The Great Bake-off 4, finale

Picnic Pie

Another thing that I've never heard of before. Apparently once upon a time it was a pie with eggs inside, and the eggs were cut so that there was yolks and whites in every piece - a tube of eggs in the middle. 

Now-a-days it's more like a picture pie, or secret pie - the pies are filled with layered and arranged fillings.

Signature pie... would be very classical :-D And I love eggs in meatloaf. 

Technical challenge: pretzels, sweet and savory

Showstopper: 3 tiered wedding cake

It would be lovely to decorate it with pressed, edible flowers. Doesn't this look just amazing! And I could be pressing the flowers at home. 

the flavors would be lemon cake with blueberry filling, pink champagne with raspberry filling, and Persian love cake :-D

The Great bake-off 4, Alternative Ingredients

Signature loaf made with using unusual flour.

I bake my Danish all rye bread once a month. :-D It takes several days... A couple of years ago I wrote a blog entry about the different cereals, and I find it fascinating. Spelt is pretty obvious, it behaves almost like wheat. Then one can add flavor with oats. I could make my oat bread from season 1, and just replace the wheat with spelt. It wouldn't be much different.

Technical challenge: Hazelnut Dacquoise

Showstopper: Dairy-Free Novelty Cake with Vegetables

Think beyond the obvious... so no carrot or gourgette :-D

Beetroot chocolate? 
No, I want to make my carrot cake, with almonds. It's not your ordinary carrot cake. 

7 eggs, separated
300 g sugar
50 g flour
pinch of salt
1 1/2 tl baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
300 g grated carrots
1 tsp lemon juice
300 g ground almonds

Cream the yolks and 3/4 of the sugar (225 g)
mix the dry ingredients and add to the yolk mix with carrots and lemonjuice.
Whip the egg whites with the rest of the sugar into a hard foam.
Fold into batter with the almonds.

Bake in 200C for about 15 minutes. Lower the heat to 180 and bake about 40 minutes more, until the cake is done.
Let sit for a short while and turn the cake out on a cooling rack. When cool, cut into three layers and fill.

 I usually make a banana cream cheese filling for this cake, and cream cheese frosting, but this is a dairy free week.
I think I'll use this Swiss carrot cake as guide and use sugar glaze. 

And then use marzipan to decorate it.

Vegetable garden is the obvious idea.

 

But it's so obvious several of the competitors made it, so, no :-D Maybe a fox, then. 

The Great Bakeoff 4, pastry

 savory canapés, one choux pastry, one pastry based, one anything

savoury eclairs, I think the coronation chicken sounds good :-D Chicken curry ;-)

Ratatouille tart

Avocado blinis

Technical challenge: Charlotte Royale

I am really good at making charlottes, but really, really bad at making swiss rolls :-D Mine always break.

Showstopper: Opera

biscuit joconde, buttercream, ganache... it's very sweet, so I understand the classical flavor of dark chocolate and coffee. But I don't like the bitterness. So... what to use to fight the sweetness of the buttercream, joconde, white ganache? Lemon? Lemon and blueberries? Make a white Opera cake with blueberries. Like the Finnish flag :-D

maybe use this lemon blueberry cheesecake cake as base. I can imagine the cheesecake filling would work to counterbalance the sweetness. 

White chocolate mirror glaze.

Though this creamsicle opera cake sounds delicious, too...

The Great bake-off 4, pastry

Signature; Suet Pudding with sauce

Suet pudding... again, I don't know enough of English traditions to be able to be much innovative with this. So I suppose I'd make apple hat or a savoury pudding... I wonder what I would use to fill it. Chili? Maybe Bacon Badger, just because it has a fun name :-D

After all, it's a question of pastry. 

Now, suet is an interesting fat. There are, of course, "secrets" about using suet. 

Technical; Religieuses

Showstopper; 3 different kind of puff pastry canapés, one filled, one iced, and one of any kind

OK, so miniature Napoleons, palmiers carre, and conversation tarts.

Palmiers carre is a Korean thing - at least I haven't seen them anywhere else. The puff pastry is simply layered up to 6 times, cut into slices, baked and dipped in chocolate. There is no sugar or spices in it, it's just puff pastry. The Koreans love it.

The Great bake-off 4, sweet dough

Signature: tea loaf

I didn't have the slightest idea what a tea loaf is. Apparently it's fruit packed brioche. 

I don't like fruit packed bread. 

So... what is my favorite dried fruit? I like apples, actually. I like the color of apricots, even though I don't like the flavor of them. And I read that almonds and Chinese five spice go well with apples, so let's do that :-D Although... I have read somewhere that some spices stop the dough from developing well, so maybe take cardamom in stead. Finnish traditions, and all that :-D And cranberries. More color. 

I also found a Paul Hollywood recipe while researching, and it has apricots and marzipan. Yum. I LOVE marzipan. 

Technical: Apricot Couronne

Showstopper: 24 Sweet European Buns

"European buns, you have 40 minutes to start your bake tonight, four hours tomorrow"

What? 

"You chill the dough for 12 hours"

Oh, dear. I never knew I have done it all wrong for 40 years! No-one ever told me, everyone I know does it the same way I do! 

And looking up bun recipes all over the Europe; classic brioche in France, Schnecken in Germany, the Scandinavian buns in Finland, Sweden, Norway... all done within 4 hours. 

I do prove my Challah for at least 12 hours, and it's a brioche dough, but this? WTF?

Uh.

Anyway. I like Karlsbaders and I would like to try Dallas buns. 

This is how you swirl the Karlsbaders. It's pretty simple, but looks complicated.

The Great bake-off 4; biscuits and traybakes

Signature; traybake

Aleksander pastry, tosca... I do love brownies, as well, and blondies, and... there's so much to choose from!

I think I'd give Brita pie a chance.

Brita pie is a variant of the Brita cake (called Pinocchio cake in Sweden, and The World's Best in Norway. Beloved cake has many names :-D It's surprisingly unutilized in the rest of the world.)

The idea is to bake a golden cake with yolks and top it with meringue made with the whites. It is seriously worth the name "world's best". 

4 eggs, separated
200 g / 7 ounces butter
3 dl / 1 1/4 cups sugar, divided
3 dl / 1 1/4 cups flour
1 dl / 7 tbls potato starch
1 tsp baking powder
2 dl / 3/4 cups milk
about 250 grams / 8-9 ounces red currants (or other sour berries, like cranberries)
1 dl flaked almonds

whip the whites to hard peak, with 1 1/2 dl sugar.
Foam softened butter and 1 1/2 dl sugar. Add the egg yolks one at a time. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl and add to the butter mixture little by little with the milk. Mix thoroughly, but don't overmix.
Spread the batter on oven tray.
Sprinkle the berries on the batter.
Spread the meringue over the berries.
Sprinkle with almond flakes.
Bake in 175°C/350°F oven for about 20 minutes. The cake should be done, the meringue slightly browned and crispy on top.
Decorate with fresh berries, eat with whipped cream.

Technical challenge: tuiles

Showstopper: Biscuit tower

Now, there's a question... krokan, kransekage, or some architectural adventures?

Krokan is practically almond paste that has been softened with egg whites to be spritzable, and then one spritzes curlicues that are then assembled into a tower. Sort of croquembouche. 

Kransekage is a classic Danish feast pastry built of different size rings (kranse), so that you get a cone shaped tower. That, too, is almond based dough. (You don't need the discs Glenn had, the Danes use different sized ring shaped pasty cutters. 

To me these things are so tightly woven to Scandinavian wedding traditions, that I have difficulties in even seeing them as cookie towers :-D It took Glenn's Helter-Skelter to remind me of that that's exactly what these are. So had I been competing in the actual event, I would not have thought of either, but gone with the architectural thing. Tower of Babel might have been an interesting idea... or Semiramis' hanging gardens. Or Mississauga Absolute Towers. That would have been easy, because it's basically just oval discs stacked on top of each other :-D Or the Uspenski Cathedral... 

And there's also like 12 different types of biscuits/cookies/"small cakes" - there's cut cookies, drop cookies, ice box cookies, molded cookies, spritzed cookies, no bake cookies, bar cookies, meringues, twice baked, rolled, wagers, deep fried, waffle cookies... it would be wonderful to make the Uspenski Cathedral with different types of cookies, using the toughest at the bottom, and the most delicate ones as roof and so... 

Great bake-off 4, pies and tarts

Signature double crusted fruit pie

One of my favorite pies is cherry pie, but if I'm going to make cherry strudel for Showstopper, I can't make cherry pie as the other challenge :-D Though, of course I could. 

The thing is that this is very British. We don't have the same pie traditions. 

We used to make blueberry pies. Finnish blueberries, I suppose they are called bilberries in English. Sometimes rhubarb, or apple. I like lemon pie... I wonder how that would work in a double crusted British form. :-D

This bilberry pie looks absolutely delectable! Just add decorative crust.

I could also make "queen" mix. In Finland, a jam made with blueberries and raspberries is called the Queen jam. 

Technical challenge is egg custard tarts. 

Yum!

Showstopper: Filo pie

I would make a Hungarian cream cheese cherry strudel, but HOW to make it a showstopper? It's just a strudel! Tanghulu cherries and almonds, marzipan fruit?

Great Bake-off 4, desserts

Signature Trifle

I immediately thought of the Finnish dessert "pappilan hätävara", "the emergency dessert of the vicarage" (yes, it literally means that :-D You see, the vicarage could be visited at any moment, and they had to have something to serve, and even though they did bake a lot at a vicarage, there were times when the cakes and whatnots were a bit stale, not too pristine and fresh, so the kitchen whipped up this dessert to be served to the unexpected guests. It is trifle, made with crumbs of all kinds, softened with some juice or cordial or sugar water, layered with jams, jellies, conserves and fresh fruit and whipped cream, and behaves like layer cake :-)

Now, as most priests back in the 18th and 19th century were either trained in Sweden, by people who were trained in Sweden, or from Swedish families (like my ancestors), this recipe originally came from Hansa. It's called "angel food" in Sweden, and "veiled farmer girl" in Norway, Denmark, and Germany. (I almost translated it to "veiled bond girl", because I couldn't remember what "bonde" was in English :-D I think I like that :-D) (The veil is like the bride's veil, and not like something to hide behind.)

In Denmark this "farmer girl with veil" is also known as aeblekage, apple cake. One is supposed to make apple sauce and roast Danish rye bread with sugar to make the "cake layers", but now-a-days people use sweeter breads for the "cake layers". I find the apple sauce too soft and mushy to really enjoy this dessert, but my husband loves it. On the other hand, he likes mushy foods (and is Danish ;-))

I think this Danish version might work well for this challenge, though I would make apple compote. 

And I think I'd replace the traditional rye bread crumbs with rye cookies. Maybe soften them a little with whisky. Rye whisky. :-D That should work beautifully with the flavors.

Technical: Mary Berry's Floating Islands

Showstopper: 24 Petit Fours: 12 Biscuit-based, 12 Sponge-based

Biscuit based? Sponge based? I was thinking of making Alexander pastry, and cut it into tiny cubes, but... I don't think that's either biscuit or sponge based. I suppose it is sort of a shortcrust pastry, so it's "biscuit based", and I think they'd like some of the traditional mini cake cubes. I think maple syrup flavored cake with buttercream, and brown sugar fondant cover with a bit of caramelized bacon on top. :-D

Great bake-off 4, bread

I really like the variation, and the idea of using bagel toppings on grissini :-D

Everything Bagel seasoning: Just mix poppy seeds, white and black sesame seeds, very finely crushed onion and garlic flakes, and sea salt or finger salt. Everything one uses traditionally to top bagels. :-D

I would also like to make tricolori grissini - divide the dough into three parts, and knead in spinach powder in one part, and tomato powder in another part, and then twist these three colors together, sort of like candy cane pattern :-D (And I had forgotten Ruby had the same idea. Maybe it was in the back of my head all the time ;-) Uh, doesn't matter ;-))

Paul Hollywood's English muffins

Decorative bread

There's a lot of ways to decorate a bread. I'm thinking about the Korovai, but I'm not that fond of the "dead dough". I'm fascinated by the stenciled and scored breads.

But what about the flavors? Maybe za'atar babka? :-D Maybe with a cream cheese swirl in the middle? This one sounds really delicious as well: Savory cheese babka. Ah, bacon...

Great Bake-off 4, cake

 Sandwich cake

I love it how everyone evolves during the seasons of this show. Paul was somewhat an a-hole during the first season, I remember the row he and Mary Berry had about what level they should be judging. Mary Berry saying these are HOME bakers, not professionals, Paul Hollywood almost expecting professional bakery level quality. I mean, of course everything should be as equal in quality, the flavors should be right, the techniques unquestionable, but perfection of decoration and precision? No. Professional bakers must spend time to learn to do things like piping and chocolate work, home bakers focus on different things. 

So... if I was a sandwich cake, what would I be? I'm Finnish, so to me "sandwich cake" means only one thing; savory one :-D

In this context it means two layer naked cake. I would like to make a Victoria Sandwich cake inspired by the Japanese fruit sandwiches. Now, one of the styles is to create all kinds of flowers or geometric patterns with fruit, but that isn't possible with a cake - I can't force people to cut the slices exactly the way it needs to be cut to create those patterns... but maybe one could. I could draw the cutting lines on the top of the cake the way they make these illustrated swiss roll skins. A simple geometric pattern divided into 10 (as that Victoria Sandwich recipe is meant to be cut into 10 pieces), and use that to create the flower patterns in the filling... and just so that the cake isn't too bland looking from outside, add a layer of something, like mango curd, on the cake between cream and cake... like this sandwich here. You see the thin yellow layer there. 

I don't think the judges would have liked it :-D

Things that I notice: 

- get the sugarwork, chocolate work, and piping game down. The judges are quite impressed with small touches like that.
- I keep looking at all that hair being shaken above the bakes and wonder how much hair the judges eat. I'd make myself 10 40s inspired dresses from different baking related fabrics, and aprons to go with each one, have a 40s hair and makeup, and wear a scarf over my hair while I bake. :-D

- do a bit more. The judges appreciate effort, even when it fails.

Angel Food Cake

Chocolate cake decorated with at least two types of chocolate and elaborate decorations

I do like me chocolate cake... Devil's food cake is my favorite chocolate cake. If we are to go "choco loco", Death by the Chocolate it is :-D

Now, Death by Chocolate is two layers of chocolate brownies, with chocolate ganache, mocha meringue, and chocolate mousse in between layers, then topped with chocolate ganache and mocha mousse. They have changed the recipe a little after the restaurant was sold. It is now glazed.

I think I want to experiment with mirror glaze / acrylic pour techniques... I want to know how much one can combine the two, and how it would look on a cake :-D

I suppose some chocolate work needs to be done as well. I love David's Black Forest Floor cake from season 1. 

But that's too much on a mirror glaze cake, so maybe just one flower :-D
Or maybe make bones from white chocolate, as it's "Death by Chocolate" :-D

The Great bake off 2: final

Signature Mille-Feuille

Technical challenge: Mary Berry's Sachertorte

Now... to me this is very difficult, because I don't consider that a Sachertorte. Firstly, the chocolate is too light. 39% baking chocolate isn't even chocolate. There shouldn't be any ground almonds in Sacher. The chocolate and apricot keep it moist. Her cake didn't much raise. It looks the same height it was when it went into the tin. You should be able to cut the cake in two. It is not glazed with ganache. 
The original Sacher torte you buy has only sugar, apricot jam, eggs, chocolate, wheat flour, butter and water. 

Here's the "approximation" Sacher gives

I like this Epicurious' recipe with Dieter Schorner. There's 4 parts to this, so go to YouTube to see all of them.

Showstopper: British Summer Petits Fours; meringue, sweet pastry, and sponge based.

Uh. I hate thinking about this! 
I'll make mini pavlovas filled with berries, bébés, and Neapolitan fondant fancies. One layer chocolate cake, one vanilla and one strawberry, with chocolate ganache between chocolate and vanilla, and strawberry jam between vanilla and strawberry. Apparently it's more important they are all the same size, than that they are small and dainty.

The Great bake off 2: pâtisserie

 Signature Layered Mousse Cake

That three chocolate cake looked interesting.

Technical: Iced Fingers

Showstopper viennoiserie

My favorite Danishes are the maple pecan Danishes. Then I like the glazed apple and cinnamon Danishes. And then to try something new, Xuixos. Now, that cannot obviously be the real thing, because one has to use the same dough for all three variants, but inspired by it; a closed Danish with Catalan cream filling. 

The Great bake off 2: Desserts

Signature cheesecake

The world's best cheesecake is Junior's cheesecake, they say. Now, I don't think there's time to actually bake a cake for the base... and there seriously isn't time to let the cheesecake set after baking, which I think is really badly done by the program. They should have made it as showstopper and done it day before so that it could have rested the night, but... alas.

I would put in canned peaches in the cheesecake, I love peach cheesecake like that. The German Pfirsichkuchen with quark. :-) That's a Finnish Easter tradition, btw. A peach pie with quark.

Technical challenge: chocolate roulade

Here's how Paul Hollywood makes a chocolate roulade. 

Showstopper croquembouche

This is a miniature croquembouche, but aren't those roses just lovely! And the pink icing! Martha Stewart made a pink croquembouche by using pink craquelin topping on her profiteroles. :-) Really cute.

The Great bake off 2: Pies

Signature family pie with flaky topping (rough puff, flaky pastry...)

Apparently rough puff and flaky are the same thing - a quicker way of making puff pastry. The butter is in bits instead of a slab. 

Puff pastry and Viennoiserie dough are different in that Viennoiserie is made with yeasted dough. So you don't really make Danishes with puff pastry, and not with just yeasted dough, but yeasted AND laminated dough. That makes them so flaky and buttery and substantial. Puff pastry is basically just filo dough :-D

I would make cabbage pie with rye puff pastry top. Also, try shaving or grating the butter into the flour. 

Cabbage filling: you need to fry the crap out of the cabbage, to get it as buttery and melting in your mouth as I want it to be. 

Chop cabbage - as much as you need or want. I make this dish with one cabbage head, and then we eat it for as long as there is stew to be eaten :-D It just gets better as one reheats it.
Brown it in butter. Lots of butter. I use about 100 grams of butter for each head of cabbage.
Put the browned cabbage in a dutch oven, with a little bit of butter on the bottom. Pour over bullion, molasses and whole all spice berries. I use about 20 berries for one head of cabbage, 2 bullion cubes (1 per 1/2 liter), about half a cup of water, and 2 tablespoons of molasses. This is a family recipe so everything is approximated and measured in handfuls and squeezes :-D
Fry about 300 grams of minced meat, I use half pork and half beef, and pour over the cabbage. Let stew a couple of hours, until the mixture is practically brown mush. :-D 
Now, for this challenge, I wouldn't be able to let it stew enough, because there's only 2 1/2 hours, and the puff pastry needs to be done, and the pie baked, so I would start with chopping the cabbage and making the puff pastry as the cabbage fries. 

Technical challenge: pork pies

Showstopper: Meringue pie

I think I'd make a lingonberry meringue pie, using lingonberry cordial instead of lemons, but make it like lemon meringue pie. Or maybe use this cranberry meringue pie recipe.

Or maybe make the clear lemon meringue pie :-D

Or maybe try to make a Sans Rival pie - have a nutty pie dough, custard filling, and cashew meringue.

The Great bake-off 2; biscuits

Signature biscuits

When I was little, we used to make fork cakes. They are good. :-)

Finnish Fork cakes

100 g / 3 1/2 oz softened butter
1 dl / 1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
3 1/4 dl / 1 1/3 cups flour
3/4 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder

Cream butter and sugar. Add egg whisking it in.
Mix the dry ingredients and mix in the batter.
Roll the dough into a log and cut into 30 pieces. Roll into bolls, put on a baking paper on the oven sheet, and push down with a floured fork.
Bake in 200C about 10 minutes.

Though I think those are way too simple and... basic :-D

Maybe sandwich them together with something nice. It's a very neutral biscuit flavor, so it goes well with anything. I think I'll fill it with Nøtte (which I remember as a combination of caramel and hazelnut butter, but apparently there isn't any caramel in it, it's just sweetened hazelnut butter made with roasted hazelnuts. But mine would be caramel (or kinuski, to be honest) and hazelnut butter. About 50% of both.)

Technical challenge; brandy snaps

I think it's hilarious that they have ginger snaps as technical challenge, because oat snaps were about the first things Finnish and Swedish kids bake, because it's so dang easy! And even though they are often let to dry flat, they are as often let to dry curved or "cigarred". Yeah, you have to move fast. 

Showstopper: macarons

maple bacon

orange cream

poppy macarons (red with poppy seed filling)

mahogany (caramel au beurre salé, noix de coco et compote de mangue)
So... perhaps replace 1/3 of the almonds with coconut, pulse it a bit finer than shredded coconut, but not to coconut flour
Fill with salted caramel butter cream and some mango jam.

chocolate banana

Pierre Hermé's Mahogany

I am sorry but at the age of internet, you cannot excuse your failure with "I really have no idea what they are supposed to be like, what the mixture is supposed to be like, what the finished product is supposed to be like".

Tasty.co has a very informative video about macarons. They go through basically EVERYTHING. And you can see very clearly what the mixture is supposed to be like, what the finished product is supposed to be like. 

Sally's baking addiction has also a very good tutorial on how to make macarons

And here's a video with absolutely perfect macarons:

And then check out some macaron eating ASMR video to get a sense of what they are supposed to be, if you are still uncertain about it. 

The Great bake off 2: Bread

Signature Free Form Loaf

Rainbow challah. 

Technical challenge: Focaccia

Showstopper:  bread basket filled with 12 sweet and 12 savoury rolls

Bread basket from pretzels

Sweet buns: Finnish korvapuusti (cuff on the ear) and savoury rose buns (bacon in stead of apple)

The Great bake off 2: Tarts

Signature quiche

I'm sorry but I love quiche Lorraine. :-( I know it's really boring. 

So maybe try this okara and cabbage quiche

Now, they say it must be original recipe... oops. :-D

Technical; Tarte au Citron

Showstopper: 24 Miniature Sweet Tarts

Pistachio rosejam bakewell tarts and maids of honor

Shortcrust pastry:

175g (6oz) flour

100g (4oz) butter

40g (1½oz) sugar

1 large egg yolk

Pistachio filling:

125g Butter

125g Pistachios

3-4 tbls Flour

2 Eggs

125g Sugar

rose petal jam

1 part (volume) red rose petals

2 parts (volume) sugar

some freshly squeezed lemon juice

some rose water

To make the rose petal jam:

Clean the rose petals by cutting off the white part, and then cut the petals into small pieces, or shreds.

Place them in a bowl and cover with cold water. Let rest in the fridge for an hour.

Drain the petals and pat dry with a kitchen towel.

In a small saucepan, combine equal amount of sugar and water. Add some lemon juice and cook until the sugar has dissolved. 

Add rose petals, stir, and let simmer for 15 minutes.

Remove from the heat and add some rose water. Not more than a tablespoon, it's very potent stuff. 

To make the pastry:

mix the flour, butter and sugar along with a pinch of salt in a food processor until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk and a little cold water, and pulse until it comes together to form a dough. Bring it together with your hands and roll flat with a rolling pin into a disc shape. Chill in the fridge for 1 hour.

Heat the oven to 180C/350F. 

Roll out the pastry to the thickness of a £1 coin, and cut into discs to fit the bun tin moulds. Carefully shape to fit neatly, then prick the bottoms lightly with a fork. Line each with a small piece of foil and fill with baking beans. Blind bake for 20 minutes.

To make the filling:

Grind the pistachio nuts in a blender until ground but not completely fine. Place both the butter and sugar into a large bowl and cream with an electric hand whisk until light and pale. Add the eggs one at a time and mix well. Fold in the flour and the pistachios.

To compose the tarts:

Remove the pastry cases from the oven, take out the beans and set aside to cool. Add a small amount of the jam to the pastry cases and top with the pistachio filling - don't overfill. Sprinkle over pistachios and bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until lightly golden.

When I have watched this episode earlier, I thought they should have kicked Rob out and kept Simon, but Simon overbaked his lemon tart, so there is absolutely no excuse for him burning his tarts the last day. He should have been extra vigilant about that.

The Great bake off 2: Cakes

Signature cupcakes

Tried and tested recipes? I don't bake cupcakes. So, let's do tres leches cupcakes.

So - 1 or 2 kinds of cupcakes, everyone with different flavor cake and frosting. Interesting.

Different flavor cake - chocolate with mint frosting, and creme brûlée cupcakes :-)

Now, I don't like that much frosting. One swirl is quite enough. 

But they are pretty with the mint sprig.

Technical; Coffee and Walnut Battenberg

Showstopper; Tiered Chocolate Celebration Cake

Chocolate work, again...
Now, which chocolate cake? I do love devil's food cake. And as the only celebration I'd make a chocolate cake for is my own birthday, that's what I'll do. I love salmiakki. In Finland we have this amazing chocolate bar, made with milk chocolate and filled with salmiakki filling, and it's one of the best things ever. 

So I'm cordially going to ignore the fact that British taste isn't that into salmiakki, and would probably find the combination abominable. It's my cake. :-D
And for a fair warning, I'm going to decorate it as some sort of Goth wedding cake from hell, with sugar flames and dripping blood. 

Great Bake-off, tea party

 24 professional cupcakes

 - actually, it's not cupcakes. It's "small, exquisite cakes" for formal afternoon tea, of bakery quality. Not entremets, but cakelets.

I don't like the American style cupcakes. I like the small European cakes, like Mazarins, Runeberg's tarts, congress tarts... but I suppose Mazarins and congresses are, well, tarts, and not cakes. Runeberg is a miniature cake, though. But I suppose it's too simple for Paul's taste. He expected something one would see on the shelves of a French or Japanese patisserie.
I like the idea of single portion upside down cakes. 

Final showstopper: 24 miniature tarts, 24 scones, 24 choux buns, and 24 finger sandwiches on self baked bread

I like things simple. My favorite tea sandwich is the cucumber sandwich (cucumber and butter, not cream cheese), my favorite scone is plain. I love tarts. And I think I would make choux swans, because of how they reacted on David's swans. What about black swans of chocolate choux pastry? I personally don't like chocolate choux pastry, I like the canvas of plain choux, but it might be interesting enough for the finale.

I think Mari Bermain's Florentine tarts looks nice, though maybe one might want to make something fruity, as the rest of the options are pretty bready. (I like bready, but this is about impressing the judges... and I think the Brits are proud of their summer berries. And I am really good at making Crème Pâtissière ;-)) (Also, Mary Berry was missing fruits. They do give color to the tea tower.)

I wonder if I would have been eliminated for making calla lily sandwiches in stead of finger sandwiches? :-D

I made these, and it was hard to get the to stuck shut. If I'd do them again, I'd use clothespins to keep the lily together at the stem. I would also give the cream cheese more flavor. They are really pretty. I suppose one could remove the darker green skin and seeds from cucumbers, salt and dry it, and chop finely, and mix with cream cheese to make these cucumber sandwiches... sort of like tzatziki, perhaps? 

Maybe make shokupan  as the sandwich bread? And pumpernickel as the brown bread? Keep it simple and serve roast beef on brown bread. Or maybe egg salad with radishes and cress. Gives more color to the tea tower. 

Also, serve clotted cream and maybe some unusual jam flavor for the scones? I like the black currant flavor. Not too sweet, but not too bitter either, like red currants can be, and not so bland like strawberries can be. And they do have a lot of flavor, almost spicy flavor.

Great Bake-off, pastry

 A savory pie with pastry bottom and top

I'd make the Finnish cabbage pie. It's really delicious and has this wonderful pie crust with sourcream. It's a slightly flaky dough, and a bit sour, because of the soured dairy, but goes very well with the cabbage filling.

You'll need
150 g of butter
5 dl flour
2 tsp baking powder
200 g sourcream, natural yoghurt, creme fraiche or something else like that, unflavored soured dairy.

Mix flour and baking powder. Mix the butter in so that you get this rough sandy texture. It's good if you have bigger bits of butter. Mix into a dough with sourcream. Add half first and then more as needed. You might not need all 200 grams. The dough doesn't need to be smooth and well mixed, it's good not to mix it much.

Form the dough into a rectangle, and put in the fridge to set, well covered.

Filling:

1 kg of cabbage
2 onions
2 tbls butter
2 cloves of garlic
200 g cream cheese (actually it should be processed cheese spread)
2 eggs
1/2 dl molasses
1/2 tbls marjoram
1/2 tbls tarragon
1/2 tsp black pepper
1-2 tsp salt

Shred the cabbage and chop the onions. Fry it in butter, first let the onion soften a little, then add the cabbage and fry until the cabbage softens. Add the cheese. You can also add grated carrots, or conserved mushrooms (In Finland, especially Eastern Finland, we pickle wild mushrooms, and this is used in cooking. You rinse them first, let the water run off, and then chop them. I don't like mushrooms, so there won't be any mushrooms in my cabbage.)

Let the fry cool down, then add the eggs, and flavoring. Taste the filling and adjust the seasoning. Pie filling should taste MORE than what you want it to taste, because it will be closed in a rather bland pastry shell that cuts the flavor a little.

In Finland you build the pie on a baking sheet. You roll the dough into two pieces of about the same size and shape. Lift one of them (slightly bigger) on the sheet, top the filling on, like a pizza, leaving a little edge (about 2 cm or half an inch) empty. Egg wash the edges, lift the other dough sheet on it and crimp the edges. You can use extra dough to decorate the pie. 
You can use a pie dish if you want to.

Do the egg wash and dock with a fork. Bake in 200°C/400°F  for about half an hour. 

Technical challenge: Cornish pasties

Paul Hollywood's recipe

pastry platters; 3 savory canapés, 3 sweet tarts

Pâte Sucrée
About sweet shortbread pastry
Pâte Sucrée

I would love to use Finnish ingredients. Cloudberries, maybe rowan berries, lingonberries... 

Maybe one could make sort of cheesecake tart with cloudberry glaze, or something like that. 

Kinuski with lingonberries. Have a layer of the tart lingonberries on the bottom of the shortbread tart cases, and then put a layer of caramel over it... or maybe fill the case with red berries, lingonberries, red currants, raspberries, wild strawberries, and pour over warm caramel... decorate with a cream rosette.

And sea buckthorn. Maybe make a sea buckthorn white chocolate tart.

Maybe I could use the rowan berries in the savory canapés. :-)

I think I'd like to make palmiers. 
Maybe something with reindeer. Mini choux buns with reindeer filling?
And then something with Finnish fish... or chanterelles.
Or I could fill shortcrust pastry shells with leipäjuusto, let it melt, and top with some cloudberry jam. Though would it be too sweet? 

Great Bake-off, puddings

 Signature pudding

Now... I'm not British, so this whole thing with baked and steamed puddings is all foreign to me, so I can't properly estimate what kind of pudding would work for me...

I have to say that this bread pudding looks fascinating. I bet it's delicious with some custard.
I think I could make it mine by making it a hummingbird cake pudding.
Or maybe Danish æblekage.
Or maybe Runeberg's tarts. Yes! Make the bread in bread pudding all kinds of cookies, cakes, and bread crumbs. I could crumb them and mix them with the custard, and then add the raspberry jam and icing in stripes over the top. I like the sound of that!

Technical challenge: Mary Berry's lemon soufflé

I'm really good at soufflés. 

Show stopper: Three puddings: Crumble, bread pudding and suet pudding

My bread pudding would be pecan and maple syrup. A little American twist to it ;-)

pineapple coconut crumble with coconut custard

Then I would have a coup... Memma pudding. One can substitute butter with suet in a recipe. 

So

300 grams / 11 ounces of memma
100 grams / 4 oz of suet
1 dl / 3 oz sugar
3 eggs
3 dl / 1 1/3 cups of flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
100 g / 4 oz dark chocolate chopped

Mix all the ingredients. Pour into a greased pudding bowl. Cover with pleated greaseproof paper and foil and secure with string. Steam for 1 1/2-2 hours.

Memma or mämmi is a Finnish traditional malted rye pudding that is eaten during the Easter. So it would be sort of malted chocolate pudding :-D

Serve with chocolate sauce.

The Great Bake-off, bread

So... signature bread? 

Rye. But one doesn't do that in 3 hours :-D

I found a recipe of small rye bread cakes. This is the type of bread we eat daily. Now, I wonder if I would get minus points because this is not a loaf, and because it's very special. I suppose Paul Hollywood can appreciate dark rye bread.

5 dl/ 2 cups water
11 g / 1/3 oz  / 3 tsp active dry yeast
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp molasses
1 1/2 dl / 5/8 cups all purpose flour
7 1/2 dl / 3 cups rye flour

Mix all ingredients in warm water. Use a spoon, it's more a batter than dough. Let rise about half an hour.

Sprinkle a lot of rye flour on the baking board and pour the dough on the flour. Pat it into an even slab about 1 cm thick. Cut out discs with a cutter. (You can use a mug or glass or small bowl, too). Lift the bread discs on an oven sheet covered with baking paper. Pat the excess dough into a slab and repeat until you have formed bread discs of the whole dought.

Let rise covered, about a half an hour. They won't rise much.

Let the oven get warm during that time, 225°C/450°F

Dock the breads with a fork before you put them in the oven. Let bake for about 20 minutes.

Now, if this doesn't do, I'll offer my oat bread :-D

3 dl / 1 1/4 cup rolled oats
3 dl / 1 1/4 cup boiling water
2 tbls butter
2 tsp salt
3 dl / 1 1/4 cup cold water
50 g / 2 oz fresh yeast
about 650 grams / 23 ounces of all purpose flour

Measure the oats, butter, and salt in a bowl, and pour over the boiling water. When the butter has melted, pour in the cold water. When the "porridge" has cooled enough to not burn your hand, mix in the yeast, and enough flour to get a soft bread dough. It's better it's a bit sticky than hard. It should be solved by kneading the dough enough. Bake like you would any bread dough. This dough is enough for two loafs, but I usually make just one big one, or bread rolls. It can also be baked in a loaf pan.

Bake in 225°C/450°F for about half an hour.

How to know your dough has properly proved?
How to rescue overproved dough?
How to tell when bread is done?

Technical challenge: Paul Hollywood's Cob

The showstopper: 12 sweet and 12 savory rolls

as my savories:

Soft Pretzels

Baked Char Siu Bao

as my sweets:

Finnish Dallas buns

 (that "vanilla cream flour" is supposed to be custard powder. These are a bit like if someone used cheese Danish filling in cinnamon buns.)

Swedish Rimbo buns

The Great Bake-off, biscuits

 So, next episode was about biscuits... and the first challenge was 

the signature bake. 

Bake a biscuit/cookie that tells something about you, that means something to you, that describes you...

I think icebox kitty cookies like this:

They would be shortbread, flavored with liquorice and raspberry, and have allsorts eyes, not bakes in it, but cut from allsorts and "glued" in place. The problem with these is that they need to be worked on quite a lot, and I'm afraid they might get too tough... So maybe draw the pink parts on the cookies as well.

Paul Hollywood's scones

Showstopper challenge; petit fours; meringues, choux, and macarons.

Now... meringues are pretty hard to make into something amazing. Maybe some roses. After all, piping is also a merit and if one is good at it, one manages to impress quite a lot pretty easily. 
Like these peonies. Peonies are one of my favorite flowers, and one could leave the center empty and fill it with a piece of mandarin orange. I wonder if it would be too wet and destroy the meringue? I have to experiment. Maybe some dried mango or apricot might work...

Macarons are also easy, when one is good at it, and it's also something that's impressive. Maybe make tiny cubes of something to hide in the middle of the buttercream... like red currant gelé in caramel buttercream... maybe color the macarons in an interesting way...

Salted caramel macarons

pate de fruit framboise anis - except make it red currant. It's supposed to be sour and fresh :-D

And choux pastry. Mini eclairs? No - homage to Finnish fat tuesday buns, and choux a la creme :-D Except with a dollop of strawberry jam under the creme patisserie. Or maybe a dollop of marzipan, as that is the Swedish way, which I kind of prefer :-D I like the look of these choux buns, a bit baroque, like me. ;-)

The Great Bake-Off

 It's time, again, soon... I can't wait, so I do what I always do, have a Great Bake-off marathon, and dream about baking along :-D

First day's challenge is "signature cake". 

"Maybe something you have been given, handed down by your grandparents or your mom, or something you just found in a restaurant and liked the look of. It's something that means something special to you, something that says something about you."

This is difficult... I don't think I have anything like this. Or... I have the Saver's Cake, an old Finnish recipe I used to bake for my dad since I was about 10 or so. I have the Sand cake, another old Finnish recipe my aunt used to bake. It's wonderful, because it really has amazing sand like texture without being dry or gritty. It's baked with potato starch. 

This is an old Finnish recipe, perhaps from war times. The recipe was published in a cookbook written for "homes and school" and published 1908. It has been updated through the times, I have my grandmother's, mother's, and sister's book, and the recipes differ somewhat. :-D They published a centennial celebration version that's 74th printing :-D

It uses coffee cups as measurements, and with a coffee cup they mean the old fashioned small, dainty ones, that fit only 1 1/2 dl or 15 tablespoons.

Anyway, the recipe goes like this:

1 cup of eggs (though 2 is enough, if you don't have enough to fill the cup.)
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of milk, cream, buttermilk, or just water if you don't have milk. Though don't use a whole cup of water, only a half a cup.
1 cup of fat (butter, margarin, oil, what have you)
3 cups of flour (can do with 2 1/2)
1-2 teaspoons of baking powder (if you use buttermilk, use baking soda in stead)
Some vanilla to flavor it. You can use anything you like, like pumpkin spice ;-). The original recipe calls for cardamon.

Whisk eggs and sugar.
Add milk and melted butter.
Add dry ingredients. Mix.
Bake in 175°C/350°F for 1/2-1 hour, until done. 

This is a very forgiving cake, you can basically replace all of the ingredients with what ever you have. If you don't have butter, use margarin, oil, apple sauce, mashed banana, mashed avocado... If you don't have milk, use water, orange juice, what ever liquid you have. Now, if you use water, use only half a cup. 

It's very, very basic, though, not at all deserving at a Bake-off. They are judging a) technical skills, b) creativity and innovation, c) artistic merits, looks, and d) taste.

Maybe I could flavor it with liquorice. Especially salted liquorice ;-) I love that stuff! There's a marbled cake (which is called the tiger cake in Finland) where the light part is flavored with lime and the dark with salted liquorice, and it's called the puma (or cougar) cake. That might be a thing.

And maybe make it a "hidden image" bundt cake?

Technical challenge: Mary Berry's Victoria Sponge

My chocolate cake is "Tiger In White Tie". It's a Finnish tiger cake base with white chocolate mousse and dark chocolate mousse filling and chocolate ganache frosting. 

Finnish tiger cake (marbled cake)

200 g / 7 ounces / 14 tbls of butter
2 dl / 3/4 cups of sugar
3 eggs
3 dl / 1 1/4 cups of flour
1 dl / 6 tbls of almond flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla sugar (vanilla powder) or corresponding amount of vanilla flavoring of your choice. I assume it's less of vanilla extract, but you should be able to figure it out.
1 dl / 6 tbls milk or half and half
2 tbls cocoa powder (unsweetened baking cocoa, not drinking cocoa)
100 g / 7 oz chocolate (good quality eating chocolate, not baking chocolate or chocolate chips) chopped

Butter the pan. Normally the tiger cake is baked in a big bundt cake pan, but for this it's baked in a flat cake tin. All in one go, not in two different tins. 

Preheat the oven to 175°C/350°F

Make sure all the ingredients are at room temperature. 

Cream the butter with the sugar.

Add three eggs one at a time, whipping well between eggs.

Combine 4 dl flour (all purpose), 2 teaspoons baking powder, and vanilla sugar. (If you use vanilla extract, add it to the egg foam).

Shift the dry ingredients to the egg foam and mix. Add the milk/cream if the batter feels dry.  The batter is quite thick, you can't pour it like normal cake batter, it's more like cupcake batter, maybe even thicker.

Don't whisk, but make sure all the ingredients are well combined.

Separate about 1/3 of the batter in a different bowl and mix in the cocoa powder, chopped chocolate, and a little milk. (You can replace the milk with some very strong coffee, that will accentuate the flavor of chocolate). Add a pinch of salt, also.
(And perhaps add a dash of almond liqueur to the white part, maybe a little bitter almond extract, and chopped almonds. As you please.)

If you want to make it even more festive, you can add white chocolate to the white cake layer, or almond, or some other white, delicious things, like candied pear, etc. 

Spoon half of the white batter in the tin, then all the brown batter, top with rest of the white batter, and with a knife or something else thin and strong, swirl a little through the batters so you get a marbled effect. You can also just draw lines, to make more tiger stripe kind of pattern. 

Bake about 30-50 minutes, until the cake is done. (How to test a cake to see if it's done). I also smell the baking. When the cake starts smelling like cake in stead of nothing or just batter, it's about ready :-D Obviously. ;-). You can also hear the cake bake, as baking is in a way drying the batter out :-D Wet batter will bubble and sizzle differently than cooked batter, and if the bake is totally quiet, you might have overbaked your cake. Start paying attention to these things. 

Let the cake cool and cut it into three layers. Of course you can make it easier for yourself and bake three thin cakes (and in the bake-off challenge that's what I should have done, because three layers cook in a shorter time - maybe even bake it in a swiss roll tin). but I am used to baking my layer cakes in one tin and cutting them into layers. I have an extra long serrated edge bread knife I use to cut my cake layers and I use small building blocks to guide my knife, but the toothpick/floss method is also recommendable. It doesn't need to be unflavored, the floss just travels through the cake and doesn't leave flavor. You can also use fishing line or piano wire. ;-) What ever you have. Sewing thread is too fragile.

... and the White Tie

Make white chocolate mousse and dark chocolate mousse using your favorite recipe. (Mine uses gelatin to keep it sturdy enough to se as filling for the cake, you don't need to.)

Fill the cake by putting dark chocolate mousse on the bottom layer and white on the top layer. The filling should be quite generous, at least as thick as the cake layer. 

Make chocolate frosting of your favorite kind 
- Sacher cake frosting
- chocolate ganache
- Swedish "love yums" frosting
- chocolate mirror glace
- chocolate buttercream

I normally use the chocolate fudge icing , but I suppose for this the mirror glace would be in order.
And maybe a marzipan tiger :-D Marzipan is pretty easy to make. Maybe modeling chocolate? Maybe chocolate leaves behind the tiger, give it a jungle? I mean... we have reached season 12, and the expectations are quite a lot higher than they were during season 1 :-D Now one should be able to do at least some chocolate art :-D

It is quite heavy, but moist and delicious.