It should go without saying that I am a huge fan of the Great British Bake Off. I can’t say that I have followed every series since its inauguration in 2010, but I have fond memories of watching in big groups at university, Mel and Sue cracking ridiculous jokes, the drama of the move from BBC to Channel 4. We gasp at the elusive handshakes, tut at the soggy bottoms and under-proved breads, cheer at the incredible showstoppers. Last year a group of my friends and I baked a good number of the technical challenges, and these afternoons were always accompanied by good food and hysteria. There was something about baking together that made us descend into giggling messes.
This year, I have recommitted to this challenge. I want to bake every single technical on the show this season. It won’t be in the week of the episode (I’m already two weeks behind!), the full recipe is allowed, and I won’t be sticking to a time limit. But I am excited to explore baking some new recipes that I wouldn’t have chosen otherwise. I might even find a new favourite!
Challenge 1 was angel cake slices. Most people will have only eaten these as a shop bought Mr. Kipling pack. They wouldn’t be my first choice of cake snack, but they do look pretty. Three pastel coloured Genoise sponges, each a different flavour, stacked with Italian buttercream between and topped with a daintily feathered royal icing. From how the contestants did in the show, this looked like a difficult task. Many of the cakes were flat and small, the icing too runny, and the feathering too crude. Having watched the show, I hoped that I could improve on their mistakes. Thankfully I wasn’t approaching this challenge on my own; I was joined by Lucy and Emma.
The first task was creating three equal parts in a baking tray to bake the sponges. We didn’t have a perfectly sized baking tray, but made do with what we had. Our sponges would be a bit squatter and longer than the ones on the show. Lucy’s kitchen is well equipped so we had a great stand mixer to whisk the eggs. One of the mistakes the bakers in the show made was skimping on this step because they were under time pressure. The air whipped into the eggs is the only raising agent in this cake so not enough air leads to not enough rise which leads to sad cakes. Nobody likes sad cakes!
Folding in the flour, colouring, and flavouring while preserving the air whipped in was difficult, and it really helped that there were three of us to do this step. It meant that the time from mixer to oven was very quick, and reduced the amount of air lost as each separate bowl of mixture was waiting to be put in the tray. The bake was really good! We had a great rise on each cake, though the raspberry cake was wonky because of the baking parchment, and the lemon cake was slightly weighed down by the zest. While they were cooling, we make the italian buttercream.
Italian buttercream is very similar to Swiss buttercream, but the method of adding the sugar to the eggs is slightly different. I have always made Swiss buttercream in the past because I think it’s easier, but Italian is easy enough. You stream a sugar syrup into whipping egg whites until it is glossy and stiff. After that, you beat in the butter once the egg whites are at room temperature. Either method results in a far lighter and creamier buttercream than simply butter and sugar, and if you haven’t tried it before I would highly recommend.
We did a bit of fiddling and trimming of the cakes to make them nice and even and I am so pleased with the stack that we ended up with! It had an even rise, and a good amount of buttercream between each layer. The final step was to make the royal icing, and carefully ice just the top of the stack before slicing it into the perfect 6 slices Prue and Paul were looking for. We nearly had a disaster when the royal icing threatened to drip down the sides of our perfect stack, but Lucy did a great job with a small spoon keeping it in check. Emma and Lucy nominated me to do the thin lines of pink royal icing ready to feather which was a delicate operation, but it turned out really well.
Once iced and dried a little bit, the last thing to do was slice. Because we had slightly different dimensions of cake, and because ours rose so well, they actually began to topple over as soon as we had sliced them! The only sensible course of action was to eat them immediately.
They were, of course, pretty good. The flavour of each layer came through, and the colours were pretty good. Ultimately they were a tasty and attractive cake, but one that involved too much faff for me to attempt again. I’ll definitely make more Genoise sponges, but not to carefully stack and slice like this!
What do you think? How did we do? Next up we have fig rolls, and who knows whether they will be easier or harder than this one!
allthegoodstuff.food.blog 
so beautiful!
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thank you!
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