The Not-So-Great-Bake-Along '24 - Week 6
Vegan Parkin
I am in mourning, and I would like everyone to respect my privacy at this difficult time. Nelly has left the tent. A moment of silence please.
Anyway! It’s Autumn Week! I was genuinely gutted to see Nelly go this week. I don’t even have a solid opinion on who should have gone, I just love her and want her on my telly forever. Most importantly, I will absolutely be attempting to make that floral antler tiara situation for myself.
Apologies for the lack of an attempt last week. I was completely in the weeds polishing up the manuscript for my next book (American Teen Dramas - From Sunnydale to Riverdale) and also I refuse to make my own filo pastry because I’m not a masochist. Well, not that much of a masochist.
But I’m back, with a vegan parkin. I didn’t hate this as a technical challenge! Mostly because I love parkin. Honestly, I love autumn. Turning leaves and big jumpers and bonfire smells are wonderful. Parkin is a cake I get quite romantic about, and I blame Ella Risbridger’s gorgeous book Midnight Chicken for that - her recipe is perfect and her description of Parkin as a cake to take up into the rafters of a barn, alongside a bag of apples and a good book, delights me beyond all measure. It’s a cake that travels well, a cake for adventures, and a cake for when the weather’s turned. Maybe finishing that damned (very good please buy it when it comes out thank you) book has mellowed me out, but this week’s challenge brought me joy.
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.
Autumn Week - Vegan Parkin
I start with the best intentions. I’m giving myself fifteen minutes to get the cake into the oven, as I want it to have plenty of time to cool. This time frame goes out of the window pretty quickly.
I have to admit, my vegan baking attempts have been hit-or-miss in the past, but I’m vaguely sure I know what I’m doing this time. 300g of everything seems like about the right amounts, and I start there.
150ml each of sunflower oil and oat milk go into a saucepan. I add 100g of sugar and 100g of golden syrup, and then stare at the red and black treacle tin and marvel at the glorious sight. I love a treacle tin. Sadly, I have to open the treacle tin and attempt to get 100g of treacle into this pan without making everything else in the kitchen sticky. I fail.
I dice a nub of ginger. It doesn’t look quite enough. I dice a second nub of ginger. I am not measuring this. Some things, like spices, ginger, garlic and my sins, should not be measured. The ginger goes in the pan, along with 100g of currants because I’d usually use chopped dates or prunes for a Parkin, but I don’t have any. I do have a massive bag of currants that I bought on a whim and I’m finding every possible way to use the damn things up. I leave the sugary situation to simmer and start on my dry ingredients.
I weigh out 300g of flour, and add 2tsp of baking powder straight away so that I don’t forget. I assemble my spices. I realise that I actually wanted to use less flour and add some oats to this situation, and attempt to scoop out 80g and replace it with oats without losing any of the baking powder. I trust that everything will be fine. I add dried ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg, measuring entirely with my heart - which means adding a lot. I want to add cloves, and only have whole cloves (which I acquired from my sister in exchange for two bay leaves and a cinnamon stick during a completely normal spice swap.) I throw a few in my pestle and mortar, and add a sprinkle of sugar to help grind the cloves down. My kitchen smells incredible, and I’m starting to wonder how early I can start mulling things. I add the cloves to the dry ingredients.
Something I am distinctly lacking for this recipe is a square take tin. I do, however, have a rectangular roasting tray and tin foil. I macgyver something akin to a square, if you squint at it, and delight at my cleverness. I then realise that 25 minutes have gone and the cake is very much not in the oven. I rapidly rectify this. My kitchen is a mess but the cake is baking!
I embark on making my own crystallised ginger. A pointless endeavour, and yet here I am, dicing another nub of ginger and leaving it to poach with sugar and water. It does this, just fine, unattended, for a decent amount of time. I take my eye off it. It crystallises, or ‘goes to shit’ - a technical term. I rescue it, coat the ginger in sugar, and dump the remaining syrup into some icing sugar in the hopes of making some icing. I have poured out too much icing sugar and made a hopeless goop. I add water. Now I have made a runny, hopeless goop. I add more icing sugar, and eventually end up with what I would call a usable gloop.
After 35 minutes, my cake seems cooked, and I grab it out with 27-ish minutes left on the timer. It has risen! It will not have cooled down by the time it needs to be cut and iced. I simply do not care. My kitchen smells of spices and sugar and I have cake. Successfully getting the challenge perfectly right is no longer a concern.
With 9 minutes to go, I cut the cake. It is still warm. Bits of it collapse. I accept their fate. As I feel like icing this at all is unnecessary, and was definitely just added for the sake of giving the contestants something to do, I ignore the concept of a piping bag in favour of chucking icing everywhere with a teaspoon. I will come to regret this when cleaning up.
I leave the cakes, icing dripping, on the cooling rack for as long as possible. I top them with bits of ginger. With a minute to go, I start plating them. There are a few more collapses. I hide them, in the middle of the plate. The timer goes off just as I place my last piece. I am done.
The Judging
My partner gives me 8/10 for visuals (he has noticed the collapses), and 9/10 for flavour. Apparently it tastes like Jamaican ginger cake and fruit cake smashed together. I’ll take it.
I’m giving myself a 9/10. Honestly, I don’t care about the collapses. I’ve made a delicious cake, and a successful vegan cake - something I’ve only managed a few times before. I’d give it a 10 if it wasn’t for the extraneous icing.
This felt like a completely fair challenge, for a change, if a bit dull. A decent knowledge of baking means knowing why the ingredients are there, what purpose they serve and how to replace them - so a vegan cake shouldn’t be an insurmountable challenge. The icing and ginger topping were pointless, but that’s also how I feel about Paul Hollywood! Luckily, he will never read this blog.
Next week - desserts. I suspect, based on the preview, a spotted dick. I’m sure the write-up will be perfectly restrained.
Shameless self-promotion time - I’ve written a book! Friends and the Golden Age of the Sitcom is available now in all sorts of places, including signed copies on my website! (Please buy it so I can buy more wool for knitting ridiculous autumn jumpers.)
Extraneous Icing is this week’s band name