The Not-So-Great Bake Along Week 7

Last week, I said two important things about Bake Off. First, I said that the Botanicals Week technical was too basic, and worried I’d be eating my words. I was right. Second, I said that if Saku goes, we riot. I’ve got torches and pitchforks at the ready, but I am a bit busy this weekend, so is everyone ok with waiting ‘til Monday to get the barricades up? Great. Ta. 

This week, it’s dessert week. The bakers faced creme caramels in the signature challenge. Which, on the one hand, is an absolutely fine test of a baker's skills, but on the other hand, really isn’t something that lends itself to gussying up with fancy flavours. The showstopper saw a meringue bombe - and not a single baker presented a bombe (technically). Instead, it was a parade of meringue containers encasing…stuff. Personally, if anyone tried to present me with that amount of meringue and expected me to enjoy myself, I would…well, politely eat it and pretend to enjoy myself. I’d be seething on the inside though - any meringue that needs that much structural integrity is going to taste like dry, sugary misery. A desert of a dessert. (My deepest apologies to every single reader.) 

And then, there was the spectacular cock-up of a technical challenge. Six orange and ginger syrup sponges were expected, and almost every baker presented six identical…piles of gloop. I am of the firm belief that if every single baker buggers up the challenge then that is the fault of the challenge, not the contestants. If every bake is under-proved, then the bakers weren’t given a decent amount of proving time. If every cake doesn’t taste enough of a particular ingredient, then the bakers should have been advised on how much of that ingredient to use. Watching people fail isn’t fun, it’s just mean, and the tone of this week’s Bake Off was just that - mean. Paul Hollywood smugly mocking the bakers for their gloop was immensely frustrating to watch, as was Prue Leith’s sad “we’re not angry, just disappointed” face. What’s more frustrating is that this was a doable challenge - even within the time frame! But once again, the bakers were set up to fail. This is becoming a familiar rant on these write-ups, so while I could easily go on for an extra page about a certain male judges Regina George attitude, I’ll skip ahead to the bake itself. 

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 had a feeling that this was a nasty challenge, so I stuck to the full time limit and full portions. 
• The judging: I still have a distinct lack of gingham altar and (thankfully) Paul Hollywood in my life. My partner’s doing the honours again this week, and very kindly came over earlier in the week so that I could clear my baking schedule for the weekend. 
• 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, again because I wanted to test the fairness of the challenge, I acquired some pudding tins. (This involved a brief nervous breakdown and paying almost a tenner for same-day delivery from Asda. I’m very mentally healthy.) 

Week 7 - Steamed Orange and Ginger Syrup Sponges

Try saying that five times fast. 

I had a couple of unfair advantages going into this week. The main was, of course, Paul Hollywood discussing the exact timings needed, out of earshot of the bakers. Apparently, there’s 20 minutes allowed for the syrup, and the sponges will need 40 minutes in the oven. That allows for a total half an hour of…faff. In theory. 

In practice, I’m not looking forward to starting with the syrup. The syrup, you see, begins with a caramel. Caramel and I are not friends. Caramel dislikes me. It likes to stick to pans and crystallise at me, then it points at me and laughs. I’m pretty sure caramel wrote rude things about me in the pub loos. Caramel thinks it’s better than me, you see.

Actually, for once, the caramel came out in my favour.  Thanks to Dan (who, now the riot-inducing Saku has left the tent, is one of my absolute favourites for the win) announcing the exact starting quantities, I know I need to get 50g of sugar and 3 tbsp of water in a pan for my starting caramel. Then I’ll need to add boiling water and a wedge of orange to turn it into syrup. Paul’s instructions involve adding extra sugar at that point as well. I don’t do this. It’s all fine. 

The website instructions also suggest 5 minutes for the initial caramel, then an additional 20 minutes for the syrup. Already, I’m side-eyeing these instructions. That adds up to more than the 20 minutes he suggests he’s allotted in the challenge. (Note that, once again, a total “takes x minutes” is lacking from the recipe on the website.) 

Unlike the other bakers, I’m willing to take my eye off the caramel and start making the sponges. A 3 egg cake batter looks about right for my pudding tins (who’re you calling pudding tins?) so 6 ounces of butter and sugar start creaming while I zest an orange into my 6oz of flour. And then the ginger. Oh, the ginger. If I have one particular loathing in life (actually, I have many, I’m a very bitter person) it’s chopping up stem ginger in syrup. No one’s hands should be that sticky. Of course, just as I’m chopping the ginger, my caramel has finally reached that perfect, deep golden colour. We are now 10 minutes into the challenge. Thankfully, the boiling water goes in before it can burn. I add 100ml, and it doesn’t seem like enough. I add another 100ml, and my orange wedge, and it suddenly seems like too much. I tell it to reduce to a syrup in decent time, and finish chopping the disgustingly sticky ginger. 

Cake mix ready, I throw a small glug of the ginger syrup into my slowly-reducing panful, just to show it what it wants to be. I stare at it, and swear. The syrup keeps reducing, at its own pace. Suddenly, magically, it’s ready. I am almost half an hour into the challenge - 1 hour and 2 minutes remain. 

Here’s where my “set up to fail” mutterings begin. Half an hour for the syrup. Now, admittedly, I worked with slightly different quantities compared to Paul Hollywood’s recipe. Also, my hobs might not be quite as efficient. But all of that really shouldn’t add up to a ten-minute discrepancy between myself and what the male judge expects of the bakers. 

I hastily spoon my syrup into pudding tins and realise that I’ve made just barely enough. Unlike the bakers, I have a handy cupboard just above me full of delicious things, and Lyle’s comes to the rescue as I add a splodge of golden syrup into each pudding tin. The cake batter goes in fine, but the hell of fiddly baking parchment and tin foil lids, and string around each pudding, takes up yet more time. Still, with 54 minutes to go, the sponges are in their pre-heated bain-marie in my preheated oven. A round of washing up occurs, and the bakers have too much of my sympathy this week for me to be annoyed at them. 

I firmly resent serving syrup sponges with extra syrup on the side, but I must perform the same camera-filling faff expected of the bakers. The juice of an orange, an equal amount of sugar (I’m in a mood so I don’t bother weighing) and a hefty glug of that ginger syrup go into a pan to be forgotten about as the syrup simmers. 

Custard. Now, custard I can make, as I attested to all the way back in biscuit week. I haven’t made creme anglaise in a long time (look, I can, but if it’s between whisking and the feral eating of the premade stuff, I prefer the latter), but I like making creme pat to layer into fancy tarts, and it’s basically the same minus flour/cornflour. I set 200ml of milk and 150ml of cream to simmer, along with a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste (No, I still can’t justify buying proper vanilla pods), and set to whisking up 4 egg yolks with 70g of sugar until they’re pretty and pale and doing that ribbon thing. At this point, my kitchen is full of the smell of that lovely orange and ginger syrup. That will prove to be an issue. 

When the milk simmers, I whisk it into the eggs, and stick the whole lot back on the hob to thicken, watching it like a hawk. All I can smell is orange and ginger. The custard looks like it’s coming to a perfect consistency so I yank it off the hob. I can’t resist a taste, and have myself a massive spoonful. That spoonful was a mistake. Unfortunately, the milk in the fridge was on the turn. It’s the sort of thing you don’t smell if your kitchen reeks of orange and ginger syrup. I could bloody taste it though - I appear to have made a custard reminiscent of pastry week’s blue cheese sauce. 

With 20 minutes to go, I send my partner on an emergency milk run, and thank the fates for the unlikely set of circumstances that led to me living directly above a handy shop. He returns, heroically, milk held aloft, and I knock up a second batch of custard. Of course, as I’m watching said custard like a hawk as it thickens on the hob, the 40 minute timer goes off for my sponges. I opt to ignore it. I’m fairly certain overcooking won’t be an issue. Custard perfected, and 11 minutes to go, I check my sponges. They seem cooked, but I’m not confident. I decide to give them an extra five minutes, and change my mind two minutes later when I remember that getting the string and silly lids off them is going to be a pain. The sponges come out. I begin the demoulding process. It involves a lot of swearing and singing of fingertips, but with 2 minutes left on the timer, I appear to have six sponges and no piles of gloop. 

The Judging

I’m not fussed about a score for appearance this week. It looks like a syrup sponge. That’s all I could really ask for. 

My partner’s thoughts:

10/10. (That’s three tens in a row. I swear I’m not paying him.) 

“I’m speechless.” (clearly not though.)

“Tastes like an orange and ginger sponge.” 

“I want to eat all six.”

My thoughts:

9/10. I’m taking a point off because the custard wasn’t as thick as I’d like it to be. And because I made cheesy custard.  

Was this a fair challenge? Well, I think I’ve made my feelings on that quite clear. But clearly, it could have been. I managed to knock up six pretty perfect steamed syrup sponges in the time frame given, and every single one of those bakers could have done the same if they’d just been told how best to use their time. Instead, the Great British Bake Off continues mean-spirited, and has a lot of wasted gloop to show for it. 

Next week, it’s party week! Perhaps I’ll wear a hat. 

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