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Opera Cake

(2024 bake off week 9)

I hadn't felt particularly inspired by this the technical challenges so far this year, but I HAD to make the opera cake.

10/10 for deliciousness, but also 8/10 for annoyingness. I don't have abstand mixture, so the French buttercream was a two-person job.

Will probably never make this again, but I'm glad I tried it.

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Week 9 - Tarte aux Pommes

I baked this at my mum's house, which meant I got to use a real rolling pin, and an oven with an accurate temperature dial, AND mum had already made me some applesauce with the apples off her friend's tree.

It was a pretty straightforward bake, although my pastry shrank and all the edge bits fell off.

No waste in this house, we ate all the pastry chunks as a pre-dinner snack.

The filling was a bit damp, but the pastry stayed crisp and that's the most important.

The only complaint from the family was that the frangipane didn't taste almondy enough. Which is preferable, in my opinion.

Next week is the final! Hope it's something weird!

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Week 8 - Caterpillar cake

🤣🤣🤣

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Week 7 - steamed pudding

I wasn't sure how I'd make these until I found a trio of tiny ramekins in a charity shop

They are half the volume of the bowls that the recipe suggests, so I hoped they would take less time to bake. Unfortunately not. They were still half-raw at 35 minutes, and a bit too squishy when I got bored and took them out the oven after 50. I'm blaming the ugly shape on that, anyway.

This is the second attempt at syrup, as I took my eyes off the first attempt and it instantly burnt

I'm glad I remade it though, the syrup was delicious. The puddings were... ok

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Week 6: Lemon and Thyme bundt cake

My, what an ugly bundt cake.

I don't have any deep cake pans at all, let alone a bundt pan. I half heartedly searched a few charity shops for one, came away empty handed, and decided to DIY a loaf pan out of an old poster I'd made for work - the thickest, biggest bit of card I could find.

I was rather proud of it initially. Silly me. It turned out to be far too flimsy

I also made the fatal sponge cake mistake of checking on it too early, so the middle collapsed.

It tasted like a nice lemon sponge. Unless you took a bit of the candied thyme you didn't get any of that flavour at all. I was rather proud of the decorations, but one of my colleagues said it looked like his bacteria growing in the lab.

Not sure if I'm more worried about my decorating skills or his bacteria.

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Week 5: Potato pithivier

I'm convinced I spelt that wrong.

I visited the old flat and made this for my friend there, which meant I got to use the exciting slicer gadget.

I love this thing. It slices so well, a winning combination of satisfying and perilous. I used it to slice the onion as well, which was maybe a bit too much. They were so small once caramelised that they barely existed at all.

The pastry was interesting. This was my first time ever making rough-puff pastry. It's much easier than regular puff pastry, but I'm still not sure it's worth doing compared to buying from the shop.

At least I got to use a real rolling pin this week.

I only used about 3/4 of the potato mixture, as the mound looked pretty huge pre-baking, but unfortunately the height evened out at lot in the oven.

I was really impressed with the flakiness of the pastry, and the thin potato layers looked great, but the flavour wasn't that exciting and I don't think I'd bother making this again.

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Week 4: caramelised white chocolate cheesecake

I hated making this. Caramelising the chocolate in the microwave took over an hour. I have no idea how any of the bakers finished in time on the show.

The toppings were a problem, as I couldn't get cream, jelly or blackcurrants. I ended up picking the currants out of a bag of frozen mixed fruit, cooking them with a little sugar, and straining to make a puree. I didn't even bother making the chocolate shards - I know I can't temper white chocolate and I don't feel the need to prove it.

The biscuit base was also a pain to make, and next time I will be using hobnobs like usual.

So, it was frustrating when this turned out to be delicious. Totally worth all the pain. What a nightmare.

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Week 3: Devonshire splits

It was a relief to make something that needed no special equipment. Unlike the last two, these were actually quite relaxing to bake.

Some of the buns came out... less than beautiful (I just can't get the hang of shaping dough), but once filled they all looked nice.

I'm also really proud of how smooth I got the cream filling.

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Week 2: Custard creams

These biscuits were much harder than I expected from watching the show.

The dough itself was mostly fine. It was very soft, even after adding extra flour, and I'm glad I didn't attempt to buy the right stamp for it as that would have been a nightmare. The main difficulty was the filling - it turns out that whipping boiling sugar into egg yolks by hand is very difficult. After 2 failed attempts I mixed the sugar with the egg yolks in a bowl and whisked them over a pan of simmering water. This was also horrendous, but it worked in the end.

They smelled amazing when baking, a pure Custard powder aroma, but they tasted blander than I'd hoped.

No rolling pin? That's OK! Use a bottle of rum instead.

I tried to emulate the decorations by pressing in shapes with various implements. I'd say it was moderately successful.

Custard creams are my favourite biscuit to dunk in tea, so I had to try. They didn't absorb tea as well as shop bought ones, but the flavour was pleasant

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I'm back!

Week 1: the chocolate cake, you know, from the intro?

The point in this blog was to challenge myself to make all the technical bakes from the show. I've moved a lot in the last year, and almost all my baking equipment is still in storage far away. That's one of the reasons I skipped the challenge last year. This year I'm going to try anyway. Currently I'm limited to two cake tins, one bowl, and one whisk, so it was lucky that the first challenge was a simple one. Some weeks I may have to be a bit more creative.

This cake was a fun bake and a good way to test the oven in my new place (i'm giving the oven a C+. It tried, the poor dear). I found the texture a bit odd, but it was very chocolatey and went down well with the people at work.

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Week 7 - shortbread caramels sticks (or whatever, it's a twix)

Oh lordy these came out ugly. They taste great though. But I doubled the recipe and still only had 8 that were ok enough to photograph.

The biscuit should have been easy, but when I turned the oven on it stated making an extremely concerning noise. I left it on for as long as I dared, but they still came out a little underbaked, and so several fell apart in the next few steps.

The caramel was too runny go begin with, but I boiled it for a few extra minutes and it turned out delicious.

The chocolate I falsely assumed would be easy. It turns out that tempering milk chocolate is much harder than dark chocolate. I made a total mess and have a whole tub of squishy broken leftovers. Which are also delicious, so I shouldn't complain.

No in-progress shots because I was too sticky to take pictures.

I'm going to try and fix the oven tonight but I'm not optimistic about it. This may be my last challenge.

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Week 6 - Baklava

These looked so perfect until I tried to get them out of the tin.

I think I kept the nuts too chunky, so they couldn't stick together very well.

I was disappointed that this didn't work, because I was hoping to give some as gifts (pistachios are expensive!) and now instead I have a whole lunchbox full of crumbly nothing.

My friend suggested they'd make a good ice cream topping though, so I can't complain too much!

In progress shots:

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Week 4 - Sticky Toffee Pudding

Oh my god

This is so good.

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Week 3 - Ciabatta breadsticks

I'm only posting the zoomed in photo so you can't see how ugly these are :D

I should have gone with my gut and added less water. I know the dough was supposed to be wet, but it was SO WET. I live in a damp city. My flour is always slightly hydrated.

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Week 2 - Jammy dodgers

I learned a new thing with these biscuits - even though they held their shape really well, the ones that I rolled too thin shrank a little on baking. That's why some of the top halves are too small. I really need to work out how to roll stuff evenly!

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Week one

Malt loaf is delicious actually!

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Week 9: Patisserie - semi final

Well I had a great time making this biscuit penis.

It was pretty simple actually, but the instructions were pretty vague, so I'm not sure I could have built it if I hadn't seen them doing it on TV first.

I had a bit of trouble with the caramel too, but let's try to ignore that....

Only one week left!