Great British Bake Off Week One

It’s reached that time of year again. That time when despite the first signs of summer coming to an end, things don’t actually feel so bad after all. I’m probably being fanciful but The Great British Bake Off has that affect on me. Yes I know it’s all a bit of a cliche but there is something about a competitive, yet supportive baking group that just draws me in every year.

I didn’t discover Bake Off until season four (that’s the Ruby Tandoh year if you’re a fan) but since then it’s been an annual highlight. I’ve baked along with it, I have various related books on my shelf and I’ve even had a couple of goes at applying to be on it. As I got further on the second application than the first I’m hoping that it’s third time lucky if i try again.

Just in case you haven’t seen the show let me explain the format. There are twelve or thirteen bakers at  the start of the season. Each week is themed to a particular bake, for example cake, biscuits, bread. Each show is then split into three bakes, the first is the bakers signature bake, the second a technical challenge and the the third a show stopper. At the end of each show one baker is crowned as that weeks star baker and another is sent home. This process continues until the last three bakers contest the final.

In previous years I’ve been a bit selective on which weeks to bake along with the programme. This year the plan is to have a go at something every week and to share my experiences here. 

Week one was cake week. The signature bake was a decorated fruit cake of your choice, the technical challenge was an Angel Cake and the show stopper was to bake the birthday cake that you wish you’d had as a child. As Angel Cake was always a childhood favourite my bake choice was never in doubt. I just needed to buy the pink and yellow food colours as everything else required was already in my pantry.

In a previous post I wrote about shop bought versus homemade cakes. Prior to this week Angel Cake for me had always been in the shop bought category. Three layers of light sponge sandwiching sweet butter cream. The layers of sponge coloured pink. yellow and white. I’d never made one before but on the face of it looked like a relatively straight forward bake. In reality I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The cake recipe required a genoise sponge. I have made one of these before but never found it easy. The problem comes with trying to keep the air in the whisked eggs and sugar as you fold in the other ingredients. A problem compounded with this cake because you are splitting the batter into three different bowls to account for the different colours.

Because of this at one point I was looking at three bowls each of cake batter, flour and melted butter and wandering ‘ why am I doing this’. Factor in three baking tins, a food mixer bowl as well and there was not an inch of empty work top in the kitchen. 

Once that stage was over it was on to making an Italian meringue buttercream for the filling. A more straight forward stage that still managed to add another three bowls to the already daunting mountain of washing up.

So that’s the first week done. Did I enjoy the bake? Yes I did. Would I bake an Angel Cake again? I’m not sure I would. This one did perhaps feel as if it should have been left as that childhood memory.

Lessons learned from Bake Off week one

• Don’t be afraid of food colours. I’d never used them before and was a bit tentative this time. The result was a slightly pastel coloured cake
• Read the recipe thoroughly before you start. I didn’t and it resulted in me having to throw away my first batch of buttercream. A schoolboy error I know.

If anyone fancies having a go the link to the recipe I used is below. For any American readers I think that this is a very different recipe to what you know as an Angel Cake.

https://thegreatbritishbakeoff.co.uk/angel-slices/

Next time it’s biscuit week.