The Not So Great Bake-Along - Week 9

It’s patisserie week, and the semi-finals, on Bake Off, which means a beautiful amount of poorly-pronounced French and a certain amount of nail-biting horror at potentially poor pastry. Honestly, this has been my favourite week so far. I love a bit of patisserie, despite my total unwillingness to attempt precision, and I’m always delighted by pretty pastries. (I’m very sorry, the alliteration will stop now. Maybe.) This week saw the demise of Tasha, which is disappointing - she’s so charming that she’s become one of my favourite bakers. It’s going to be a sausage-fest finale next week, which I wouldn’t have predicted in the early episodes. Before we get there though, the technical! 

During the challenge, during one of those fun little “chats” with Noel that would have me apoplectic with profane rage if they came at the wrong time (for someone with an atrocious attention span, I don’t handle distraction well), Josh mentioned a titanium plate in his skull. He told Noel that he woke up in hospital with “do not press” written on his forehead in sharpie, and Noel mentioned that his first response would be to press it. As I’m writing this the day after celebrating 40 years of Discworld, this seems the perfect time for a Terry Pratchett quote: 

“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”

As someone who has chosen to recreate all of these challenges just to see if it’s possible to do it, I’m glad I’m nowhere near the apocalypse switch. I felt a bit guilty this week - I’m coming in with a lot of advantages. I’ve made many tarts similar to this one in my life (because they look fancy and I like to show off), and unlike the bakers, I knew exactly what the final result was meant to look like. I tried to handicap myself as much as possibly, and thankfully the universe was standing by to help out. 

A 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’ve made a smaller tart. To be safe, I gave myself a 2 hour time limit (half an hour less than the competitors), but secretly aimed to do it in 1 hour and 45 minutes. 
• The judging: I still have a distinct lack of gingham altar and (thankfully) Paul Hollywood in my life. My partner did the honours again, and I learned that I need to turn off the television for a meaningful response. 
• 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. This week…I lacked some vital equipment. 

Tarte Aux Pommes

The 2 hour timer begins and I immediately grab my baking scales to weigh out my ingredients for the pastry. They refuse to turn on. Then they turn on, but immediately turn off again. Then they turn on, and turn themselves off as soon as I add any weight. Then (I might have imagined this bit) they give me the finger. I stare at them blankly and have a minor, quiet, mental breakdown. I turn the timer off. I continue staring. My partner offers to go and acquire me a new set of scales. I refuse the offer, and decide that my American-style measuring cups and eyeballs are somehow going to make this recipe work. Once again, it’s time to forge blindly ahead. 

The 2 hour timer begins, again. I put what I think is 150g of flour and 50g of icing sugar into the mixer, with a vague 75g of butter. (Those little 50g notches on the butter packet are occasionally handy.) Prue’s recipe, I learn afterwards, calls for pâte brisée. I’ve gone with pâte sucrée - a sweeter version - largely because I can remember how to make exactly the right amount for my tart tin. When the pastry has vaguely come together, I add an egg and it starts to look like a dough. I could have been delicate, and made this by hand, but honestly I was feeling particularly lazy. With 7 minute down, my pastry is in the freezer chilling. 

I dice a couple of tiny apples and one decent sized one and get the puree going, with a squeeze of lemon juice and a sprinkle of sugar. I don’t think to add any extra water. It’s fine, honest. There’s no way the pastry’s ready to roll at this point, so I start on the frangipane. I have a recipe in my head for frangipane, and as it requires 150g of ground almonds and that’s the exact amount I have, I don’t think to scale it back. I put what I hope is 100g each of butter and sugar in the mixer, add 2 eggs and the bag of ground almonds. I have made too much frangipane. I’m distinctly lacking Calvados, but I’ve got a good glug of brandy left in the cupboard. Most of it goes in the frangipane. The last swig goes in my coffee, for luck. 

With time ticking away, I roll out my slightly too-soft pastry dough and line the baking tin. There’s absolutely no chance, at this point, of baking it without it shrinking to nothing, so with 25 minutes gone I stick it back in the freezer. All of the bakers this week left their pastry edges untrimmed until after the blind bake - it’s the easiest way to avoid shrinkage but it’s not the “proper” way of doing things. It is, however, how I also do it, and I like seeing an amateur technique just sort-of work. 

While faffing with the pastry, I realise I’ve neglected my apple puree. The liquid’s cooked out and it’s starting to colour. Luckily, my wealth of professional experience has taught me something important - it’s not burnt, just caramelised. (I’ve used that excuse plenty.) I really want to get things baking, but for now, all I can do is finely slice apples. My wrist takes the time to remind me that after a decade of working in kitchens, gripping a knife for too long (say, while trying to cut perfectly thin apple slices) is bad for me. This reminder comes in the form of a mild amount of agony. I take a swig of coffee to steel myself, forgetting that I added a generous slug of brandy. It’s not the worst surprise. 

After ten minutes in the freezer, it’s time to blind bake the tart. I go to line it with baking parchment. I realise that I do not have baking parchment. I resort to tin foil and make a mental note to cut the baking time down. (Foil does weird things to raw pastry, don’t ask me why.) I also am very much not the sort of person who own ceramic baking beans. I probably never will be. Instead, I use rice to weigh it down, because I’m sensibly thrifty. With 37 minutes gone, my pastry case is blind baking. I continue slicing apples and crying. The pastry gets ten minutes with the foil, and 5 without. It’s not ideal, but I’ve accepted that what will be, will be. I start spooning in frangipane. It’s slightly too much frangipane. I’m fine with that. I’ve made my peace with it. With 55 minutes gone, the next layer is back in and baking, and I’ve sliced two apples. I start worrying it’s not enough, and start on a third. After ten minutes, the frangipane seems to have set, and I’m ready for the final layers of apple faff. 

My caramelised puree is in, and I start delicately placing my apple slices. Prue’s recipe called for dipping them in a lemon syrup first. It’s one of those extra steps you can do with an apple tart, but you can also skip. I’ve skipped it - not so much for time but out of sheer laziness. Miraculously, despite my usual lack of precision, the tart looks like it might be quite pretty. I have definitely sliced too many apples. There’s a step of brushing the whole thing with melted butter here that I’ve also skipped. It’s something I do with apple tarts sometimes - if I’ve remembered to melt some butter. I have not remembered to melt some butter. I’ve made my peace with it. 

With an hour and 18 minutes down, my tart is in the oven. The final step is the nappage. Nappage is just a fancy term for a simple glaze to finish a tart - often apricot based. The pectin in jam sugar, or in ready-made jam, acts as a setting agent for the glaze. Bake Off had the contestants making it themselves, with fresh apricots. I always like to stick to the challenges as set, and don’t take shortcuts if the contestants can’t. However, it’s fucking November. Fresh apricots are not to be had. As this isn’t so much a key component as another “filling screen time with something other than the bakers staring into their oven”, I take the shortcut and water down some cheap apricot jam, simmering it and then straining it. If it helps, I feel very bad about cheating and will appropriately self-flagellate later. 

Finally, with just 21 minutes left on the clock, my apple tart is as perfectly baked as I hoped. I take it out of the oven and remember that I am, in fact, an idiot. I didn’t trim off the excess pastry after the blind bake. It’s still there, dangling accusingly. I take as much off as I can manage without destroying the tart, and accept the imperfection. It doesn’t do to be too precise. I dab on the apricot glaze and carefully faff about transferring the tart to the plate. There are 16 minutes left. I’ve quietly managed my hour and 45 minute goal and take a second for a smug celebration. Only a second though, then it’s back to rage at my impotent scales. Still, I have certainly made a tart. 

The Judging

If nothing else, things are looking less cursed this week. 

My partner’s thoughts:

Appearance: 10/10

Flavour: 8.5/10  

“It’s good.” (The best that could be mustered while watching The Mandalorian.)

My thoughts:

It could definitely stand to be neater, but that would be going against who I fundamentally am. I’m giving the whole thing a 9/10 overall. It’s delicious, but there’s definitely too much frangipane. At this point, having written this pile of nonsense, the word frangipane has lost all meaning. Could it have been better with an extra fifteen minutes? If I’d bothered with the syrup and the butter? Possibly. But there would have been more washing up, and I don’t deserve that. 

This felt like a fair challenge! There was a decent amount of time allowed, the techniques aren’t something totally foreign to an amateur baker, and I’d assume most would be able to conjure up a mental image of a fine french apple tart. It’s nice to know that Bake Off is still capable of being nice. 

Next week - it’s the grand final. I assume nonsense will abound. 

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