Woohoo the bake of is back and so is my baking drive.  It’s been a little slow of late, what with the pressures of work and starting to plan a wedding! That’s right peeps the boyfriend proposed and as baking isn’t great for the waistline I’ve decided to do things a little differently this year.  Instead of doing the Signature and Technical bakes each week, I’ve decided to just do the Showstopper.  In theory this should be simpler, but I am prepared to eat my word as well as my cake!

This episode see Mel & Sue back to their old tricks and there is no shortage of innuendo, especially with during the first task. A week of throw back bakes with traditional cakes begins…

Signature Bake: Madeira Cake
This is one of my favourite cakes.  Mum always baked it for birthday cake as its a good solid base, so it’ll definitely be making an appearance in the wedding cake 🙂

Traditionally, according to Mary this cake should be a close texture, soft, domed and with a good crack on the top. Some of the bakers chose to go with the traditional citrus flavours, but others got a little experimental sometimes with unsuccessful results. Alvin decided to add figs, great for moisture in an often dry dense cake, but the piece were too big and they sank to the bottom.  Matt decided to do a gin & tonic glaze, unfortunately according to Mary, there simply wasn’t enough gin!  One of the more successful variations, which I’d like to try, was Tamal’s Pistachio and rose.

Technical Bake: Frosted Walnut Cake
Not a popular cake, because of the walnuts, but still pretty impressive.  The main thing seemed to be the size of the walnuts. Too big they sink to the bottom, too small and they get lost in the sponge when you still want texture.  In general this is a pretty easy cake, the difficulty for me, and what proved to be for the bakers would be the caramel for the candied nuts and the frosting. The frosting seemed similar to an Italian meringue, but instead of adding hot molten sugar to cook the egg white, it was all cooked while whisking it over boiling water. Only a few of this weeks bakers seemed to do the frosting correctly, with the main problem being that this was too granular, I can only assume it wasn’t cooked for long enough.

Showstopper Bake: Black Forest Gateaux
A 1970’s classic, made up of distinctive layers sponge, cream, cherries and the vital ingredient, Kirsch. Three, or in Floras case four layers, of sponge, traditionally chocolate. The sponge needs to be kept light and the rest of the fillings can be rich and dense.  Genoise sponge seems like the obvious choice but the question is, do I bake 3 cakes or 1 large cake and slice it up?

I’ve been thinking about how I can pimp this cake up, so it’s good to see what every one else has done to help develop my ideas.  I like the idea of the cherry generate that Tamal uses, though I don’t think I’ll attempt the chocolate wrap.  Stu’s use of mascarpone it a nice twist on the cream, but unless you have the right texture of sponge, it’ll just be to heavy. Some of the best chocolate work came from Ugne, but at the detriment of her sponge.

This will be a first for me, I like chocolate and cherries, but it’s a bit of a decadent cake to make on a regular basis.  The key this week will be to keep it traditional but at the same time give it a bit of a kick, and not just  with the alcohol content. Chocolate tempering is not something I excel at so there’ll have to be a bit of research and swotting up this week. Texture, moisture and full flavour are the major players, I’ve jut got to make them all stand out.

Lets get down to business, episode one is out and that means 12 new bakers to get to know. For starters this is, for me, an episode to learn the names of everyone and try to pick out the strong contenders. From the outset Marie, who bakes everyday (who has time for that!), stands out as the a solid and steady baker, so no surprise she was star baker. Ones to look out for in my opinion, Tamal, Flora and Ugne. It was a bad week for Stu, but maybe he was just too experimental for the first week.  However he did come up with a new catch phrase which I will take with me and try to use “Holy Shenanigans!”

The best onliner this week came from Ugne with “My crack will show!”