GBBO – The Final

So it’s all over for another year. Hubby knew who had won when we watched it on Thursday evening and told me that apparently it was a very ’emotional’ episode. And there were a lot of tears from the bakers and even Mary Berry!

We felt it was a disappointing final. I think the right person won, but the challenges weren’t that challenging really. I’m sure that in previous series’ the bakers have had to make several items for their final showstopper rather than just normal cake made pretty. But hey, it’s still good TV.

Dairy free chocolate tart

Onto the chocolate tart that I wanted to make and, for a change, have actually made. We had friends coming over on Saturday night and one is lactose intolerant so I thought I’d look for a dairy free chocolate tart, and BBC Good Food did not let me down! Unfortunately I’m still getting used to the oven in our new house so the pastry was a bit overdone and the filling was probably a bit overdone too, but it tasted nice with some cream and none of the guests were Bake Off judges.

I’ve also had a go at making a sugar free banana bread using up some coconut milk, based very loosely on a Mary Berry banana bread that I normally make. When I say very loosely, I used it to find out how much flour and how many eggs would normally go into banana bread. It doesn’t have any honey or maple syrup, so is really sugar free. All the sweetness comes from the bananas, so make sure they’re over ripe.

It turned out ok. It’s not very sweet and I omitted butter for some reason. I chucked in some desiccated coconut as I had it leftover from making coconut macaroons for after dinner on Saturday. The nuts give a nice crunch. I think chopped up dark chocolate would make it pretty scrummy. Here’s the recipe in case you’re feeling brave:

Sugar free banana bread

Banana Bread with Coconut Milk

175g wholemeal plain flour
50g oats
2 tsp baking powder
150ml coconut milk
2 eggs
2 bananas, mashed
50g chopped almonds
handful desiccated coconut (optional)
chopped dark chocolate (optional)

Preheat oven to 175C. Line a loaf tin.

Mix dry ingredients together. Add eggs and coconut milk. Mix well, then stir in the bananas. Add almonds, coconut and dark chocolate, if using.

Pour into loaf tin and bake for about 1 hour.

GBBO – Episode 9, Ramsgate and Chetna!

We went away for a few days at the end of last week so I only watched episode 9 of GBBO on Sunday night, but I already knew the outcome as I attended a food demonstration by Chetna from last year’s GBBO at Broadstairs Food Festival and of course GBBO was discussed.

A quick overview of episode 9 before Chetna…

Mmm chocolate. I love chocolate. I find it hard to resist anything with chocolate in it or on it. Mmm. Chocolate tart. Mmm. I really want to make chocolate tart. Well done to Flora for winning the technical but I already knew she left so I knew her showstopper wasn’t going to be as good as the other bakers’. I was really impressed with her though because all the way through she has handled criticism pretty well and didn’t cry. On camera, at least. I think the final tomorrow will be a close run between Tamal and Nadya.

Ok, onto our holiday and seeing Chetna. Before we moved we agreed we would try to get away for a few nights before the baby arrives so that we could have some quality family time and be away from house stuff. Originally we were planning to stay in Broadstairs as we had a lovely holiday there two years ago, they have gelato shops and it’s by the beach. However, it was Broadstairs Food Festival so it was hard to find somewhere to stay that was available and within budget. Instead, hubby found a lovely flat for us in Ramsgate which overlooked the beach and we could watch the boats in the harbour from the window. It was amazing!

We had wonderful weather and quite a packed few days. We arrived on Thursday afternoon (after another tasting at Unico… more to follow), went to Dover Castle on Friday, spent the day in Broadstairs on Saturday at the Food Festival and on the beach, and after church on Sunday stopped off at the Hornby Visitor Centre. There were also trips to the harbour in Ramsgate to watch the boats and eat fish and chips.

Chetna

Hubby had said I could go to the Broadstairs Food Festival to see Chetna as she was doing a demonstration at 10.30am. It was £5 so hardly breaking the bank, plus it was an hour of being on my own doing something I enjoy. Lovely!

I wasn’t as excited as I thought I would have been, perhaps because I woke up in one of those slightly sad and grumpy pregnancy moods. It was a small group, maybe 80 people and it was fun listening to her talk about GBBO, the application process, what she’s been up to and of course watching her make mango cupcakes.

Unfortunately I hadn’t clicked that there would be some discussion about the current GBBO series and so episode 9 was spoiled for me. Having said that, I thought Flora would probably be leaving in the semi-finals so it wasn’t too much of a surprise.

The rest of the Food Festival was made up mostly of local produce stalls. At 10.10am when I arrived it was fairly quiet and the ideal time to take a look around. Later on in the afternoon when we returned as a family it was packed and not much fun to look around. Most people seemed to be drinking local cider! Hubby bought two bottles of local apple juice but we didn’t buy anything else. We actually went to the bakery in Broadstairs to buy some cake!

 

GBBO – Episode 8

I watched episode 8 with my mum last week but have been so busy with a small boy’s birthday that I am only just writing up my thoughts now.

My mum is supporting Tamal, and I think I am too. It’s interesting that none of the bakers have been consistently brilliant, and of the remaining bakers only Flora hasn’t won a technical or achieved star baker. I wonder what that means for who will win?

Cream horns. Not something I plan to bake soon (I’m seeing a theme…). I loved that Mary said she wanted them filled all the way to the bottom, just like she wanted the vol-au-vents well filled. But it did seem a bit like the first round was more about flavours than baking.

I’m also sure that in previous series of GBBO, bakers haven’t been so sure about puff pastry and yet this year they can all produce it with their eyes closed! GBBO has clearly taught the nation more about baking.

Ok, seriously, making an eclair tower?! At least there was some room for error as they were given a two-hour lunch break in which they would see whether or not their creations would stay standing. I appreciate that they were a little mean in doing this but as they said, the real ones are expected to stay standing for a few hours.

And moving onto my baking experiences in the last week. I made a simple traybake which baked in a disposable tray and attempted to decorate it by icing digger for our son’s third birthday last week. Decoration is definitely not my strong point. Admittedly I could have tried harder by printing off a picture to use as a template!

Digger cake – from a safe distance

He saw the cake in the morning, blew out the candles and then I cut it in half and sent half to pre-school for him to share with his friends. This was such a simple way of providing cake for pre-school! I couldn’t be bothered with icing lots of little cupcakes and this way we had some cake for home, too.

We had a family gathering on Saturday to celebrate his birthday again and for this I made his ‘proper’ birthday cake, a Thomas cake, which was surprisingly easy if a little time consuming although that might be due to my present state.

Thomas cake

I’d seen a few photos online of this idea and made up how I would do it. I made two 4-egg Victoria sponge cakes. One became the base and was sliced horizontally and filled with jam to sandwich it back together. The other was sliced vertically, one half put to one side, and the other half sliced horizontally and filled with jam to be sandwiched together. I also spread jam on half of the cake so that I could stick the top part on. Then it was a case of smothering the cake in buttercream icing as I find it far easier to put it on a cake than fondant icing.

I was pretty chuffed with the outcome given I’m not very good at decorating cakes. I carefully cut a chocolate digestive biscuit to make the tunnel and used tiny pieces of fudge I found reduced in Sainsbury’s as rocks or boulders. Thomas and Harold were on lollipop sticks so that they didn’t get too much icing on them and my mum suggested putting cocktail sticks around them so that they didn’t fall off when we moved it! Simple but effective.

 

GBBO Episode 7

Episode 7 already!

Big congratulations to Tamal for winning Star Baker this week. Great effort.

I was a bit disappointed that in Victorian week the bakers were allowed to use modern appliances such as a fan oven and a mixer. Well, mainly a mixer, I can understand that getting Victorian-style ovens into the tent would be problematic. Come on people, use a bowl and a wooden spoon!

Anyway, it was interesting that in the first challenge most of the game pies were made in a sort of oval shaped tin. I wonder why tins were this shape? But then again, why are we used to round cakes?

The tennis cake was amazing. It’s fruit cake season and after the coming week of birthday cakes I will probably make a fruit cake, or perhaps an apple cake to use up a few of the apples we brought with us from our old garden. Poor Mat baking his icing!

And finally, the charlotte russe. When I tried to explain it to hubby he said it’s basically trifle. Yes, but it has to stand on its own which I thought would be difficult but only one baker struggled with this.

On the BBC website they have an interesting interview with Tom Hovey who illustrates the bakes each week. I’ve often wondered how they do this as the illustrations don’t always match up to the finished product. How do they get inside the mind of the baker to find out what they hoped to achieve? Well, have a read of the article to find out.

Next week is patisserie week. Mmm cream. Mmmmmmmmm.

GBBO Episode 6

GBBO episode 6 – pastry week.

I love pastry. So before I watched the episode on iPlayer on Friday night, I’d already planned to make pie at the weekend because I knew I’d want to eat pastry after watching the episode!

Mmm frangipane. This made me want to make an almondy cake but unfortunately we were all out of ground almonds. Instead I used up the leftover pastry from the pie to make a variation of a bakewell slice recipe I have and used ground hazelnuts instead of ground almonds. Next week I’m making not one but two birthday cakes for our son – one for his actual birthday and one for the weekend after when family visit to celebrate. They’ll both be Victoria sponge cakes but the second one will be a tunnel with a train coming out of it!

I loved that Tamal said he was inspired by one of his favourite sandwiches for the filling of his vol-au-vents. Such a man thing to say! And it reminded me of Joey’s sandwich obsession in Friends.

I’m now in the third and final trimester of this pregnancy and tiredness and sickness are both back. Thankfully both are manageable but it has meant that in the evenings I’ve been flopping on the sofa and watching something on iPlayer, especially if back pain has kept me up during the night before. So I have been watching Eat Well For Less which I watched last time it was on.

Clearly some of it is staged but it is an interesting watch. I sometimes spend too much on food, I’m sure many do, but we do have a budget which I try to stick to. It has a few useful, sometimes very obvious, tips and recipes like making risotto in the microwave. We have homemade bean burgers about once a fortnight so it was nice to see them getting some good press.

GBBO Episodes 4 and 5

I had my Bake Off binge last night after getting the internet back yesterday. It was amazing! More about moving house in a later post, there are more important things to discuss…

Episode 4: Dessert week
I’d previously said that I wasn’t so interested in dessert week, but it was still a good watch. I can’t see myself making creme brulee, particularly as so many of the bakers struggled with it, and I’m happy with hubby being the meringue man. I definitely won’t make a cheesecake tower! Crazy! I prefer normal cheesecake to baked cheesecake but the flavour combinations were interesting.

Episode 5: Alternatives week
Wow they tried making sugar free cake! I was quite excited when they announced that was on the next episode and then all I had to do was press the episode on iPlayer. Of course they used honey and agave nectar so it wasn’t 100% sugar free, but it was a decent attempt. Some of the recipes are on the BBC website.

I have to admit the last week and half have been decidedly un-sugar free. In fact you could say sugar packed. We ate our way through a fair lot of biscuits and cake to keep us going whilst we moved, unpacked and I built up confidence to use the oven – I’m going to make banana bread later as my first bake.

Anyway, the rest of the programme was also interesting as they cut gluten out of pitta breads and dairy out of ice cream.

Do I have a favourite at this stage? Not really. This year I’m actually just watching it to see what they bake rather than have a favourite contestant to support.

GBBO episode 3

Bread week!

At the end of episode 1, I was excited for biscuit week. At the end of episode 2, I was excited for bread week. Bread week!

Home baked bread

I’ve really got into baking bread in our oven lately, especially as it makes two loaves each time so I don’t have to make it that often. And now I really want to give soda bread a go having seen how quick it is to make. It looked so yummy. It’s a shame only a handful of the recipes are available online as I actually fancied making a savoury bread.

Mmm imagine the smell of freshly baked baguettes, that you’ve made and not part-baked, coming from your kitchen. I love buying wholemeal part-baked baguettes. They’re so yummy straight from the oven with butter melting on it! Perhaps as part of putting our oven through its paces I will give baguettes a go, but I think I’m planning too much given we’ll need to unpack and prepare for the new baby…

The 3D bread displays were quite impressive. I’m not trying to recreate any of them! But the individual breads sounded nice. I’m tempted to try making Chelsea buns – so tempted that I’d make them today if we had enough strong white bread flour but I’ve been using it up to make moving slightly lighter.

Desserts week doesn’t bother me so much because I don’t really make desserts, which is good really as when we move house next week we’re moving phone internet providers and will be without internet for 2 weeks!

GBBO episodes 1 and 2

I’m a bit behind!

I always find the first few episodes a bit hard to get my teeth into. There are 12 bakers to get to know and 12 versions of the same cake being made. It’s all a bit confusing.

Having said that, I loved sitting down last week to watch the first episode, albeit a day after the rest of the country. I enjoyed biscuit week more than cake week though. I think it’s the 12 bakers and 12 cake thing. 11 was a bit easier to manage and there was even a short history section this week.

Hubby once made a BFBFG at university – a big fat black forest gateaux – I think for a BBQ my housemates and I were having. It was enormous!

Pistachio, almond & raisin biscuits

I’d quite like to give making biscotti a go but I don’t want to break anyone’s teeth! At around 3-4 months of pregnancy I seem to lose a filling. It happened with our son and it has happened in this pregnancy. My teeth seem to really suffer! But I’m pretty sure biscotti won’t pull a filling out, perhaps crack a tooth if I bake it for too long. Maybe when we’ve moved I’ll give our ‘new’ oven an initiation test. I just love the idea of cooking with pistachios.

So instead, this morning I made pistachio and cranberry biscuits as my parents are visiting this weekend, but I had to top up my pistachio supply with almonds and used sultanas as that’s what was in the cupboard. They’re a bit quicker to make than biscotti and didn’t require me to study a recipe intently whilst keeping an eye on our son.

Unfortunately I’ve been feeling a bit sick again recently, so my posts are becoming a bit short and rambly. Also we are hoping to move house in a couple of weeks so there may be less communication as we drown in boxes and bubble wrap!

Dirk Gently

I have written before about how we tend to like series that suddenly disappear off the TV such as Whites and Dirk Gently.

Well, much to our delight, the BBC recently added Dirk Gently back to BBC iPlayer. Highly recommended. It stars Stephen Mangan and Darren Boyd as detectives, so it’s funny.

We started with the pilot episode which we hadn’t seen before and it struck me how it must have been competing with Sherlock. Now, I like Sherlock (or at least, I liked the first two series), but it saddens me that it might be because of Sherlock that Dirk Gently disappeared. Wikipedia tells me it was because of the licence fee freeze.

There are a few similarities with Sherlock – the music is chirpier in Dirk Gently but bears a slight resemblance to Sherlock; they are detectives who don’t get along with the police; and there’s a comedy element. But the comedy element is obviously greater in Dirk Gently, featuring two comedy actors.

Anyway, if you have a spare hour, try watching Dirk Gently on iPlayer.

Inside the Factory – BBC Series

I have recently been catching up on Inside the Factory: How our favourite foods are made on BBC iPlayer. Each episode focuses on a different product (bread, chocolate, and milk) and shows how it can take as little as 24 hours from some of the ingredients arriving at the factory to the product arriving on supermarket shelves. There’s also a bit of a history lesson in each one. It’s really interesting because as well as showing us how food is mass produced, it also blew a few myths out of the water for me about mass produced food.

The first episode was all about how big factories make your everyday loaf of bread. I was expecting to be horrified by the processes but actually it was impressive how they manage to make them on such a large scale so quickly, keeping to some of the original methods – obviously you can’t skip proving! In the history section they talked about how before official guidelines, people would add all sorts of strange things to bread like sawdust.

The second episode was about chocolate. I wasn’t that interested in how they make millions of KitKats, but the history part was fascinating. The chocolates we enjoy most in the UK like Cadbury’s Dairy Milk are the same as when they were first introduced in the 1930s. And chocolate in different countries is designed for those people’s tastebuds, which is why American chocolate tastes weird to my British tastebuds, but Dairy Milk tastes amazing.

The final episode was about milk. I LOVE milk. My sister loves milk. We can both drink glasses of milk instead of a cup of tea or a glass of water. I don’t know what my parents did to us as kids but we both love the stuff. But it’s only in Europe that the majority of the population can digest lactose as adults, and in China about 90% of the population are lactose intolerant. I guess it’s hard to buy a pint of milk in China, then? I hadn’t really thought much about how milk gets to my fridge so it was an eye opener to see how that happens, as well as looking at the history.

I like watching food programmes like this – you’re pretty lucky that I don’t write about every one I watch!