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?