It’s Bake Off time again. After assuming all summer the show was going to be another 2020 corona casualty they’ve defied all of our expectations and the new series started on Tuesday evening. A ninety-minute baking extravaganza and I’m hooked for the next ten weeks. Yes I know it’s all a bit cliched, but there’s something about a competitive, yet supportive baking group which just draws me in.
I didn’t discover Bake Off until season four ( the Ruby Tandoh year if you’re a fan ) but since then it’s been an annual highlight. I’ve baked along with it, have various related books on my shelf and 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 if I try again it just might be third time lucky
In the unlikely event of you not having seen the show, let me explain the format. There are twelve bakers at the start of the season. Each week is themed to a particular baking style, for example, cake, biscuits, bread etc. Each show is then split into three bakes, the first is the contestants signature bake for the week’s style, the second a technical challenge and the third a show stopper. At the end of each show, one baker is crowned the star baker and another is sent home. This process continues until the final three bakers contest the final.
This series opened with cake week. The signature challenge was a Battenberg cake, the technical a batch of individual pineapple upside down-cakes and the show stopper the somewhat bizarre idea of creating a cake bust of one of your heroes. If you don’t think the cake bust idea sounds odd, just click on the link and you’ll see what I mean.
I’m going to have a go at one of the challenges each week and this time the decision was easy. Cake busts were a no go and my local stores were unlikely to have the fresh pineapple required for the upside-down cakes, so it had to be a first attempt at making a Battenberg.
To me, a Battenberg has always felt like a shop-bought cake, the sort of thing I remember from childhood where part of the fun was peeling off the marzipan to eat it separately from the brightly coloured cake that it encased. If Battenberg is new to you I should explain, they consist of four pieces of sponge cake, two yellow and two pink, these are held together with jam and then encased in marzipan. The coloured cakes are combined to give the chequered pattern which you can see in the photo.
I hadn’t appreciated until this week that they’re a uniquely British bake, dating back to Victorian times. Some food historians claim they were first created for the marriage of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter to a Battenberg prince. Even if this can’t be verified it is accepted that recipes first appeared in the late 1800s. Some of the originals had multiple squares, but over time four has become the norm.
Being a novice I had to do some recipe hunting, I opted for this one by Felicity Cloake and I’m glad I did. In my original plans, I’d assumed I would have to use food colouring for the pink cake but Felicity’s idea of using freeze-dried raspberries is ideal. Once you’ve ground them down you get a lovely raspberry flavour to the cake, as well as the colour you’re looking for.
If you are tempted to have a go I will forewarn you, this is quite a fiddly bake. Cutting the cakes to the right size and then assembling them felt a bit like baking Jenga, made even more difficult by the fact that everything is coated in jam and then wrapped in marzipan. By the end, I was one very sticky baker.
I’m glad I made it though. It’s always good to learn some new skills and the general consensus is that it more than matches up to the shop-bought version people remember.
Next time its biscuit week.
David in the kitchen. 