Technical Thursday: Paul's Raspberry Millefeuille

How quickly have these 10 weeks gone?!

I can't believe that the Great British Bake Off is actually over, and by extension that I've survived 10 Technical Challenges (I'm counting the pitta breads in that as even though I didn't blog about them I did make them, promise!). I'm beyond thrilled that Nadiya stormed to victory in the tent - even though I'm a little bit in love with Tamal - and I loved that the final challenge tested the bakers on a skill they'd all struggled with previously: pastry.

Under normal circumstances I'm not too bad at making pastry, but this challenge had me wrapped in knots... For some reason it all fell apart slightly and I had to make my rough puff twice, plus it all went a little wrong in the oven (melted butter everywhere: such a disaster!). Somehow I managed to pull it back with the presentation, and when the time came for people to try them all previous panic was forgotten as they tasted incredible. I'm not entirely sure how I managed to pull this off, but these Raspberry Millefeuille were pretty spectacular indeed!

Technical Thursday: Mary's Hot Chocolate Soufflé

Well last night was a little exciting, wasn't it?! I've been routing for Nadiya for weeks so was predictably thrilled with the results (although not overwhelmed with excitement about having to attempt pesky raspberry millefeuille at the weekend...).

In a stark contrast to the up-coming Technical, last week's chocolate challenge was largely stress-free, fuss-free and unobtainable-fancy-ingredients-free. Aside from a slight faff finding the right dish, Mary's Hot Chocolate Soufflé was a definite success. In true semi-final style it was a recipe none of the bakers had attempted before - me included - but after carefully reading the instructions and working through them slowly and methodically it all came together pretty smoothly indeed. There was no panicking, no swearing in vain at my KitchenAid, and no frantic restarts of the whole process from the beginning. It all sort of slotted into place, and while the end result isn't half as neat as I would have liked, I'm pretty proud of my first ever soufflé!

Technical Thursday: Mary's Mokatines

These were awful: so truly awful that I will happily never make a Mokatine ever again.

I hate to blame the recipe, but there were more holes in it than a sieve. The official recipe from the BBC Food website - where I download them every week - had dodgy quantities, vague instructions and the method was so full of grammatical errors that it seemed apparent that no-one had thought to proof read it before publishing. I think it's meant to be a variation of the Mokatines in Mary Berry's Baking Bible, but I couldn't make much sense of either one. It could just be me, but it was a nightmare!

I suppose it didn't help that I was on a time limit this weekend so really could have done with it going a lot smoother than it did. For the first time it felt almost like a real Technical Challenge and I hated it! Obviously I had a lot longer on the clock than the bakers to account for photographing/tidying up etc. but it was still ridiculously stressful!

Technical Thursday: Mary's Tennis Cake

It seemed rather fitting this week to be making Mary Berry's Tennis Cake while Andy Murray stormed into the final of the Davis Cup at the weekend. The amount of time I spent waiting for the sponge to cool allowed for plenty of time to watch the tennis, and it really helped to calm my annoyance at how stupidly long this cake took to make.

I felt it was a bizarre bake given how largely uncomplicated and boring it was at this stage of the competition, but at least it fell at a topical time! Plus, it looks pretty and tastes divine, so I can't really complain...

Technical Thursday: Paul's Flaounes

Another episode of Bake Off, another opportunity to make a recipe I've never heard of and have absolutely no clue how to pronounce... Pastry week saw the bakers tackle Paul Hollywood's Flaounes - Cypriot cheese-filled pastries flavoured with a mix of decidedly difficult to find Greek spices.

This week really confirmed for me that I'm going to have to become creative with these Technical Challenges in order to actually make the best version of them I possibly can. The previous episode called for Gluten Free-Pitta, but even after searching in multiple health-food shops and enormous supermarkets several crucial ingredients either eluded me (Nigella seeds were a mystery despite now being readily available in both my local Tesco and Waitrose) or were way too expensive (Psyllium powder in Holland & Barrett cost around £15 and I only needed to use a tenth of the pouch). As a result I decided not to make them, instead going for normal pitta. A work trip meant that I didn't have time to blog my results last Thursday but needless to say they were a success. However, they weren't exactly within the specific remits of the challenge.

Thus from now on I've decided to definitely alter the recipes so that I can feasibly complete them and simultaneously not use up all my savings in the process. This will mean finding alternative ingredients when others are too expensive/impossible to locate and essentially making do. Hopefully this will work out well!

Technical Thursday: Mary's Spanische Windtorte

I've made meringue a couple of times before, and each time I've ended up with a brown, dry mess that I've had to jazz up with sprinkles or crush into a pudding to disguise the fact that it's a total disaster. Therefore, when this Technical Challenge was revealed it's probably understandable that I panicked slightly! It had the potential to go extremely wrong, but luckily for me it did the exact opposite! (If it's not already obvious, I am beyond thrilled about this!)

I'm not sure if it's my new oven or if I've finally mastered meringue, but either way this ended up being one of the prettiest challenges to date, and one that's really surprised me. Mary's delicate layers of French and Swiss meringue filled with a strawberry/raspberry/cream centre were basically heaven on a cake stand. *insert heart-eyed emoji here*

Technical Thursday: Paul's Baguettes

If I was on The Great British Bake Off, last week would undoubtedly have been my last in the tent. Bread really is my nemesis, and Paul Hollywood's Baguettes almost defeated me this week. After two days in the kitchen I emerged downtrodden, baffled and quite frankly bored with the whole process.

And, to add insult to injury I was left with 8 loaves of ciabatta that looked nothing like the intended baguettes. What a disaster.

Technical Thursday: Paul's Arlettes

Last week was biscuit week on The Great British Bake Off, and the weekend in the tent was bookended by variations of biscotti in the Signature Bake and intricate biscuit boxes in the Showstopper. In the middle though, was the humble Technical Challenge where the bakers were tasked with creating 8 of Paul Hollywood's Arlettes - "classic" French wafer-thin cinnamon biscuits.

I thought this would be particularly tricky as I really don't have the patience for waiting for dough to chill in the fridge repeatedly, but it ended up being reminiscent of last year's Schichttorte - lots of relatively easy steps that lead to a striking yet simple bake.

Technical Thursday: Mary's Frosted Walnut Cake

Guess what's back...

Technical Thursday, woop woop!

Admittedly, it's not half as original this time around as everybody in Britain seems to be doing exactly the same thing and baking along with the new series of The Great British Bake Off too... I don't mind though: I think it's fantastic that baking has become so popular!

I love the Technical Challenges, and I'm hoping this series has just as many bizarre, fiendishly difficult and beautiful concoctions as the last. I'm definitely a better baker because of my previous attempt at these, so fingers crossed the coming months provide even more of an education into all things bread, pastry, biscuits, cake and everything in between.

So, without further ado: here's my version of the very first Technical Challenge of the series, Mary Berry's Frosted Walnut Cake.

Melting Moments

As all overindulgence in the last two weeks of December is now a hazy but delightful memory and after a month of clean eating, morphing into a gym bunny and drinking enough water to sink a battleship, January - the month that makes the world feel guilty for enjoying Christmas - has finally come to an end. At this stage you either need congratulating for spending four weeks focussed and sticking to your New Year's resolutions, or congratulating for pretending so convincingly that you've spent the last 31 days being super well behaved when actually you've still been sneaking the odd chocolate bar and haven't actually broken that Diet Coke habit like you promised.

Either way, and no matter how you approached January, the most depressing month of the year is over - yay! - and there seems only one way to celebrate properly: baked goods. If you've been good, then you deserve it; and if not, who cares anyway? Treat yo' self!

These Melting Moments look beautiful, are the perfect accompaniment to a cup of tea, and taste wonderfully light, making them feel like a huge indulgence when they're really not.

Cinnamon & Raspberry Whirl Wreath

Recently I've finally started to finally master bread and sweet enriched doughs, so I'm really keen to try out all kinds of doughy recipes at the moment, almost as proof that I'm no longer a total disaster in that department.

I stumbled across the recipe for this Cinnamon & Raspberry Whirl Wreath in the new Great British Bake Off: Christmas book and instantly knew I had to try it out and include it in my Christmas bakes. There's something ridiculously festive about cinnamon, and the aroma of freshly baked bread is an enormously comforting scent to be greeted with in the kitchen during the winter.

This is ideal for a yuletide brunch as it's an interesting centre-piece, is large enough to feed the five thousand, and as it can made and frozen ahead of time (up to 3 months) it's ridiculously easy to produce a complicated looking, freshly baked centre-piece at the last minute that guests will think you've spent hours preparing prior to their arrival. It's more than worth the extra effort as producing something like this is an excellent alternative to any normal pastries and breads, and adds a festive flourish to a standard brunch.

Technical Thursday: Religieuse

This week's Technical Challenge required the bakers to make 8 Religieuse - French pastries that consist of two choux buns filled with pastry cream, topped with chocolate ganache and decorated with a whipped cream "collar".

Given the fact that I've never made choux pastry before I was pretty excited to try these out, and they actually worked quite well!

Unfortunately these were victims of The Great SD Card Disaster of December 9th 2014 so I have no pictures of the baking process. Luckily there were 4 left when the nightmare began so they are photographed below as evidence that I did actually do the challenge - and make all 8 - so I'm not just pretending!

Technical Thursday: Apricot Couronne

In this episode of Series 4 the bakers were asked to tackle sweet dough, and the Technical Challenge was Paul Hollywood's Apricot Couronne - a sweet, glazed crown of rich bread filled with walnuts, apricots and raisins.

I'm notoriously bad at any form of dough so was really not looking forward to this at all, but it actually ended up going really well… I don't want to jinx it, but I'm hoping this means I'm no longer quite so scared of sweet dough!

Technical Thursday: Mary's Tuiles

This has to be one of the annoying Technical Challenges to date.

It's not particularly difficult and for once didn't lead to elevated levels of stress in any way. The problem is that the challenge required the bakers to make 9 tuiles and 9 cigars, but the recipe provided makes around 50. This is fine if you have all the time in the world and an industrial-sized oven, but working in a small kitchen with limited baking trays (and patience as the afternoon wore on) the whole process took literally hours longer than it needed to.

If I'd have known this I would have halved the quantities from the beginning, but once you're elbows deep in tuile paste and in the middle of a production line with a template, it doesn't make sense to stop, or throw away the rest of the mixture. I made the decision to carry on past the requirements of the challenge and use up all the mixture, but ended up losing over 3 hours in the process. Eugh.

Plus, I spent the evening nursing burnt and stinging fingertips from shaping piping hot tuiles, which is less than ideal to say the least!

Technical Thursday: Egg Custard Tarts

So it turns out I'm a bit of a disaster when it comes to basic recipes.

Give me something with a million ingredients I've never heard of, a series of complicated instructions that reduce me to a state of mild panic and a finished product the name of which I can't pronounce properly and I'm in my element. However when I'm faced with the sort of recipe I should technically be able to do in my sleep I slowly fall apart until I'm so frustrated that I just want to throw it all away and give up on baking as a hobby altogether.

Step forward, Paul Hollywood's Egg Custard Tarts, made from a recipe so simple I had to read it three times to check I wasn't missing vital steps and yet required two attempts at the pastry, a flap about the custard that turned my language so colourful I felt like Gordon Ramsey, and resulted in 12 rather sad looking tarts that definitely aren't at the standard I'd like them to be.

Eugh. According to everyone at work they tasted okay though, so all is not lost!

Technical Thursday: Floating Islands

I think everyone remembers Dessert Week of The Great British Bake Off Series 4, as it's the one that highlighted how a quaint little show about cake wasn't immune to scandal.

When making their signature bakes - trifles - at the beginning of the episode Deborah accidentally used Howard's custard instead of her own, and not only did it ruffle feathers in the tent and cause a bit of a commotion, but it ushered in an entirely new era on the show. Custard-gate overtook the weather as the main topic of conversation in Britain that week, and I like to believe that it's heart-racing and deliciously tense episodes like this that elevated GBBO to BBC1 for the following series.

In amongst all the custard excitement at the start of the episode it's ridiculously easy to forget what on earth happened in the rest of it. The Technical Challenge was Mary Berry's Floating Islands, a "classy, dreamy dessert" that features quenelles of poached meringue floating on top of custard and decorated with a ball of spun sugar. Don't worry, I hadn't heard of them before the episode either.

Easy peasy? Not. At. All.

Technical Thursday: English Muffins

Technical Thursday is back! Woop woop!

Life feels very strange without the weekly dose of the Great British Bake Off. In order to cope with this I'm going to carry on with a GBBO-themed bake each week by working my way through more Technical Challenges. I loved doing them each week during Series 5, and given the fact that I'd never made the majority of the bakes before I found it really helpful to try them out and expand my baking knowledge in the process.

After very little deliberation I figured, why stop now? I spent an hour or so the other day working out a plan of attack, and have decided to go back to Series 4 - famous for the tense episode where Deborah stole Howard's custard - and start doing the Technical Challenges from Week 1 through to the Final. I'm not going to lie: I'm very excited for the next few weeks.

Technical Thursday: Back to Basics & GBBO Giveaway

I can't believe this series of the Great British Bake Off is over.

It seems like just yesterday we were watching the contestants discover for the first time that crying over cake isn't that weird in the GBBO tent, and a Mel & Sue sandwich really can heal all pain. It's been an educational series: we've learnt that using shop bought fondant is an unforgivable sin; Baked Alaska should have stayed in the 1970s; and icing sugar can cover a multitude of sins (or the entire bake à la Norman).

Although I'm not thrilled with the result - I was routing for Richard for weeks! - I loved the final. From the Signature Bakes of two types of Viennoiserie to the stunning Showstoppers in the form of intricate and beautiful pièce montées the bakers were really put through their paces.

Theoretically, the Technical Challenge was the easiest yet in a return to the absolute basics with 12 mini Victoria Sponges, 12 mini tartes au citron and 12 scones. However, the 2 hours in which the bakers were allocated made the whole thing a fiendishly difficult task.

Technical Thursday: Mary's Cherry Cake

This is the Technical Challenge that got away.

I only decided to start attempting each week's challenge on The Great British Bake Off in the second week - with Mary's Florentines - so I missed making the first one to face the bakers. 

As I've been in London today and unable to make the three part epic multi-tasking challenge from last night's final, I'm instead posting the recipe for Mary Berry's Cherry Cake from Week 1. Next week I'll post my attempt at the final Technical Thursday challenge and reveal details of I have planned next...

Technical Thursday: Paul's Schichttorte

I can't believe I'm saying this at this stage of GBBO (the Semi Final!) but this was the easiest challenge so far.

To be perfectly honest it didn't feel like much of a challenge at all - very un-Emma to admit - it was more a faff with an insane amount of eggs, lots of mental arithmetic and a seriously ridiculous method involving grilled layers of cake.

It was completely bizarre but one of the most doable challenges of the series. I was definitely not expecting something like this the week before the final!