next. I was fine with the drizzle cake, iced biscuits and Yorkshire pudding, and managed to turn out a passable chocolate babka.
But the thought of making Danish pastries from scratch stopped me in my tracks for months.
However, I’m nothing if not an “completer-finisher” (eventually)… Since the show ended, I’ve gone on to make lemon meringue pie and Swiss roll. And at long last… pork, chicken and cranberry pie.
Strictly speaking, I seem to recall the brief was individual meat pies, but it seemed simpler to make one large pie instead.
Swiss roll
27 Jan
It took a few tries before I got the knack of making a Swiss roll, and could tick the next item on the Great British Bake-off signature bake list.
A few things I learned the hard way:
- Unless you whip eggs and sugar together until they have tripled in volume, your sponge will resemble an omelette in texture. (That one went straight in the bin.)
- Do not over-cook the sponge, or it will not roll without cracking. (I converted that one into a flat, mangled Victoria sponge.)
- Do not over-fill the sponge (or spread the filling too close to the edges) – all that extra filling just oozes out the end of the roll (and was dolloped on top when I sliced and served it.)
The fourth one worked like a charm…;-) Continue reading
Lemon meringue pie
24 Nov
Next on my belated list of Great British Bake-off signature bakes is a classic lemon meringue pie.
Where I grew up, most restaurants (at least the kind my family ate in), had at least three types of pie on offer.
Apple, cherry, blueberry, pumpkin, raisin, bumbleberry, saskatoon, rhubarb, pecan, peach… I’d happily order any of them, but if lemon meringue pie was on the menu, they wouldn’t get a look in.
After reviewing several recipes, I settled on this one from The Great British Book of Baking, which was published to accompany the first series of the Great British Bake-Off.
Sweet shortcrust pastry, a tangy lemon filling you could stand a fork in, and pillowy French meringue – it looked and tasted like the lemon meringue pie of my childhood. Works for me.
Danish pastries
15 Nov
I was genuinely intimidated by the thought of making Danish pastry from scratch. So much so that it knocked my Great British Bake-off cook-a-long right on the head.
But one of the things children excel at is reminding you of those promises you’d just as soon forget, and there was no way I was getting out of this one.
Yorkshire pudding
28 Sep
When I was a little girl, my dad cooked a roast dinner every Sunday. Gradually, he stopped – maybe roasts got too expensive, or family schedules too complicated, I don’t know. But I do remember years where Sunday night meant The Wonderful World of Walt Disney, roast beef, and bath-before-bed.
We were a meat-and-four-veg family – typically potatoes, beans, corn and carrots, but sometimes squash, peas, beets, broccoli, spinach or chard featured instead. Whatever the vegetable, it was always boiled or steamed.
But I couldn’t have cared less about roast meat or boiled veg – for me, that dinner was all about the Yorkshire pudding. Never mind that dad’s Yorkshire puddings were often the size and density of hockey pucks – they were utterly delicious, and capable of holding a generous splash of gravy.
While I now know that airy puff is what you’re aiming for with Yorkshire puddings, I retain a fondness for the dense little numbers of my childhood. (I’ve noticed many recipes call for twice the number of eggs dad used, which would no doubt make a difference to the rise.) Continue reading
Chocolate babka
25 Sep
The moment I saw those Great British Bake-off contestants tackling chocolate bread, I knew I’d be making chocolate babka.
I first heard of chocolate babka in that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry and Elaine fail to buy one for a dinner party, but have never made – or eaten – any type of babka until now.
It turns out that making babka is a time-consuming, fiddly labour of love. Part way through the bread-braiding process, I thought “this is the first and last chocolate babka I’m going to make.”
And then I tasted that pillowy sweet dough laced with swirls and knots of chocolate and nuggets of toasted pecan. If I hadn’t been stupified by deliciousness, I could have happily started making another one immediately…;-)
Pepparkakor (Swedish ginger biscuits)
7 Sep
“Oh, reindeer biscuits!” my daughter said when she saw these cooling on the rack. “Are they for Christmas?” “They’re moose biscuits,” I told her, “and they’re for the Great British Bake-off biscuit week.”
Why moose biscuits? Because I’m a proud, moose-loving Canadian, of course. (And also because it’s the only non-Christmas-shaped biscuit cutter I own…)
When making cut-out biscuits, it’s important to choose the right sort of dough. It’s dispiriting to go to the effort to cut out little bells and Christmas trees, say, and end up with indistinguishable, amorphous blobs.
Of the three go-to biscuit doughs I use to make cut-out biscuits, this pepparkakor one is my favourite. It hardly spreads at all during baking, and the resulting biscuits are fragrantly spiced, and satisfyingly crisp.
Grapefruit drizzle cake with yogurt icing
31 Aug
The Great British Bake-off is back! Returning from a week in Girona a couple of days ago, we didn’t even unpack our suitcases before sitting down to watch the first episode. We have our priorities straight around here…;-)
“You are going to bake along with them again, aren’t you mum? You could do the technical challenges this time…” (While the thought of attempting my own Jaffa cakes is tempting, I plan to stick with signature bakes for another season.)
So, first up, drizzle cake…
Lemon drizzle is the undisputed champion of the drizzle cake world – a sweet-tart, sticky-soft, tea-time treat you’d have to go some way to improve upon. But having already written about my mum’s lemon bread, I decided to make a grapefruit drizzle cake instead.
Filled iced buns
21 Jan
I was pleasantly surprised by these iced filled buns, which are like homemade, fresh and delicious jam doughnuts. Or sweet hamburgers. Needless to say, the girls adored them.
As I’m not keen on strawberry jam, I opted to fill mine with raspberry instead. It’s not the most photogenic of jams, appearing dark and gelatinous in the photos.
With these filled iced buns I complete my Great British Bake-off signature bake challenge – better late than never. Continue reading
Chocolate tart
27 Nov
There’s been a hiatus in the Great British Bake-off project, but the girls were never going to let me get away without making the double chocolate tart.
Chocolate pastry is new to me. My go-to pastry recipes have little or no sugar, and I wasn’t confident that would be enough to balance the bitterness of the cocoa. The pastry recipe I followed starts by creaming the butter and sugar, which resulted in a biscuity-crisp crust. Continue reading
Mocha cream horns
29 Oct
Cream horns are delightful things – and were completely new to me when I saw them on the Great British Bake-off the other week.
The concept is a simple one. Thin strips of puff pastry are rolled around a conical mould. Once baked, the pastry cones are piped full of sweet cream.
Raised game pie
15 Oct
My heart sank when the Great British Bake-off contestants were set the task of making a raised game pie.
According to BBC Good Food (where I found this Paul Hollywood recipe), “a game pie always makes a spectacular centre piece and… is amazingly straightforward to make – especially if you buy mixed game meat ready-prepared from a good butcher.”
Continue reading
Pear frangipane tart
6 Oct
The Great British Bake-off signature bakes seem to be increasing in complexity as the weeks go by – which is as it should be I guess.
Still, I find myself watching in trepidation, wondering what challenge I’ll be inflicting on myself next…
Sugar-free orange cake
29 Sep
When the Great British Bake-off contestants were tasked with making a sugar-free cake, I immediately thought of Claudia Roden’s orange cake.
This Judeo-Spanish cake relies on puréed whole oranges for much of its sweetness, which I thought would make it relatively easy to adapt. And because it calls for ground almonds instead of flour, it’s gluten-free as well, which seemed in the spirit of the challenge.
As this was my first attempt at baking with agave nectar, I did some reading first. The recommendations are to cut the quantity of sugar by about quarter, reduce the liquid in the recipe and lower the oven temperature – all of which I did.
Crème brûlée
21 Sep
Crème brûlée is – without a doubt – my favourite dessert. I love the moment when you crack the crust of caramelised sugar, and the shards shift apart to reveal the creamy custard waiting beneath. I’m already happy before I even raise the first spoonful to my mouth…
Until now, all my crème brûlée moments have occurred in restaurants. But the fourth Great British Bake-off signature bake was crème brûlée, so it was time to give it a go. Continue reading
Soda bread
16 Sep
Soda bread and I have never got on… My go-to quick bread has always been baking powder biscuits – I could throw together a batch with my eyes closed, and they would turn out light as air, fluffy and delightful.
Soda bread is another story. Whatever I do, it turns out heavy as rock, dense and… undelightful. I still remember making it for the first time in Home Ec. The ugly brown lump that emerged from my oven had a crust like rhinosaurus hide and a sullen, pastelike interior. It had somehow doubled in weight– though not in size – and could have been used as a weapon in close combat.
So when the Great British Bake-off contestants were tasked with producing a signature quick bread, my first thought was to make something based on biscuit dough. That would have been the easy way to go… Continue reading
Cranberry and almond biscotti
13 Sep
Biscotti is the second signature bake on this year’s Great British Bake-off. I’ve eaten plenty of biscotti, and even knew that the name means “twice cooked” in Italian because they are baked once as a log, and again in slices. But I had never tried baking them myself. Continue reading
Madeira cake
10 Sep
The Great British Bake-off has returned to our tellies, and the family is following along enthusiastically. Inspired by the contestants’ efforts in the tent each week, I’ve signed up to complete each week’s signature bake. Baking and desserts are not my forte, so this will be a stretch for me. First up, Madeira cake… Continue reading
Ten More Bites 