The Not-So-Great-Bake-Along '25 - Week 1

Bake Off is back! 

Once again, I’ll be baking along with the technical challenges every week. I’ll be trying to answer the question - is this just mean? 

Bake Off used to be the feel-good reality/competition show. It was the not-like-other-shows show, but in recent years it’s been criticised for being overly harsh and over-complicated. Personally, this is one of the only things I’m not watching for the drama. I’m in it for the cake. 

As a new season begins, I am obviously in love with every single new baker. I haven’t learned their names yet, but I adore them all. It was sad to see Hassan crumble, melt and fold under pressure, and I’m of the firm belief that the opening episode should be elimination-free - it works for Drag Race! Speaking of which, isn’t it ridiculous that Bake Off has its first drag king contestant, and yet Drag Race remains queens only? 

(Should I try to compete along with drag race? Do a kingified-version of every main stage challenge? Is this just another form of procrastination instead of doing my proper writing?) 

Anyway. The challenge. Every week, as I’ve done in previous years, I’ll be attempting to recreate the technical challenge, in the time limit, with no recipe. (This is less impressive when Bake Off steals my shtick by not giving the bakers a recipe.)  I’m an ex-chef and a decent baker, not to mention obsessed with food, so there’s no reason this shouldn’t be doable. 

Do I think a recipe-less challenge is fair? Read on and find out! 

The Rules:

• I have to recreate, to the best of my ability, the Technical Challenge. 
• I will not be looking at any kind of recipe. Each week, I have to do this purely with some context from the show and my own store of baking knowledge. 
• The time limit: The maximum amount of time I’ll be allowing myself is the time given to the bakers. However, as I don’t want to be wasting food and I don’t have a vast team of producers and camera operators to eat my bakes, I will sometimes be scaling my bakes down. When that happens, I’ll be reducing my total time accordingly. 
• The judging: I do not have handy professionals available to judge me. I have not, as of yet, however, purchased the fabric to make my own gingham altar. I will be judging myself, and I’m a raging bitch so I won’t be particularly lenient. My partner will be scoring as well, and probably his office mates if there’s too much cake for us to consume in one sitting. 
• The equipment: I like to think I’ve got the sort of decently-stocked kitchen any skilled home baker would have. If a technical challenge requires specialist equipment I don’t have, I won’t be buying anything for the occasion. I will be MacGyvering it, and adjusting my handicaps accordingly. 

Cake Week - Raspberry and Almond Fondant Fancies.

 I should be honest at this point. I’m actually writing up attempt no. 2 at Fondant Fancies. Unfortunately, during attempt no. 1 I was very much at home to Mr. Cock-Up, without enough ingredients to fix my mistakes. I had to throw in the (tea) towel before the end. The results were…unshareable, to say the least. 

Still, I forged on, with a second shopping trip to buy more hideously expensive raspberries. I did actually grow my own raspberries this year, but they were unexpectedly golden and I’ve already eaten them all. Life truly is just so incredibly difficult for me. 

So, in the kitchen, the timer is set, with every intention of actually finishing the challenge. Two hours and fifteen minutes to go. 

I make a basic sponge, slightly more than I need (because there will, inevitably, be mistakes that need to be trimmed off). I know full well that ground almonds were a red herring ingredient, but quite frankly I think it would be nicer with some in. Still, I stick to the brief, acting as if Paul Hollywood knows best (which I doubt, just a tiny bit.)  I do not own one of those nice square cake tins, so I faff about with a bit of tin foil and a battered old roasting tin. I may be slightly incompetent, but I’m at least resourceful. 

In just under fifteen minutes, my cakes are in. I throw together jam - raspberries, sugar, some orange peel because I still refuse to buy jam sugar, and a splash of raspberry liqueur left over from some summer cocktails. The booze definitely isn’t in the brief, but I need to use it up before I start thinking it’s a good idea to drink the awful stuff again. The jam bubbles, and thickens, and I curse that I have to strain the bastard. It truly feels like a specifically irritating waste of my time. (I’ve just checked the opening blog from last year, and apparently I hated straining the jam then too. At least I’m consistent.) 

I make buttercream (again, far too much), and dump plenty of almond extract into the mixture. The cake comes out of the oven, looking wonky and dishevelled, and I find it extremely relatable. While it’s cooling, I start making the horrific icing for the coating, and contemplate my life choices. I throw some raspberry liqueur in there too, as I couldn’t find raspberry extract in my local Asda. I don’t actually think raspberry extract is a real thing, quite frankly. I think Paul Hollywood’s made it up to upset me. Despite my best efforts, I cannot convince the icing to be anything other than a slightly surgical shade of pink. This is fine, I tell myself. 

With an hour and fifteen minutes left to go, all of my components are prepared. It’s time for the dreaded cooling wait. I use this time wisely; I wash up, I contemplate my life choices, I compose a sonnet about surgical raspberries and wait for the existential dread to hit. This lasts about ten minutes, and then my impatience gets the better of me and I start cutting the cake. 

What follows is a dance between ‘is it cool/set/usable enough?’ and ‘I’m bored, let's do the next bit.’ I trim, I cut squares, I realise I have no idea how big these bastards are meant to be. I carve out jam divots. (Wouldn’t ‘The Jam Divots’ make a great band name?) I pour jam into the divots, and somehow splatter it around the kitchen. It looks like a saccharine murder has taken place. Honestly, I quite like it. Having checked the recipe after the fact, I’m supposed to put those little cut-out rounds of cake back on top of the jam. I’ve not done that. In fact, I’ve eaten most of them. 

Eventually, I can’t put it off any longer. I have to crumb-coat these little fuckers. This is not my idea of a fun time. Crumb coating - putting on a thin layer of buttercream that will act as a barrier between the sponge and the lurid pink icing - is sticky, fiddly with such tiny cakes and generally Not Fun. But I’m not here to have fun, I’m here to bitch about Bake Off. So I crumb coat, and I swear, and I put little blobs of icing on each ‘fancy’. I think the word ‘blob’ so much to myself I remember that Mr Blobby exists. This is not a pleasant experience. 

Finally, with 25 minutes to go, I start with the final coating - pouring over icing that I imagine is the same colour as Mr Blobby’s small intestine. I faff about with a palette knife - at first, trying to get a neat and even coating on each cake. By the end, I just want everything to be pink enough. This takes fifteen minutes. I gild the lilies with a final drizzle of white icing, transfer each cake into a flattened cupcake case (I might have made these a bit too big), and I’m finished - with three minutes left on the timer. 

The Judging

My partner’s verdict: 

10/10 on flavour, 9/10 for appearance. I ask him if he’d buy one in a shop, if it was labelled as ‘rustic’. He says he would, and he’d even buy a coffee with it. (He doesn’t drink coffee.)

My verdict: 

9/10 on flavour, 6/10 for appearance. They definitely taste of both raspberry and almond, but I’m knocking off a point because I honestly think they’d be nicer with ground almonds in the sponge. Honestly, I think I’m being a bit generous with myself on appearance - these are definitely not neat, precise little cakes. I’m not giving Mr Kipling a run for his money. However, they are recognisably fondant fancies, and I’m rewarding myself for that. 

The office verdict: 

10/10 for flavour, 8/10 for appearance. I swear, I have not paid these people. 

Do I think this was a fair challenge? Nope! And I’m not saying that because mine came out wonky - that’s down to my own refusal to be good at precise things. 

If this was a standard technical - a time limit, and a pared-down recipe, then it would be a more than fair challenge for the first week. These are a good test of basic technical skills - just like the previous year’s battenbergs. Even if this was a repeat of the previous year - with just a demo cake and the ingredients, it would still feel like a kind-of fair challenge. But the red-herring ingredients, and taking the demo away after just five minutes, feels like unnecessary cruelty. This is the first week in the tent - it’s already an incredibly stressful experience. It seems like this challenge wasn’t a test of technical skill - it was a rug-pull to make ‘good’ telly. It comes down to the most basic test of the technical challenge - were there a few mistakes, or did everyone get it wrong? If a few contestants get it wrong, the problem is with them. If every contestant gets it wrong, then the challenge is the problem.

Would I make this again? Not a chance. There are far less fiddly ways to assemble a cake, and perfectly good fondant fancies available in packets.

Next week - biscuits. Let’s see if I can get it in one!