United Cakedom: GBBO

Showing posts with label GBBO. Show all posts

Apple & Elderflower Drizzle Cake

The Great British Bake Off is back! Well it was what 2 weeks ago? Every year I say I'm going to bake along with the Bake Off and every year I don't. I like baking and I enjoy the show, but I hate feeling like I have to bake something I don't want to bake just to tag along.

But every year there is that part of me that wants to tag along! I want to be apart of all the social media groups that are baking along and take part in all the competitions held by Lakeland and Dunelm and other various kitchenware companies.

I just can't get my act together. I made a drizzle cake, the one I'm about to share with you two days after the first episode! Yay great, but I'm only just blogging about it. Oops. I also had all the ingredients to make Viennese Whirls and I still have all the ingredients sitting in my cupboard. Oops again. And there is no way I'm going to prepared for this week! Bread.

However, I will be watching every week and maybe I'll be able to sort it out and actually bake something and blog it all in the same week? Although please don't hold me to it.

Apple & Elderflower Drizzle Cake

2 granny smith apples, diced
juice and zest of one lime
2 tbsp sparkling elderflower presse
300g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
100g ground almonds
250ml sunflower oil
250g caster sugar
4 large eggs, 3 separated
1 tsp vanilla extract

Drizzle
2 tbsp sparkling elderflower presse
juice and zest of one lime
50g demerara sugar

Heat the oven to 160C and grease the bundt with butter and dust lightly with flour.
Mix the diced apples with the juice and zest of the lime along with the elderflower presse.
Combine the flour, baking powder, and almonds and leave to the side.
Beat the sunflower oil, 125g of the sugar, 1 whole egg and 3 yolks plus the vanilla until completely combined it should be lighter in color. Fold in the dry ingredients and just the juice from the apples.
In a separate bowl whisk the 3 leftover egg whites until stiff peaks form. Add the leftover 125g of sugar and whisk until thick and shiny. Gently fold it into the cake batter a third at a time. Last, but not least, fold in the diced apples.
Gently pour/spoon the batter into the prepared bundt pan and bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool for about 10 minutes before carefully turning the cake out of the pan gently poke holes around the cake.
Leave mixing the drizzle ingredients together until you finished the last step. You don't want the sugar dissolving in the liquid you want it to be a bit crunchy where the sugar doesn't soak all the way through. Leave to cool completely before serving!

notes: recipe is inspired from a BBC Good Food recipe found in their 2016 calendar.

Sweet Potato & Sweet Smoked Paprika Bread

This summer has been pretty disappointing. We had some glorious weather early on and that was about it. With the cooler weather lately I have already been thinking of fall/autumn flavors. Dinner has already started changing from chicken salads and sandwiches to creamy delicious macaroni and cheese and cottage pies! If dinner is already changing why not my baking!

With bread being the star of The Great British Bake Off this week, plus I just received a new bread book, and I had a whole bag of strong white flour in my cupboard I thought I’d make a loaf of bread! With fall/autumn like weather I decided to go with a sweet potato and paprika flavored bread.

You know how when decorating a room you either have plain walls with decorative accessories or you have fun wall paper and plan accessories. That’s how bread is. You either have plain bread with flavor packed toppings or flavor packed bread with butter or for dipping in soup. If done tastefully you can decorate a room with wallpaper and colorful accessories and that goes for bread too. If you know how to pair it just right you get yummy fillings/toppings to go with your flavor packed bread.

Well, after that load of ramble here is how I made this loaf of Sweet Potato and Paprika bread. The recipe comes from Simply Good Bread: Delicious home-baked recipes for everyone by Peter Sidwell. Somewhat adapted as my method varied from his direct instructions. The title says it all the recipes all seem pretty simple and easy for everyone. There are even instructions for those who are using a bread maker.

Sweet Potato & Sweet Smoked Paprika bread

200g sweet potatoes, baked/soft
500g strong white bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon fast action yeast (about 1/2 of a 7g sachet)
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
300ml water
1 tablespoon smoked sweet paprika

Start by baking the potato(s) and mashing them. Set aside.
Mix the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. In a measuring jug measure the water before adding the yeast, sugar, and paprika - stir to combine.
Make a well in the centre of the flour/salt and pour the liquid mixture in the middle. Add the mashed potatoes before using a spatula gently bring the dry and liquid ingredients together before using your hands to start to work the dough. Once it starts to come away from the bowl tip out on to a well floured surface and knead for 5-10 minutes. The dough is sticky so keep floured and have a dough scraper near by.
Once kneaded place back in the bowl and leave to rise until doubled in size should take 30-40 minutes in a warm place.
When it’s ready gently tip it out and knock it back or gently knead for about a minute. Then place in a 1kg or 2lb loaf tin, grease if it’s not non-stick. Leave to double in size while you pre-heat the oven to 200C.
Bake in the heated oven for 40 minutes until golden brown on top. Gently tip the loaf out and knock on the bottom, if it sounds hallow then it’s ready. If not cook for 5-10 more minutes.
Slice and enjoy!

notes: I hope break week on The Great British Bake Off encourages you to give bread a go! If you do you should enter it into Jen’s Food and Utterly Scrummly’s Bread Challenge - Bready Steady Go! I did!

To see a few other books I recently added to my bookshelf beside's Mr. Sidwell's check out my last post here!

Best of The Great British Bake Off! {Clandestine Cake Club}

This month's theme for Reading's Clandestine Cake Club was the Best of the Great British Bake Off! It was open to cakes from the show, contestants, presenters, and so on.

I have Edd Kimbar's first book, both of Jo Wheatley's, and John Whaite's new book plus a couple of the GBBO books that accompany the show.

In this case having too much choice was a bad thing. I couldn't decide on anything! In the end I went with a cake from Edd's The Boy Who Bakes, the Orange and Passion Fruit Cake:

This is all that was left, but I am not complaining! I love going to cake club! However because we are all trying to eat as much cake as possible we only take very thin and little slices and I always end up with a lot of cake left over. Again not something I would normally complain about, but I tend to make cakes for cake club for me. I mean I tend to pick flavors and cakes I would like and I usually think of my family first. Therefore I want the cake to go because it would end up being me eating the rest of the cake!

Here are the cakes from last night! I do apologize for the lighting, I really do need to invest in a better camera!

Orange & Passion Fruit Cake: Edd Kimbar
Me

Toffee Apple Cake: GBBO Showstoppers

Chocolate: Mary Berry
Clara

Raspberry Ripple Cake: Edd Kimbar
Louise

Mocha Cake: Mary Berry

Battenberg: GBBO book
Jen

All the cakes were amazing! We really do have a talented bunch of bakers! I am looking forward to next month meet up! We were talking Halloween themed which is fine by me as it's my favorite holiday!

notes: Find a Clandestine Cake Club near you! I do apologize for missing one cake from a late comer and I am also sorry that I failed to learn everyone's name! Please let me know and I will correct it! Also check out Jen's awesome blog here!

Cake & Bake Show Thoughts

I let fate decide weather or not I was going to go to the second Cake & Bake Show. I couldn't decide on what to do. It's just that I didn't know what I wanted to get out of the show.

Currently I am not after any baking supplies and I am not into the decorating side of cake making. I mean I like simple decorations, sprinkles and glitter etc... but fondant isn't something I get excited about. Therefore, I don't need a lot of decorating tools and what not.

Then they don't have online when things are and who is talking or have demonstrations. If they do I couldn't find it so please correct me if I am wrong. Therefore I wasn't sure when to go and who I'd see.

As I couldn't decide I thought I'd just let it go this year and reconsider next year. Then I was having a lazy morning hanging out on Twitter and Cupcake Heaven Magazine were giving away a ticket to the show if I only retweeted the tweet. So, that's what I did and I won!

Then I went! I just walked around with my biggest mini baker. We saw Paul A. Young make a chocolate and pecan tart and talked to him briefly afterwards. Then we bought a few bakes from here and there, some sugar from Billington's Sugar Shake, and met some fun people!