Bake Off Technical No. 3: Floury Baps

As you may already know, I like bread, and I like baking bread. So this was a challenge that I was pretty confident I would nail. I am also vegetarian, so have made many veggie burgers in my time. This technical was to create 8 floury baps, alongside making some yummy veggie burgers. I’ll admit, I didn’t follow quite so closely to the recipe this time as I knew what I am doing with regards to each component. This began at step one, where I substituted the vegetable shortening for 50:50 of butter and oil. What even is vegetable shortening? I don’t think it affected the outcome, its purpose is just to add fat to the dough to enrich it.

‘Baps’ is such a funny word, isn’t it. This is what Paul’s looked like. In my opinion, I don’t like the look of that burger and cheese – it looks rather dry!

Below is a short visual montage of all the steps for the dough. Yeast, flour, butter, oil, salt and sugar went into this one. Look at how its texture changed from shaggy before it was kneaded to smooth after it was proved (pictures 2 and 3). I was making these baps for dinner for my housemates, and I hadn’t left myself quite enough time for the second prove so rather than the 45 minutes they were meant to have, I gave them 20 (strike two for deviating from instructions, we were hungry ok!). Nevertheless, the dough looked lively and I could see the yeast being active.

While the dough was proving both the first and second times, I set about making the veggie burger. This is where I went completely off piste. In my opinion, this technical is about the bread – it’s a Bake Off, not a Cook Off, after all! Therefore, when I saw that I had absolutely no beetroot in the fridge, I decided to make up the recipe for the burgers myself.

These burgers had onions, chickpeas, lentils, flour, one egg and plenty of spices mixed into them. In my opinion it’s pretty difficult to go wrong with a veggie burger as long as you have good flavours and enough flour and egg to bind it together. I cooked the lentils until they were just falling apart, then I mixed together all the vegetables I wanted starting with the onions. Then I added flour and egg, and continued adding flour until I felt that the mixture would hold together when fried. Veggie burgers aren’t particularly structurally sound, but I wouldn’t worry too much about that as they are going straight in your mouth, I promise!

Just about managed to get a picture before we tucked in!

As soon as I couldn’t wait any longer for the baps to finish proving, I dusted them with flour and put them in the oven to bake. A nice thing about baking baps is that they take far less time than a loaf of bread as each of them is smaller. For the dinner, I also made some potato wedges, and while everything was baking and frying I assembled all the burger topping. The recipe for the burger sauce was really tasty, and not something I have made before. As well, it was nice to make the effort to collect the cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, gherkins, halloumi etc all for the burgers as it is the combination of all the elements that makes them truly delicious.

Finally, when we were all terribly hungry, the rolls were really and we ripped into them straight away. I was really pleased with them, they were a good shape and a perfect size for my burgers, and the butter in the dough led to a lovely smooth and flavourful roll. They didn’t last long for sure!

Now, given that I know how to make bread already, and have some go-to recipes for bread, I probably won’t revisit this one, but it was a pleasure to make as always! The picture of the finished product is below; compare it to Paul’s at the top and let me know how I did! Next week’s technical is the Maids of Honour and I’m looking forward to it. Find the recipe I used for this technical here.

Bake Off Technical No. 2: Fig Rolls

Round two here we go! After our success in the first technical of the season, in ready to smash next one. In contrast to the previous article, I am writing this one as I bake so I can better record how it goes. I was putting off the second technical as it really doesn’t excite me. I associate fig rolls with them being the boring snack around Christmas that nobody wants to eat. Not something I would ever choose to bake myself, which is exactly the point of doing these challenges! Fig rolls have a soft biscuity/cakey outer with a nicely spiced fig filling. I am interested in the biscuit cake outer and what texture this will turn out as. Having watched the show, I know the shape and size I am aiming for, and to taste taste taste that filling to make sure the spices are just right.

Will my fig rolls look like these? Keep reading to find out!

One thing I like about the show’s technical recipes is that they make enough, but not too much. This recipe gives you 12 fig rolls, which will be enough to taste and see whether they’re worth making again. This recipe is pretty simple, and first off is the biscuit dough. Not sure what there is to say about this! It has baking powder is which is what makes it fluffy and cakey. I mixed this up and wrapped it into a happy cling film square which then needs to chill. Next up, I need to make the figgy filling.

The above photos are evidence that I actually sifted the flour! I usually skip this step, but in the spirit of actually following all the instructions I decided to push the boat out. The figgy filling had a good amount of stem ginger and ground cinnamon in it to complement the flavour of the dried figs. I’m not gonna lie, one all blitzed into a paste it looked a lot like a pile of poop.

Now the dough has finished chilling, and the fig filling has cooled, it’s time for assembly. I told you this is a quick one! I wonder if I added a little too much water to the filling, it was quite sticky to handle (much like poop?). I needed to roll two long sausages of fig filling to go in the middle of two long rectangles of dough. My rolling pin conveniently has centimetre markings on it so I could actually make them the right size!

There was plenty of filling and I had some dough scraps, so as well as the allotted twelve fig rolls, I managed to make a few extra small ones. They looked rather good and uniform sitting together on the tray. To make sure they weren’t too round (a criticism in the show) I pressed down firmly with the fork to flatten them a bit.

Aaaand we’re done. This was really really simple, and they look pretty great! They taste good too, for fig rolls. I have come to the conclusion they aren’t the sweet treat for me though – a little to dry for me, and the lack of chocolate is a bit sad. Maybe they could be improved by dipping them in chocolate? An experiment for another time…

Next up…floury baps, again courtesy of Paul Hollywood.

How did I do? Let me know!

Angel Cake Slices: Great British Bake Off Technical No. 1!

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!

The goal: 6 perfect slices of stacked Genoise sponge, sandwiched with Italian buttercream, topped with feathered royal icing

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.

Delicate origami required for this bake!

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!

Prue Leith’s Angel Cake Slices

A bit wonky, but a good rise because we took the time to whisk the eggs well

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.

A beautiful stacked and sandwiched angel slice before icing. From the top down: Lemon, raspberry, vanilla.

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!