Week ten - The Final!

Hello Bake Off fans. It's been a while since my last post, but I'm sure you haven't been waiting with baited breath!, I had to make some crucial baking purchases to be able to attempt the final technical challenge. 

So without further ado here are the final results (drumroll please). 

Tarte au Citron, mini scones and mini Victoria sponge cakes. All very yummy!

I hope you've enjoyed reading about my adventures in my imaginary Bake Off world!  Now to consider applying for the next series and what to blog about next.

Cheery bye...for now x

Week four - Mary Berry's tiramisu cake

Good evening Bake Off fans,

Sorry this post is a day late, but I didn't fully complete the challenge until this morning. 

So, when I watched Bake Off last week I was filled with dread at the prospect of attempting this bake. So many things could go wrong.  I think my heart was in my mouth when they had to slice the sponge in half, let alone attempt making the rest of it!

Anyway, I bravely soldiered on and as you will see, I don't think my first attempt is actually half bad.  First step was to bake the sponge.  I was very pleased with my effort, and even took a photo to show you.

Then came the tricky slicing in half and constructing the cake.  Slicing was ok, but then my sponge did end up getting stuck to the wire cooling rack so not all layers were perfect.  But hey, you can't see it all.  Next putting all the layers together was quite easy, just needed to guesstimate how much of each ingredient to use per layer - which consisted of half a tonne of mascarpone, the coffee and brandy mix and grated chocolate.

Here's the result.

And here's what my kitchen looked like after all that effort.

Next up was the chill, then the chocolate decoration.  I had a problem with creating the chocolate decoration as I'm lacking in a proper chocolate thermometer, so improvised by using a meat thermometer.  Even still I think I was impatatient and didn't wait until the chocolate was quite cool enough before I started piping pretty shapes.  Which resulted in only a few good designs,  which didn't end up nice and shiny.

But as a first attempt I'm pleased, and both my husband and an independent taste taster who happened to be visiting today thought it was tasty.

So final results...taa daa!  If you'd like to try it out for yourself here's the recipe: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/tiramisu_cake_13686

Week two - Mary Berry's Florentines

So here we are, my second blog post, that's quite an achievement in its self!  This week is Florentines. I've never made these before and it's not something I would normally buy.

So I gathered all the ingredients together this morning...unfortunately my local neighbourhood shops don't stock unsalted butter or candied peel - fail.  But I persevered, instead of butter I used margarine with the lowest salt content I could find and ignored the candied peel.

Recipe was very straight forward and easy to follow, I don't think I would make any adjustments next time around, apart from perhaps melting slight less chocolate as I had a bit left (which I spread on some baking paper and refrigerated, then broke it up to use in cookies).  What I didn't manage to do was temper the chocolate properly as I'm lacking in a chocolate thermometer.  Also I left the chocolate to set too much so couldn't add the zigzags properly.

Ta da, my take on Mary Berry's Florentines:

Recipe can be found here http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/marys_florentines_49833.