The Not-So-Great-Bake-Along - Week 5

Finally, some good television!

It was Chocolate week on Bake Off, and I absolutely love chocolate. (Not white chocolate, which was a bit of a shame for this week’s challenge, but we can’t have everything.) 

What a relief to see a chocolate week that clearly wasn’t filmed in temperatures that would make the tent feel like Satan's sweaty armpit. Once again, I’m raising a glass to the showstopper title. Making ‘A Chocolate Fondue Display Over 30cm Tall with a Prominent Baked Element’ sound like a Normal Thing is a testament to the wonderful nonsense of Bake Off. 

My absolute favourite moment of the episode? Aaron, through gritted teeth, congratulating Jasmine on her well-earned praise during the showstopper judging. I think his star baker was absolutely deserved, but I’m also pretty sure if he hadn’t won the accolade, he was going to start buying contraptions from Acme and painting a cartoon tunnel on the wall in an attempt to sabotage Jasmine. 

Anyway, the technical! After a few weeks of fantastically dull icing, what an absolute delight to finally get creative with a tart. Let’s bake!

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, however, considered purchasing some 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. 

Chocolate Week - White Chocolate Ganache Tart

We’re trying new things again for the technical. This week, instead of the vague recipe, bakers were just given the outline of ‘a set white chocolate ganache tart’, and given five minutes to pick whatever flavours they wanted from a gingham pantry. Is this just a signature challenge with less prep time? Is this actually just Masterchef? Maybe, but let’s go with it. 

In an attempt to give myself a similar challenge to the bakers, I gave myself five minutes, while watching the show, to decide what I was going to make, with the caveat that I was allowed to pivot if I couldn’t find the correct ingredients. (I did find the correct ingredients, but between Asda’s limitations and my own piss-poor organisational skills, it somehow required going on a lovely damp stroll to four different shops. A delight.) 

So - my plan. White chocolate, raspberries, pistachios. I’m not reinventing the wheel, I know, but it was definitely going to work. 

The time starts and I immediately get to work on the pastry. Here’s where I did cheat a little. Usually, I don’t look at any kind of recipe for these challenges. However, I did (a couple of years ago) spend a good chunk of time developing a really good chocolate shortcrust recipe, and I did quickly flick back through my recipe notebook to check those quantities, since I’ve already put the work in on it. 

So, flour, icing sugar and cocoa powder go into the mixer. For the best pastry, I should do this by hand, but I’ve only got two and a half hours and a lot of things need to chill and set. Butter goes in, an egg binds it all together, and a few splashes of milk make it a dough. I immediately roll it out, line my case and stick it in the fridge, telling it to chill. The longer it can rest, the better, but I haven’t got long. With just over 2 hours to go, it’s in the oven, merrily blind baking away. I did not think to check the cook times when I flicked back to that recipe, and it’s very difficult to tell when something this dark is cooked, but I trust my instincts.

As I got to develop this recipe myself instead of interpreting someone else’s, I’ll explain my choices as I go: the chocolate pastry adds a little darker chocolate element, something to add a bit of crunch, and a bit of bitterness against the sweet. 

Next up, the star of the show - white chocolate ganache. Have I mentioned I can’t stand white chocolate? I have, therefore, never made a white chocolate ganache. I’m not letting that stop me. I go with the ‘measure-with-my-heart’ logic, chopping up a bunch of chocolate and heating up some cream. I had an upsetting experience with a split dark chocolate ganache earlier this year, and as a result I basically just stare at this pot of cream, daring it to get too hot. It doesn’t. I pour it on the chocolate. Things seem to be going ok. 

Next, raspberry coulis. I put a lot of thought into this process, and by that I mean I dump a couple of punnets of raspberries into a pan, chuck on some sugar, splash in some water, and leave it cooking away. I whisk away the last few lumps of not-quite-melted chocolate in my ganache with a little help from the heat of a bain-marie, and my ganache is ready, just as my tart case appears to be fully baked. One hour down.  

I realise at this point that I’m going to need my freezer to chill everything in time. I do not have room in my freezer. I chuck everything from one drawer into a coolbox and tell it not to defrost. I think it listens. 

With the case almost at room temperature, I tumble in another punnet of raspberries, and gently, delicately, haphazardly, cover them up with the ganache. Into the freezer it goes. 

Now, I can pay attention to my raspberries. They’re cooked. Good for them. I faff about mushing them through a sieve, and think about better ways I could be spending my time. I put the now-seedless sauce back on the heat, and soak a leaf of gelatine before whisking it in. So far, so good. I set that mix in the fridge to chill. I panic, and start thinking one leaf of gelatine isn’t enough. I get the mixture back out, heat it up again, and add a second. I am inefficient, but with an hour to go, the next element is almost ready.

I grab the tart back out, and now bother to trim the excess pastry off the edges. The white chocolate is just about set, so I pour over the raspberry goodness and shove it back in the freezer, reminding it to stay flat, ish.

Thought process at this point: white chocolate ganache is sweet and rich, and needs acidity as a counterbalance - that’s why it’s so often paired with raspberries. The fresh raspberries will add an interesting textural difference, while the set raspberry coulis on top of the ganache allows some of the flavour contrast in every bite, and a nice colour contrast with the white ganache and dark pastry. 

With 48 minutes to go, it’s time to make the final toppings. Whipped cream, sweetened with just a little bit of honey, is going to play off the white chocolate beautifully, and cover up any wonkiness in the tart’s appearance. It comes together in minutes. 

Next, crystallised pistachios. These will give another layer of crunch and bittersweetness, and pair nicely with the pastry. (See, there’s logic to some recipes!) Also, I saw a guy make crystallised pistachios on Saturday Kitchen last weekend and it looked really easy. 

In theory, all I need to do is heat up some sugar and water, toss in the pistachios and stir, and the syrup will crystallise around them. I’m basically supposed to be fucking up a caramel on purpose. I can do that. I fuck up caramel all the time. 

Somehow, it does not work. I have, instead, made a half-decent pistachio praline, which is not what I wanted. I quickly chuck in some extra sugar and a splash of cold water, and I get closer to the desired effect. 

Now, the fun bit. I cool off my nuts, make a thousand dirty jokes about them in my head, then get them into a bag and smash the hell out of them with a rolling pin. With fifteen minutes to go, everything is almost ready, and some of my repressed rage has been taken care of. 

Finally, I grab the tart out of the freezer. Miracle of miracles, everything has set. I pipe on whipped cream in a pattern I’m dubbing ‘intentional chaos’, sprinkle over my nuts, and get it on a plate. With seven minutes left on the clock, I’m done! 

The Judging

My partner has requested that the contents of the tart be a surprise. (I thought he knew me pretty well already), which means along with judging I get the delight of watching him try and work out what I’ve made. He guesses everything possible except raspberries. There are visible raspberries in the tart. When I point it out, he says ‘well I knew it was a berry.’ He’s impressed though, and I get a ‘really fucking good’. When pressed for numbers, he gives a 10 for appearance, and a 9.5 for flavour, knocking off half a point because the pastry’s a little tough. (I think he just doesn’t want to give me two 10s in case I start getting an ego. Too late.) 

I’m giving myself a 9 for each. It’s delicious, but maybe the pastry isn’t quite perfect and the pistachios aren’t quite the texture I imagined. And while it’s a very pretty tart (as am I), there’s maybe a little roughness around the edges. 

 Was this a fair challenge? On the one hand, yes. It’s totally doable in the time limit, and I don’t think not giving the bakers a pastry recipe is particularly harsh - shortcrust pastry is something I’d expect them all to know. Also, pastry and ganache are pretty good technical skills to test on.

On the other hand, this isn’t really a technical challenge. The contestants already have the Signature and the Showstopper to show what they can do, given some freedom. This should be a challenge that makes them all work under identical parameters - and taking that away makes this challenge kind of redundant. 

Next week, pastry! Based on the next-time-on, I will not be having fun.