With the possible exception of bread week, there’s a case to be made it’s always dessert week on Bake Off. However this time it officially was. The week you can guarantee more than any other that every challenge is going to be sweet, sticky and indulgent.
My mum would have loved it. Whenever she ate out, dessert was the first thing she looked at on the menu. Then having made her choice she would work backwards through the rest of the courses. Always making sure her picks would leave sufficient room for the sweet treat she’d decided to finish off with. If there was a glass of dessert wine in the offing as well it was her idea of a perfect evening
Mum never made it to a Pudding Club evening, but something tells me she’d have been in her element.
She would have approved of this weeks signature challenge. The bakers were tasked with producing a pavlova. For me, this dessert has always been a favourite. The billowing meringue is crunchy on the outside but sticky in the middle, the cream filling flavoured with caramel if my choice, the fresh fruit on top adding a wonderful freshness in flavour and contrast to the sweetness of the other components. There were still two challenges to go but I’d already decided what my bake was going to be this week.
My go to pavlova is a Jens Jorgen Thorsen. Jens was a Danish artist who also directed films and was a jazz musician. This wonderful indulgence, inspired by his free form style, features in Trine Hahnemann’s Scandinavian Baking Book and has been a huge hit whenever I’ve made it for people. As Trinne explains in the recipe it’s a very free form concoction, the preferred fruit is figs but anything you have to hand will work and the melted chocolate can be splashed on however you wish. I’m not sure what the Bake Off judges would think, but I love it.
The week’s other challenges were individual sticky toffee puddings for the technical and a decorative imprime cake for the show stopper. I’ve never been a big fan of the former, as good as they looked on the show, toffee pudding always feels like a functional school dinner pudding to me. As for imprime cakes, they may look impressive, but my vote will always go for pavlova.
I like to think that mum’s sweet tooth lives on with me.
David in the kitchen. 