The Great British Bake Off Week Four - Baked Alaska

Well, what a show week four brought. After all of the drama of Iain, Diana and the 'bincident' there was only one bake that I could choose to feature this week... baked alaska! Let's hope I manage to keep my cool better than Iain.

Ingredients
5oz margarine
6½oz caster sugar
1½oz cocoa powder
2oz self raising flour
mini marshmallows
2 eggs
vanilla ice cream

For the meringue
2 egg whites
4oz caster sugar

To start with you have to make the cake base. I decided chocolate brownie would make a nice sturdy and tasty base. I used a simple recipe which involved combining the margarine, sugar, cocoa powder, flour and eggs together in a large bowl, sifting the cocoa and flour first to avoid lumps. When mixed thoroughly, stir in the marshmallows and then pour into a round cake tin. Preheat the oven to 180°C and then bake the brownie mixture for approximately 40 minutes, checking after 30 minutes as you don't want to over bake it.

Once baked, leave to completely cool before going on to the next stage as you don't want your ice cream to melt before you've even had a chance to put the meringue on! At this point I decided to make my cake base smaller by cutting round a smaller bowl as I had less people available to feed. During this time you can also prepare your meringue. Separate the egg whites of 2 eggs into a bowl and whisk with an electric mixer until fluffy. Then gradually add the sugar whilst still whisking to make a stiff, glossy mixture.

When your cake is cold, transfer it to a lined baking tray. Now scoop ice cream in a mound on top, leaving a border of cake around it so that it doesn't leak. Unlike on GBBO, I chose not to make my own ice cream. Attempting to make baked alaska for the first time is hard enough, I think I'll leave making my own ice cream for another day! Now completely cover the ice cream and cake with your meringue, making sure that there are no gaps. This is where the problems with my meringue started to become apparent. I'd either under or over whisked my egg whites meaning that the mixture didn't stay put and definitely wasn't mouldable, meaning that I couldn't create decorative swirls on the meringue top like I'd planned.

It's now time to bake. This part worries me because... hello... there's ice cream in there! Put your alaska in the oven for around 7 minutes, just enough to cook the meringue but not melt the ice cream. My problems went further downhill from here. During the baking, the liquid meringue slid off the top, exposing my ice cream which subsequently started to melt. In the end I made an executive decision to take the bake out of the oven to try and salvage what was left of the ice cream before that melted too! As you can see what was left was a meringue-y, creamy mess! And it tasted as such, although the brownie base was delicious if I do say so myself.

So what did I learn from this recipe? Baking something for the first time doesn't mean that it will be a success, make sure that my meringue texture is perfect before baking and most importantly... keeping your cool and not throwing a ruined bake in the bin means you can still eat the unspoiled parts like the brownie. Sorry Iain!

Next week is pie/tart week. Fingers crossed I'm more successful next time.

The Great British Bake Off Week Three - Monkey Bread

So it was bread week on GBBO with a few soggy bottoms, stern looks from both Mary and Paul, and plenty of scrummy looking bready bakes you could almost smell through the screen. Instead of choosing one of the bakes featured on the show I've decided to have a go at a recipe I found in the GBBO How To Bake recipe book called Monkey Bread. It says 'easy for kids' at the top so I shouldn't have a problem!

Ingredients

• 500g strong white flour
• 1½ teaspoons crushed sea salt
• 7g of fast-action dried yeast
• 150g melted unsalted butter
• 200ml lukewarm milk
• 1 room temperature egg
• 150g grated mature cheese
• ½ teaspoon dried chilli flakes

First I started by putting the flour, salt and yeast into a large bowl and then made a well in the centre. Then I melted 50g of the butter and mixed in with the milk and egg before pouring into the well. Then using my hands I mixed it all together to make a smooth dough. I actually had to use wholemeal flour as that's what I had in the cupboard and I think this made the dough quite flaky. To help it stick together I did have to keep adding a bit more milk until I was happy. If your dough is too wet or sticky, you can add more flour as well.

Now turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for approximately 10 minutes. This is always the part that I fall down on as my arms get tired or I don't do it for as long as needed which means that my bread normally isn't as light as it could be. After kneading the dough, I put it back into the bowl and covered it with cling film before leaving it to prove for about an hour. To prove, the dough needs to be left in a warm place in order for it to rise to about double the size, which is quite hard in my house because it's so cold. This meant that my dough only rose slightly which could result in a tougher or heavier loaf.

The next stage is where this recipe starts to be a little bit different. After I'd collected my proved dough, I tipped it back out onto the kitchen counter and, using scissors, cut into roughly 60 pieces. Then I rolled them in between my hands to make them into round balls, although it didn't matter that some were larger than others. Now melt the rest of the butter in one bowl and put the grated cheese and chilli flakes in another.

This is now the fun/messy part so would be great to do with kids. Take each dough ball in turn and dip it into the melted butter then cheese mixture before placing into your prepared bread tin. I used a silicon loaf tin so that no greasing was needed. Try to place the balls in evenly to make your loaf look more appealing when turning it out. About half way through I noticed that the melted butter was starting to collect in my cheese bowl, making it harder to get the cheese to stick onto the dough balls. At this point I then started to stick the cheese on using my hands and then even just sprinkled it on top of the dough balls once in the loaf tin. I felt that it was ok to improvise at this point, just make sure that you get the toppings evenly spread out!

Once you've finished that part, put the filled loaf tin into a plastic bag and then put back into your warm room or cupboard for another hour's proving. Near the end of the proving time you might want to start preheating your oven (200˚C) so that you can start baking straight away. When I collected my bread I noticed that it actually hadn't risen any more than before but luckily didn't feel heavy when I picked it up so I was still quite hopeful that it wasn't a complete disaster! I then baked it for about 35 minutes, covering with tin foil after 25 minutes as the top had started to get quite dark.

When done, take out of the oven and leave to cool. Then turn out onto a decorative plate and slice ready to serve. My bread was still warm when I was ready to serve so was delicious with some butter spread on top which then melted.

Jordan, the somewhat maverick on GBBO this year, was the baker kicked off this week but I'd like to think that the judges would admire my choice of an unknown recipe for this blog entry.

Don't forget to come back next week to see what I've attempted next...

The Great British Bake Off Week Two - Florentines

After the fifth series started with a bang (or an explosion of chocolate cakes, sorry Claire) last week, it was a long 7 days wait for the next episode. But at the end of that wait we were generously rewarded with lots of delicious recipes, amazing 3D sculptures and a controversial incident regarding some shop-bought icing during biscuit week.

Continuing my trial of a different recipe each week, I've chosen this week's technical challenge of my family's favourite biscuit to enjoy with a cup of tea at grandma's house... florentines. Many of the bakers were a bit stumped with this one and I'll admit that although I've eaten them many a time I've never actually baked them before this week. I used Mary Berry's Florentine recipe, surely you can't go wrong following Bezza's instructions... let's hope! 

Ingredients

• 50g butter
• 50g caster sugar
• 50g golden syrup
• 50g plain flour
• 25g glacé cherries
• 50g candied peel
• 25g almonds
• 25g walnut pieces
• 200g plain chocolate

Start by preheating your oven to 180˚C and lining 2 or 3 trays with greaseproof paper. Measure out the butter, sugar and golden syrup into a saucepan and lightly heat on the hob until the butter has completely melted, stirring occasionally. When melted, turn the hob off and stir in the flour and chopped cherries, peel, almonds and walnuts. It can be your choice how finely to chop the ingredients as this will determine the texture of your florentines (FYI I opted to chop mine quite finely to create a more gooey biscuit).

Once your ingredients have been combined, you are ready to spoon out your mixture. This was one area I, as did some of the bakers on this week's show, fell down. As I was rushing, I didn't measure out my mixture, ending up with some florentines larger than others. This didn't bother me too much but if you want uniformed biscuits you should get 18 equal sized florentines from this recipe. So once you have decided on quantity, spoon your mixture onto your prepared trays and then flatten into an appealing circular shape. It is important to note that you have to leave quite a lot of space between each biscuit as they do spread out a lot during baking.

Bake for approximately 8 minutes or until the outsides start to go a darker brown. If you want an even colouring I would suggest baking each tray one at a time so that they are on the same shelf. Now leave them to cool on the tray (don't try to remove them from the tray to a cooling rack as they remain soft whilst still warm) before transferring them to a plate or rack ready for decorating.

The traditional decoration for florentines is a covering of zigzagged dark chocolate on the bottom of each biscuit, unlike what some of the bakers provided this week on GBBO. Again because I was rushing, this part didn't work out exactly to plan as I completely melted all of the chocolate and then immediately spread onto my biscuits, making it almost impossible to create a nice zigzag. As Mary suggests, you should temper the chocolate (melt half then add the rest before leaving to cool slightly) before spreading onto your florentines and next time that's exactly what I will do as the zigzag does give it a lovely finish.

And that's it. I'll admit it was a much simpler recipe than I was expecting. I still need to see if they get my grandma's approval for the next family afternoon tea but so far they've had the thumbs up from myself and my mum! Let me know if you've had a go at making Mary's florentines or any of the other recipes from this week.

Next week, bread week!

Great British Bake Off Week One - Swiss Roll

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Hoorah, the Great British Bake Off finally made it's long-awaited return to our screens this week. With plenty of yummy bakes, eyebrow-raising innuendos and hilarious Mel and Sue one-liners, it did not disappoint! To celebrate, each week I will be choosing one of their bakes to have my own go at, hopefully learning from the bakers' mistakes and trying out their techniques. This week, swiss rolls.

I found a recipe on the BBC Food website and couldn't believe how simple it seemed, surely it couldn't be that easy! Let's find out:

Ingredients

• 3 free range eggs
• 75g self raising flour
• 75g caster sugar
• raspberry jam
• a small pot of whipping cream
• a handful of raspberries
• icing sugar for dusting

Start by whisking the eggs and sugar in a bowl. I first mixed them together with a wooden spoon to make a smooth paste before whisking but I'm not sure if that made a huge difference. Then I used an electric whisk until it became light and frothy. After, I sifted then folded in the flour, being careful not to beat out all of the air my whisking helped create.

This is the point where I thought it would be great to try the pattern-making idea shown by a few of the bakers on this week's show. I put a bit of the mixture into a small bowl and then added some food colouring (pink in my case) and then after greasing and lining a shallow tray, used a spoon to make flower designs. The cake mixture was quite fluid so I would recommend adding more flour to this coloured mixture as mine started to run into each other. 

Now put the tray in the freezer, being careful that the tray stays flat whilst you carry it over as a few of my flower designs started to run at this point. I wasn't sure how long to freeze the pattern for so used preheating the oven (200°C) as a timer. Once the oven was ready I retrieved my tray from the freezer and noticed that my patterns were starting to melt quite quickly so I would recommend freezing your designs for longer, possibly 30 minutes. I panicked slightly at this point so poured all of my cake mixture into the tray to try to get it into the oven as quickly as possible. This then created more problems as I had to tilt the tray to get the mixture to cover it evenly, which in turn obviously smudging my flower designs too. So what you should actually do is spoon the mixture on to ensure that you get an even covering without having to tilt it. This should make sure that your designs do not distort.

Bake the cake for just over 7 minutes, it really doesn't take long as it's so thin so don't forget about it! Once baked, leave to cool slightly for a couple of minutes and then lift the cake and greaseproof paper onto a board. Now's another chance to try out the GBBO bakers' techniques. Whilst it's still warm, roll the cake still on the greaseproof paper and then use a rubber-band to secure it in place. Leave it in this shape until cool, I actually left mine overnight but you could leave yours for an hour if you wanted to eat it on the same day. 

Whilst waiting for it to cool, whip your cream using an electric whisk until it holds its shape and chop your raspberries ready to fill. Once cool, unroll your cake and spread with a layer of raspberry jam, then whipped cream and finally with chopped raspberries. As you can see, I made the mistake of filling mine too closely to the sides, which resulted in it oozing out of the front so be quite sparing with your toppings.

Once you have filled it, carefully roll the cake up to create your swiss roll, finishing with a sprinkling of icing sugar before serving.

So that's my attempt at a swiss roll. I'm not sure how it compares to the bakers' attempts on this week's Great British Bake Off, nor what Mary or Paul would make of it but it seemed to get a thumbs up from my family! Did you have a go at making a swiss roll this week too? Let me know how you got on and if you have any of your own tips for me.

Next week the bakers will be attempting biscuit-making to check back here to see what I've come up with...