...bake!

Week one - Mary Berry's frosted walnut layer cake.

Well here we are again, week one's technical challenge. 

I'll be honest with you here...I wasn't looking forward to this bake. Why?  Well, it's just such a big cake, and really a special occasion type of cake...who's going to eat it all?  Ok, don't all rush at once.

Onto the recipe. First up make the sponge mixture. Straight forward enough, that is after you've spent far too long finely chopping walnuts (life is too short for this). Out came the Kitchen Aid (woop woop!), and we're off.  The resulting mixture was quite firm, so I was a little dubious about how it was going to pan out (plus the added risk factor of having found out that I didn't have enough baking parchment to line the bottom of my tins - I like to live life dangerously!).  Anyway, I proceeded, undeterred, and the layers of sponge turned out just fine, as you will witness below. 

Next step, caramelised walnuts. Ooh, a new skill required here. I'd never before attempted caramel so this was going to be interesting. The recipe called for 100g caster sugar and 2 tbsp of water. Sounds all well and good...but no, first attempt crystallised.  Not sure why, I thought perhaps I'd bottled out and not left it long enough. Second attempt, better but still no cigar. Third attempt (after a quick bit of caramel making research by my husband and a lunch break) success, ever so slightly burned, but success all the same.  Hurrah!  On this attempt I used the 'dry' method, i.e. no water. Higher chance of burning (erm) but more success!

Step three, make the buttercream. Kitchen Aid at the ready, again!  Vanilla extract, splash of milk, and heaps of butter and icing sugar later - voilà. 

Lastly, boiled icing (?!). I'd never heard of this before so apart from seeing the results on Bake Off on Wednesday, I had no idea how this would turn out. Again so much sugar that you think your teeth will fall out, egg whites, water and cream of tartar (I've only used this previously to make play dough). Suffice to say, I don't think I'll make the frosting again, way too sweet, and also in the mighty words of Paul Hollywood, it came our "granular". 

So there we have it...week one completed!  I hope you've enjoyed reading about my kitchen escapade this week. If you have, then make sure you don't miss out on future posts by subscribing to email notifications (pop your email address in the 'Follow by email' box). 

Until next week xxx

P.S if you live nearby, and fancy some free, all be it granular, cake...let me know. 

P.P.S if you want to attempt this for yourself, check out the recipe here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/marys_frosted_walnut_15679