The Great British Bake Off is back
once more on television, and this year I’ve decided to take on the challenge of
the technical bakes!
What that means is following a basic
recipe and sticking to the strict time limit given to the contestants.
I am also probably going to end up
altering the recipe/ingredients to my own tastes and by what I can easily get
on hand. So it is probably more accurate to say that I am going to be inspired
by these bakes. And the first week only proved this to be the case!
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| Artistic angle to hide the cracks... |
First Week: Walnut Cake
Sophie’s Bake: Walnut & Coffee Cake
So the first technical challenge was
a lovely walnut cake using one of Mary Berry’s recipes. As soon as I saw it I
knew I was going to adapt this into a Walnut & Coffee cake. The fact I didn’t
have cream of tartare to hand aided in this swift decision making.
Ingredients
Cake
225g Unsalted Butter
1 tsp of Baking Powder
225g Caster Sugar
4 Free-range Eggs
50ml Strong Coffee
225g Self-raising Flour
100g Walnuts
Decoration
Buttercream
225g Unsalted Butter
350g Icing Sugar
50ml Strong Coffee
Candied Walnuts
12 Walnut Halves
100g Caster Sugar
3 Tbsp Water
Sponge Method
1)
Preheat the fan oven to
160C, 180C for non-fan ovens. And grease your baking tin of choice! The recipe
called for the mix to be split between three cake tins, I only have one so just
used one. The beginning of my deviations.
2)
Chop the walnuts into
fine pieces.
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| Some fine nuts |
4)
Cream the butter and the
sugar in a separate bowl until light and fluffy.
5)
Add the coffee mix to the
creamed sugar and beat well.
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| Appropriate mug is appropriate |
6)
Beat the eggs separately
and slowly add into the creamed sugar mixture while stirring.
7)
Fold the flour walnut mix
into the wet mix gently, being careful not to over fold.
8)
Pour the mix into the
baking tin/s and level the surface.
 |
| Ready for the oven |
 |
| Fresh out the oven! |
Decoration
1)
First get the caramel on.
That’s two tablespoons of water with 100g of caster sugar on the hob at a low
temperature. Once the colour turns brown quickly take it off the heat and dip
the walnuts in the caramel. Leave the walnuts to cool on the side.
2)
For the buttercream
frosting beat the icing sugar and butter together until pale, then add the
coffee and mix well.
Now this is where it started to go a bit wonky for me. The contestants had 1 hour and 45 minutes to make their cakes, but my giant one tin cake took 1 hour in itself. That's without the cooling time. So not being equipped with a blast chiller in the London I had to improvise...
Bringing It Together
1)
Cut the cake in half once
cool and add a thick layer of coffee buttercream. You see the 'once cool', this is really important. I didn't take my own advice, due to the time pressure and accidentally ended up with a cake in pieces....
2)
Spread the rest of the buttercream
on the top of the cake and decorate with walnut pieces. Or in my case, try and rescue cake by covering the cracks!
Conculsion
So the above recipe is fine! My cake
tastes great. Presentation wise it’s a bit….
Where I went wrong is cutting it
before it was fully cooled, thanks to the time constraint I was under. The frosting
got the better of me as well, I added too much coffee in it which resulted in
the mix splitting. I also didn't make enough frosting, so didn't get the perfect covered top. Thus the artful cropping.
But the proof is in the tasting, and
it tastes pretty darn good! So a blind person would give me 8/10! Reality is probably a 6/10 and bottom of the pile. Here's to next week's biscuit challenge going better!
Sophie
xxx
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