The Not-So-Great-Bake-Along '26 - Week 7

It’s Free-From Party week!

I’d better start off by addressing the elephant in the room. Well, the axolotl in the room. Well, the cursed demonic entity that vaguely resembles an axolotl in the room. I did not do my best work this week - and I’m somewhat delighted by the hellish result.

There. Anyway. Free-From Party Week!

I am curious - are the judges aware that there are more parties than just ‘kids’? I can imagine that Paul Hollywood doesn’t get invited to many parties, but I’m sure Nigella’s been to her fair share. I like the idea of a free-from week, don’t get me wrong. But the ‘party’ aspect seemed weird. I’m not saying the week needed a showstopper inspired by bad house parties, halloween parties or dodgy office christmas parties, but allowing a broader theme might have meant that two out of the three challenges didn’t boil down to ‘make a cake’.

Still, who am I to judge? The maker of the cursed axolotl, that’s who. I chose the axolotl because, quite frankly, the bar was the absolute lowest; poor Gary, the connoisseur’s Paul Hollywood that he is - he’ll be sorely missed.

Still, a low bar is something I can still limbo under. On with the challenge!

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 still have a distinct lack of gingham altar and (thankfully) Paul Hollywood in my life. My partner wasn’t overly upset about once again having to form an opinion on cake.
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.

Free-From Party Week - Axolotl Cake

I gave myself a similar advantage to the bakers this week - drawing a little doodle to remind me, at the end, what the cake is meant to look like, before the timer starts.

Then, two and half hours on the timer, and I’m starting with the sponge.

Luckily I’ve made a couple of vegan sponges in my time, and a few variations on this kind of hot-water based chocolate cake. I won’t lie, I did take one of the contestants announcing ‘720ml of hot water’ and reverse-engineer everything from that, and it turns out I wasn’t a million miles away from Nigella’s recipe, so that’s a delight. I do almost forget to put sugar in, I’m using white wine vinegar because I forgot to acquire the apple cider stuff, and the black cocoa powder makes the whole thing look slightly ominous, but I achieve cake-in-the-oven in only fifteen minutes.

Next up, ermine buttercream. I can’t stand this stuff. For one, the mousse-like texture is odd, and unpleasant (to me). It’s also just a lot of extra faff. It makes sense for a technical challenge - it is, sort-of, technically challenging (especially if you miss out half of the butter), it takes up a mildly annoying amount of time and requires more cooling, and it gives the contestants something to whisk.

Sadly - especially when using oat milk for the proceedings - the mixture of milk, sugar and flour, once cooked and thickened, looks a hell of a lot like wallpaper paste. I successfully spend the next twenty or so minutes making a bowl of unpleasant, sticky goop while I start ganache in the background, and regretting my life choices leaps up to the top of my to-do list.

The ganache at least, takes place without incident. Well, unless you count the cost of vegan cream and vegan chocolate - I love a bit of vegan baking, but fuck-me it’s pricy to be plant-based. At this point I am getting concerned about how damn long it’s taking these cakes to bake, considering they need to cool down fully. I finally pull them out with an hour and thirty-five minutes to go, and this is where the disaster begins.

Eggs, you see, serve an important purpose - they help give a sponge structure. I do not think about this, or the laws of physics, as I flip my unevenly risen sponges onto a cooling rack. Sitting upside-down, on top of that awkwardly-risen dome, with gravity taking effect and no structure in the sponge to fight it, leads to the cakes just sort of falling apart.

I decide this is a problem for future me and shove them in the fridge while I finish the buttercream. Vegan butter was also breathtakingly not cheap, but it whips up a treat, accepts the wallpaper paste with gusto, and then turns a lurid shade of pink - possibly too lurid, but really that’s the least of my problems.

Finally, with 50 minutes to go, I’m determined to start decorating, as I’m following the logic that a decently chilled crumb coat is the only thing that might save the cake. I slap the ganache on. Really, the sponge isn’t quite cool enough, and I decide not to worry about it. 90% of my baking is just me desperately shouting ‘she’ll be right’ as I fuck around with a spatula.

She, in the end, was not right.

Anyway, a coat of buttercream gets slapped on, the whole thing looks a mess, and with a little over half an hour to go, I shove it back into the fridge.

Attention then turns to the decorations - and I have to admit, this is where I let the vegan side down. The contestants were apparently given flower paste to work with - such a thing does not exist down my local supermarket, so I’m making do with some pre-made (and coloured) fondant. The fondant is not strictly vegan, according to the packet, but luckily this cake isn’t intended for any vegan recipients and I’ve decided this is the best I can do.

I dutifully consult my little doodle. It is unhelpful.

Still, I do my best, assembling some decorations, chucking toothpicks into my little…antennae? Ears? I do not know enough about the anatomy of the axolotl. I also don’t think, here, about things like gravity, or about how not-solid fondant will cope with being shoved, via toothpick, into the side of a very soft cake.

With 20 minutes to go, I dutifully slap the last of the buttercream onto the cake. Incredibly, it doesn’t look…awful? I suppose? Maybe?

Alright, it’s better than Gary’s.

Finally, it gets eyes and a mouth - which look somewhat normal. Then it gets ears, which do not. They start sinking, and falling out, and I sort of have to force them on top of each other.

With that, I throw in the towel. There’s five minutes left on the timer, and I’m done.

The Results

My partner points out that it looks more like a mutant pig than an axolotl - deeming that ironic, considering it’s a vegan challenge. Then he asks if it’s gluten-free, because sure most vegan things have to be gluten-free. Eventually, I work out that he’s mixed up gluten and gelatine. Maybe I need some more professional judging. When pushed for a rating, he gives me a 4 out of 10 for appearance (but says from a non-professional standpoint it’s a 10/10 for looking ‘cursed as fuck’). He gives me an 8 for flavour though.

I’m giving myself a 3 for appearance, and naming the cake ‘Eustace Clarence Scrubb the 2nd’ (after my terrifying caterpillar from a few years ago). I can agree with the 8 out of 10 for flavour though - despite the chaos, it’s actually quite delicious.

Was this a fair challenge? Yeah, I suppose. Look, I really want to say ‘no’ and blame the challenge for my atrocious offering, but the blame there can be laid squarely at my feet. It’s doable, if tight, in that time limit, and I’d assume the bakers would have probably practised a vegan cake in the run-up to ‘free-from’ week. The ermine buttercream might throw a few off, but considering ‘whip goop into butter’ was also last week’s filling, it’s clearly not an overly complicated prospect.

Notably, this keeps Nigella scoring much higher on the ‘fair challenge’ counter.

Next week, caramel. My nemesis.