And so to the final challenge.
On first glance it looks a little simple if I’m completely honest. It’s not as if scones and victoria sponges are the most difficult things to cook, I’ve been cooking them since I was a child. The real challenge of this final task is all about timings, and I’m going to do my best to keep to the 3 hour time allocated to the bakers, and be as organised as possible.

Sticky fingers.
The first task was the make the Jam, as this needed time to cool and set so that it would hold in the sponges. Keeping to a similar recipe I used of the Swedish princess raspberry jam, it was just a case of making sure there were some nice pieces of fruit, but also keeping it relatively smooth. To bigger lumps meant it wouldn’t cool down faster enough, so a potato masher was called for near the end. When it came to cooling the jam, obviously I couldn’t put it in the fridge so instead I poured it into a large pyrex bowl to give it more surface area, than being stuck in a small hot pan.

The next time sensitive item of the task was the pastry for the lemon tarts. This pastry used lots of butter and icing sugar making it a very smooth and delicate dough and one that is pretty soft when it is first made. Its a little simpler that your regular pate sucre but it was basically the same principle, and very similar to the method behind the scone dough too.

Rub the flour, butter and the sugar together until it resembles breadcrumbs, which I normally find soothing, but not on the time schedule I’m working to! Next step was to add the liquid, in this case the eggs and a bit of water, and bring it altogether until you have a smooth ball of dough, all the while trying not to handle it too much! Then put it in the fridge to harden up, while I proceed to make more mass in kitchen.

Multi-task baking.
Whilst all the above was in progress the oven was warming up for the sponges. I usually revert to the all in one method when making a sponge just for ease and general laziness, but this time I’m going to do it properly. However, I will stop short of using a traditional wooden spoon, and use the electric hand mix, I am after all on a deadline! Cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy, then adding in the eggs one at a time, while keeping an eye on the jam that is boiling away! Sift in the flour (creating more mess) and fold in until it is well combined. Using an old fashioned ice cream scoop, divide the mix into the prepared cake tin. I then smoothed them over, so they are all even, as they are meant to be mini sponges not muffins. As you can see I don’t have the fancy push up tin, instead I’m using a deep muffin tin. Hopefully Mary Berry would understand, that my cupboard simply cannot fit another baking tin!

Its baking scone crazy.
As I said before scones are pretty easy, even a child can make them (which I did). It the same principle as the pastry only this time, after getting to the breadcrumb stage you want add the liquid and mix it in with a knife or a fork, but not touching it too much with your hands.

When a slightly sticky dough is formed you need to tip it out onto a floured surface and pat it down with your hands, not a rolling pin. Using a smaller cutter than I would usually use I proceeded to cut out 12 of these little pretties, placed the on the baking tray and waiting for the sponges to cook before being able to bake them. One important thing to mention when cutting the scones with a cutter, is not to twist the cutter. If you do, you risk the scones rising evenly. The same can be said for using an egg wash glaze, as we saw in a previous episode with the bread rolls.

Pastry panic, and no pics!
Now that almost half the challenge was done it was time to approach the rest of the lemon tarts. Again, this was pretty simple (whisk the eggs and add everything else), so I was wondering where the difficulty was in the challenge. When it came to the pastry it soon became clear. The rolling out was fine, although I would have preferred it to be more firmer. The amount of pastry that didn’t seem enough for 12 tarts so I had to make them pretty thin, which started to cause problems along with the delicacy of the dough. This all mean that there were some cases that need patching up even after going back in the fridge to harden, before blind baking. Note to self, never try to make pastry in a hot kitchen, it will only end in a hot and bothered mess!

Cooling chaos.
Once the sponges were out of the oven the scones went in, the pastry rolled, tins lined, and then the scones had to come out. It was then time for a little rearranging on my one cooling tray to fit everything on, while also having to put in the pastry cases to bake! While the cases where in the oven I had the chocolate melting in a bowl over hot water, and started to whisk the cream for the filling of the sponges. By this time I think I had about an hour left!

Pastry panic part 2.
With the timer beeping maniacally at me, which I have decided to call it Chetna, I quickly removed the baking beans from the cases. Some of the beans then promptly spilled over the kitchen floor, narrowly missing my already flour covered feet. Underneath the beans my already delicate pastry showed more imperfections. Some of them had cracked and others had melted where they were thinnest. Gritting my teeth, I turned down the temperature of the oven I put them back in for a few minutes more while I cut the sponges. When the minutes were up, I poured in the filling and observed how in some of them it simply ran out of ran out of the case and around the edge of the tin. Great, that’s going to be fun to get out!

Pipe and write.
The end end now in sight, although a lot more flustered than I would of liked, I started on the finishing touches. The Scones were simple just, plate up and arrange. The sponges, needed a generous helping of the jam, which was now at room temperature, ideally it would have been cooled more, but I only had about 30minutes left. On top of the jam needed to go the whipped cream, which, especially in the heat of the kitchen, I was careful not to over whip. Sandwich together with the top part of the sponge and then dust with sieved icing sugar (more mess) and present one another one of my cake stands.

Pastry panic part 3, this time with piping.
I would like to have said I saved the best to last, but that isn’t true. Unless you count the best disaster of the three bakes. As I didn’t have twelve of the same tins, I chose to bake 6 in fluted edge, lose bottomed tins, and the rest in the 6 round tins I had in the cupboard. Both of them caused issues, all because of the thin pastry! Some came out in one piece, the rest, well it looked like they’d been for a bumpy ride in a car, while sliding around a tray! Choosing to carry one, with the last 5minutes, I hastily piped over the chocolate, and wrote in my best french.

Simple tasks but a test of timing and work surface!
Well I have to admit I was glad when this one was over. It’s just a shame I didn’t feel as pleased with it as I have done the previous challenges, especially as it was the last one. Simple is one thing but don’t be fooled by timings. One can never have enough time with baking, also there is, and never will be enough work surface my kitchen!

The first of the two final challenges was Vienoisseries. This term was a little confusing at first as it is not something that you generally see these baked goods called in the shops. Basically in laymen’s terms it mean lamented dough pastries, commonly known to you and me as croissants or danishes.

As this was the final week, the judges decided to up their game even more by asking the bakers to make 2 different flavours of pastries. Rich chose to do make two different types of dough, which was definitely daring. At first I thought I would do the same, but after reading a bit about these types of dough, I chose to stick with the same dough for both. I decided to make two of my favourites type of croissants, pain aux chocolat which reminds me of camping holidays in France as a child, and Almond croissants.

The first part of the task was to make the dough. This dough required time to prove, along with rolling in the butter and an 8 hour prove in the fridge over night. Basically don’t make this dough with a plan to eat it ion the same day! Measuring out the ingredients took a longer time that usual, due to the vast quantity, plus, due to only having one mixer I couldn’t make them both at the same time. But then again, who has two mixers in their house?! The technique to making these croissant turned out to be relativity easy, is a just a little time consuming. The flour, yeast, salt and sugar are all added to the bowl and the water was added while the mixer was on a slow speed, then after a few minutes the speed was increased and it was left to do its work for about 6-8minutes. After the time was up I was left with a smooth, stiffish dough that needed to wrapped in clingfilm and chilled for an hour, the first of many hours!

While the dough was chilling in the fridge I go a move on with the butter. Each batch of dough required just over one patt of butter, which needed to be rolled out to a very specific measurement.

Butter Bashing
As with the Koign Ammans, the layer of butter needs to the an exact size and thickness, that is then folded into the dough, which has been rolled out to a specific measurement too. Trying to bash the butter into the exact measurements certainly released some of the tension that had built up over the past weeks, but not without it its own problems. The warmth of my hands made the butter nice and supple at first, but this soon changed and it became difficult to guarantee the thickness of the butter through out. Once both layers of butter were as precise as I could get them, I decided the best thing to do was to stick them in the freezer for a quick blast to harden up, trying to keep them as level as possible.

Folding, folding, folding
Now that the dough was rolled to the exact measurements of 60x20cm, the now rigid butter layer was recovered from the fridge. As it turned out the butter was not as level as I first though and hoped, which meant one of it was thinner than the other and in fact crumpled slightly. Once the butter was placed on the dough I have to crack the crumpled side which meant it was even less even than the rest of the butter. My only hope was to proceed as if nothing was different and hope that the numerous folding of the pastry would even out the layers.

The process of the pastry folding is the exact same principle as puff pastry, fold it in thirds and place in the fridge to harden for and hour before turning and rolling and folding again. The difference with this pastry is that after you have done this 3 times, you have to leave it in the fridge to prove, for eight hours! This meant that with the first set of folds with an hour in between, the first step of this pastry takes 12 hours, and a late night for me!

Pillows of pastry!
Oh good lord I really wasn’t prepared for what I was greeted with in the morning! The boyfriend had looked in the fridge before me and warned me that there had been some dramatic developments with the dough. Honestly what kind of dramatic thing could a dough do? Well inflate to the 3 times the size of the pastry you left in the fridge the previous night, and turning into giant pastry pillows

Fill me up…
As I said at the start I decided to go with a family favourite, Pain aux Chocolat, and my favourite sneaky indulgence of an Almond croissant. The first is simple enough, good chocolate, cut into strips, but a thats a little boring, so to pimp it up a bit I decided to add a little kick. Using a cupboard staple of dried chilis, I thought it would be interesting to sprinkle a few of the flakes along the strip of chocolate going in.

The Almond croissant are my little treat to myself once a month, on my way to work. I love the creamy texture mixed with the delicate pastry and the crunchy almond slices on the top. I had lots of almonds left over from the previous challenges with baklava and marzipan, plus I thought I would add a few extras…Making this was nice, easy and pretty low maintenance, especially compared to the dough, basically everything is chopped, whizzed and mixed in the trusty food processor. What you’re left with is something yummy and paste like in consistency, that you have to avoid eating!

Cut, measured and rolled.
Now we’re on the home stretch of these little darlings, it was time to grab the ruler again, I never thought I would a ruler in the kitchen this much, and start the final rolling. For the Almond croissants the dough needed to be rolled and cut into triangles, once again measured precisely. The dough was then painted on with the yummy almond paste and rolled up from wide end to pointy. Finished of with a final a pasting on the top and sprinkled with the all important flakes almonds, these little darlings were now done. The Chocolate ones required less mathematics as they were just the rectangles. The chocolate strips were them placed along the short side of the rectangle, and in half of them I sprinkled the before mentioned chilli flakes. They were than rolled up into little logs, and placed on the baking trays along with the almonds ones, left to prove 2 hours. Once again this is not a recipe to do if you are on a time limit, so I feel a lot of sympathy for the GBBO bakers.

Baste & bake
After 2 hours they got the final prep before the oven, a gentle basting of the all important egg wash for that shiny golden glaze, which a croissant is simply naked without!

Chocolate Roulette and Almond Delight
They looked good, if a little uneven, especially the almond croissants, but they tasted yummy. The addition of the chilli was a little daring, especially as after the baking I couldn’t remember which ones they were, plus I had forgotten how spicy those dried chilli flakes can be! Throughout the bake it became clear that the rolling up of the pastries themselves could have been tighter, and that the end seam needed to be underneath them, otherwise they unrolled. Both pastries had a good lamination, especially the chocolate ones. I won’t be averse to making these again, but next time it’ll just the one batch of dough.

The remaining unbaked croissants that were frozen and baked beautifully and the flavour was richer, definitely something to bare in mind for parties!

Wow what a result, it’s not like it was unpredictable, but still a little surprising.  But before we get ahead of ourselves lets get back to the show.

Ahhh what is it with the increase in the amount of the bakes needed for the challenges? Two for signature and now three entirely different bakes for the technical! Bloody hell, I think I’ll have to buy a wig to hide the grey hairs, bake with a bottle of wine on hand and have a party to get rid of it all!

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Monday night was filo fandango night!! Making a quick exit from work it was an earlier train home than usual to get a start on this potentially catastrophic bake.

Time consuming prep
The ingredients for this week took a lot longer to sort out as I had to do two different flavours. In the end it was taking too much time so I just ended up putting the ingredients on the table without measuring the, so sorry for the slapdash photo.

The filo was the first thing to get made as it needed time to rest before being rolled and stretched. Looking for a recipe for the filo called for some more in depth research than just going to the bbc site. Even though they asked the bakers on the show to make their own pastry, the recipes the bbc site say to use ready made, cheeky! Eventually I found one I felt happy with, all be it substituting red wine vinegar for white wine.

Choosing to use the quicker less manual method, the kenwood chef was bought down from the cupboard to work its magic. I don’t think my kenwood has been used quite so much as I have in the last month! All the ingredients for the filo were emptied and poured into the mixer and left on a medium setting to knead and combine for 8 minutes. When the time was up I was left with a silky smooth dough, which I hope is enough to make two batches of baklava. With the dough made, I left it to rest while I got on with the two fillings.

Nutty, nutty, nuttiness
The first flavour I have gone with is pistachio, rose and cardamom. I know that Richard baked this on the show, but it us classic and I love pistachios. The syrup consisted of sugar, honey, water and peppercorns, all boiled together until the sugar is dissolved and a syrup consistency is reached. Once I was happy with the thickness of the syrup, the heat was turned off, the rose water was added and it was left to cool.

The pistachios needed finely chopping in a food processor, along with some icing sugar and ground cardamom. I don’t keep ground cardamom in my cupboard, I only have whole pods, so a little elbow grease was needed to get the ground spice I wanted. After one final whiz of the machine, the pistachio filling was ready

Next it was the Apricot and almond filling, with spiced orange blossom syrup. I know that this ingredients picture I also included walnuts, but after revising the recipe and the amount, I decided to just go wight the almonds. The almond were processed in the same way as the pistachios, with a bit of icing sugar and the spices. I then added the chopped dried apricots and gave them a final blend together in the processor to ensure there everything was well combined.

The orange syrup for this was the same base and process as before but instead of the peppercorns, it was a cinnamon stick and some orange zest. Once the thicker syrup had formed, the orange flower blossom water was added and it was left to cool

Tradition vs Modern
Now that the fillings and syrups were made, the more complicated stage of the bake could commense. I removed the rested dough from the bowl and divided it into 6, thereby giving me slightly more manageable piece to roll out. Removing one of the dough ball for the rolling I covered the rest with a damp tea towel to stop them from drying out. In preparation for the rolling I had covered the dining table with a tablecloth and weighed it down by tying a dumbbell weigh to each corner with a piece of ribbon. I was my hope that his would stop the tablecloth from moving around….not that it did. In my research into making baklava and rolling out filo pastry, I had seen that a lot of people used a long wooden pole for the rolling, much longer than you average rolling pin. As I was trying to be authentic as possible I asked my dad to pick me up something similar on his morning trip to the hardware store. He ended coming back with something slightly longer than requested so there was a bit of hacksaw action to get it right. Now armed with my regular rolling pin, and the longer wooden pole I started to go to work on the dough ball waiting on my floured tablecloth.

I started with the regular rolling pin to get the dough to a shape that was larger and more suitable to longer pole. from the videos it was clear that the rolling with the longer pin takes practice but I thought I would give it a go. The pastry needed to be well dusted with flour and then almost rolled up onto the pin. The next step was to roll the pin, with the pastry on, thereby stretching and rolling the dough at the same time. Practice is definitely needed of this and mine just got in a mess and ended up sticking to itself. Instead of continuing with this method I just use both the rolling pins in the more traditional method, and my hands to stretch it out further. There were a few hole at the edge and the sides were not as neat as I would have like, but that is nothing that a knife can’t fix.

Baklava 1.0
With the first ball rolled out I divided it into three rectangle and laid it into the pre-greased tin, brushed it with melted butter, and placed the next layer on top, until all 23 were in the tin. I covered the tin with another damp cloth to prevent the pastry from drying out and got on with the rest of the dough. In total I had about 4 layers in the tin before adding the first of 3 layers of almond mix and pastry. Once the final layer of nuts was added I topped it off with another 5 layers of pastry, along with more melted butter. As you can see this version of baklava was cut in the tin to the shape of triangles which meant the pistachio would have to be something different.

Baklava 2.0
The process for the second batch of baklava was the same again for the pastry, but instead of cutting it into three before filling it was left as one long piece. I decided to go the concertina roll for this baklava which meant sprinkling the filling in a long heaped line along the longest side of the pastry. The next stage of the roll was a little trickier than just layering the pastry. The technique to getting this style of baklava is to roll the baklava around a stick and then push the ends towards the middle creating a squashed roll. Ideally I would have used a long piece of dole for the start of the roll but in the a science of it I used  two chop sticks instead.

Once it was rolled up, and squashed, which was easier without the sticks, I had to trim the edges so that it would fit inside the greased tin. This is why there are a few oddly shaped rolls I the picture below. Once all of the rolls were made they were butted again and placed in the oven, along with be almond triangles for 25-30mins, giving me enough time to eat some dinner!

Golden parcels
When the time was up and the baklava had a nice golden colour they were removed from the oven. Once out, they were left in the tin and he now cooled syrup was poured over the top. It was important to ensure that every individual piece was covered to ensure consistency in each piece, in both flavour as well as stickiness!

I left them to cool ovenight so that they would cool completely, sitting in and absorbing the syrup as they did so. In the morning I removed the baklava from their respective tins and recut them. I’m not sure why, but I forgot to pre cut the rolls, which meant I was in danger of crumbling them with my knife, but luckily they were ok, maybe the pastry is too thick?!

Small things
There are a few things that I will do differently when I make this again.

1. Sieve the orange syrup, even though it looks pretty, the the left over rind enhances the orange flavour and masks some of the others
2. Grind the cardamom finer, as in some pieces the flavour is stronger than in others.
3. Remember to pre-cut all the piece before baking as it’ll helps the syrup to soak into the middle