The Not-So-Great Bake Along - Week 2

Bake Off is back for another week, and this time it’s biscuits. The contestants faced a marshmallow-based signature, and a meal-based “biscuit illusion display” (a phrase that has me remaining convinced that there are continual mass delusions taking place in the Bake Off tent - it’s very disturbing when they all pretend something like a “biscuit illusion display” is a Normal Thing that People Have Heard Of) for the showstopper. 

Of course, there was also the technical. Custard creams. A thing that no one makes for themself, surely? I’m very concerned about the people who are voluntarily* making their own custard creams instead of buying them in a packet. I feel like those people take things like yarn-bombing seriously, or they’re the type to build things out of matchsticks. No judgement here, obviously, I just want to know that the people voluntarily making their own custard creams are all right. 

*I am behaving as if this attempt to recreate the technical challenges from this season of Bake Off is something being forced upon me. It’s not. I am the only person making me do this. 

And so, to my own journey of custard cream frustrations. A quick reminder of 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. This week, I’m making myself the full twelve, and giving myself the same 90-minute limit as the contestants. 
• The judging: I still have a distinct lack of gingham altar and (thankfully) Paul Hollywood in my life. This week, the judging was performed by a couple of pals I went for coffee with. 
• 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. That includes refusing to buy a special custard cream stamp. Read on to find how I worked around this, almost successfully. 

Biscuit Week - Custard Creams

I have sensibly, the day before, actually checked that I have all of the ingredients necessary for this. I have had to go and purchase custard powder - it’s not something I usually have in the house. I’d like to make it very clear that I am absolutely not anti-custard. It’s just that I either make it from scratch or eat it directly from a tin with a spoon. Custard powder sits in a weird liminal space between those two options, requiring almost as much effort as the from-scratch version, while not being quite as nice as the pre-made stuff. Nonetheless, I have acquired custard powder for the purposes of this recipe. I have a strange feeling that it’s going to make me dangerously powerful. 

Ingredients at the ready, I set a trepidatious 90 minute timer. I am genuinely concerned it’s not enough time, considering the need for properly chilled biscuit dough. I persevere.

The shortbread, at least, I know how to make. Two parts flour to one part butter and sugar, and an egg to bring it all together, is deeply ingrained in me. I’m assuming, as custard powder is effectively just cornflour with colourings and flavourings, that it can just replace some of the flour. Normally, I’d make the dough slowly, carefully pulling all of the ingredients together. The timer won’t let me, however, and so 100g each of butter and sugar are thrown into the stand mixer, followed by the egg, and then 170g of flour and 40g of custard powder. I do not bother sieving the dry ingredients - I’d like to blame this on the ticking clock but, quite honestly, I’m just lazy. 

Something resembling a shortbread dough assembled, I throw it into my (quickly rearranged that morning) freezer and wash everything up. I continue to grumble, quietly to myself alone in my flat, that the contestants don’t have to do the bloody washing up.

It’s time to start swearing at the concept of a crème au beurre. I have been mildly stressed about how to fill my custard creams since I watched this week’s Bake Off - which shows you exactly how much I have going on in my life right now. I do have a custard buttercream recipe that I trust, but I’m trying to stick to the processes on the show, and that means crème au beurre. I have made crème au beurre before. It has consistently gone tits up. It’s time to blindly forge ahead again! 

I weigh out my 70ish grams of sugar, ready to make a syrup. I forget to add water. This will become a problem. I line up 100g of butter. I have no idea if this will be the right amount. I have two separated egg yolks in my stand mixer. I have a haphazard amount of custard powder, and have somehow spilled it over every single counter. 

I start heating up the sugar while attempting to roll out my shortbread dough between two pieces of paper. It works! Genius that I am, I assume I can also get away with cutting the dough into biscuits at this point - before it’s properly chilled. It does not work. I consider that I might, actually, be an idiot. The rolled dough is thrown back in the freezer and I look to my sugar. I don’t have a sugar thermometer, because I’m just not that kind of person, but it seems to be taking forever to become a syrup. I shrug, and think about egg yolks. 

Congratulating myself once again on being very clever, I realise that the whisk in my stand mixer isn’t deep enough. It’s only going to tickle the surface of the eggs. (Somehow, that sentence feels dirtier than a real double entendre.) I start whisking them to their beautiful pale yellow colour by hand and start thinking that I should treat myself to hollandaise sauce on my breakfast the next day. (As I’m writing this, it’s the next day. I stayed in bed until lunch time and did not make hollandaise sauce.) I look back to the sugar. It’s not become a syrup - but it is burning. Without water, what I’ve made is a caramel that’s going to be an absolute bastard to wash up. Do I throw it away at this point? Of course not. I think it’ll be fine to just chuck in a splash of cold water. It’s not fine. The burning caramel sputters, hardens, and glues itself to the pan like a particularly clingy whelk. I accept that I am, in fact, an idiot. I have one hour to go. 

Caramel chiselled off, I finally manage a successful sugar syrup. Despite knowing that the whisk in my stand mixer isn’t deep enough, I assume it will be fine for the rest of this process. I pour the sugar syrup onto the eggs. The mixer does not mix them. I give up, and continue on by hand. I may not have successful custard creams at the end of this, but I’ll have had a lovely upper body workout. I throw in chunks of butter until things start to look promising. I add the custard powder, and create a day-glo yellow monstrosity. It’s decidedly gloopy. My hardwon years of cocking up basic buttercreams has taught me that the gloopiness can be fixed with some time in the fridge. There’s no cure, however, for that colour. 

Finally, I can cut and stamp my biscuits. As mentioned, I do not have a special custard cream stamp and I refuse to acquire one. My pal Marc has suggested lego, but the only lego in the flat is a fully-assembled tallneck from the Horizon: Zero Dawn games and I’m not willing to take it apart for a baking project. Instead, I resort to a cookie cutter and a stamp I usually use for wax-sealing letters. The custard creams will be marked with a “J”. They will be Justard Creams. 

(Isn’t that a horrific word? Justard. Go on. Say it to yourself. Justard. Enjoy the little shiver of disgust. It’s a word that makes you want to sneer.)

I cut and stamp the biscuits. The first half of the dough seems to yield thirteen, and I’m delighted that I’ll have a spare, in case of inevitable cock ups. The second yields twelve, and I immediately drop one. Good thing I’ve got a spare! I put the biscuits in the freezer, and realise I only have 40 minutes left. Assuming I need ten for baking, ten for cooling down and ten for icing, those biscuits can only hang out in the freezer for ten minutes. The stamp will not be well-defined. (Partly, to be fair, this is because a stamp for wax seals really isn’t designed for pastry work - they were never going to be well defined.) 

I realise I have nothing to do while I wait for the oven to preheat. I take the time to have a completely imaginary argument, in my head, with a person I have absolutely no quarrel with in real life. We make our own fun around here. 

With just half an hour left, the biscuits go in the oven. I pace. I have cooling trays at the ready. I pray the oven will, this week, not be too fucky. Ten minutes later, I have success. I appear to have achieved biscuit. Can you tell there’s an elaborate “J” stamped on them? Not at all. But these are, definitely, biscuits. Here is where my ten years of professional cooking experience finally comes in handy, as I bare handedly transfer the screaming hot biscuits onto a cooling tray. It doesn’t really hurt, but I swear anyway, for fun. 

I check on the gloop. It appears to have become something resembling icing, and I transfer it to a piping back. Well, I try. Then I realise I’m out of piping bags. I transfer it instead to a cheap sandwich bag. 

With ten minutes left, and the biscuits just cool enough, I start icing. It takes nowhere near as long as I thought. I pipe a little circle of icing on twelve of them. I start sandwiching them with the plain twelve. I realise I can’t count, and I’ve only made 23 biscuits. I accept that, in life, sometimes you will be missing a biscuit. The important thing is to pick yourself up and move on. I eat the now-extraneous, untopped biscuit and am surprised to find it tastes amazing.

Almost like a custard cream. I assume the timer will be going off at any point. I check it - there are a whole four minutes left! A victory dance ensues, before I realise something important. If I have four minutes left, those minutes could have been used to improve the biscuits. They could have chilled for longer, I could have somehow fixed the filling, they could have been better. I will think about those four minutes all day. 

The Judging

The judges this week are my lovely friends, Francine (My co-host on The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret) and [REDACTED] (who values his privacy.) I have asked them to judge on two criteria: Enjoyability as a biscuit, and actual similarity to a custard cream. 

The Verdict: “Tastier than a custard cream” (Thanks Francine) 

Enjoyability: 8.5/10 from Francine, 8/10 from [REDACTED]

Custard Cream Resemblance: 6/10, from both. 

My Verdict:

Overall, a solid 8/10. I’m deducting points for the weird day-glo buttercream and the missing twelfth biscuit. Personally, I’ve decided to ignore the fact that they look nothing like custard creams. That’s the fault of the stamp. The biscuits aren’t really, in any way, custard creams. Some might think I should be marked down for that. I however, while usually my harshest critic, feel quite mellow today. I deserve some points. So there. 

Do I think this is a fair and doable challenge? Actually, yeah. While no one (apart from those people I’m concerned about) is making their own custard creams at home, the challenge is effectively a shortbread and a crème au beurre. They’re techniques a good home baker would know. And clearly, with those spare four minutes, the time frame is just right. 

Next week - bread. God, I love bread. I can’t wait. 

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