The Not-So-Great-Bake-Along '24 - Week 7
Spotted Dick
It’s Dessert Week on the Great British Bake Off! Once again, I was so compelled while watching the episode to make literally anything other than the technical, and yet here we are. With a spotted dick.
It’s thoroughly established at this point that steamed puddings only exist as technical challenges to screw over the contestants with timings, so I went into this week with the massive advantage of knowing that I needed to steam my pudding for an hour and a half. I came out of it with a large spotted dick.
It was gutting to see Sumayah go home this week. She’s been amazing, and I’ve wanted to try all of her bakes. However, if Gill had gone instead, I might have rioted. Anyway, on to spotted dick.
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.
Dessert Week - Spotted Dick
I have never in my life made a spotted dick before. I have steamed a pudding, once or twice, but I’m unfamiliar with suet. This leaves me totally reliant on the little shown of the technical challenge and my ability to guess shit. Two hours and fifteen minutes on the timer.
I start by soaking some currants in boiling water and bicarb. If I was doing things properly, I’d be soaking them in orange juice or something. I can’t be bothered to juice an orange, quite frankly, and this will do.
The one thing I remember about making suet puddings is that I don’t need eggs. (I am not entirely sure where I know this from. I have simply absorbed the knowledge. I wish I could absorb something more useful.) That means I’m working on very similar principles to last week’s parkin. So, 300g of flour and a couple of teaspoons of baking powder get mixed with 150g of suet. I’m using the non-vegetarian kind, because my partner’s mother keeps donating me her excess groceries. She has also provided a single lemon. I zest it, and the orange that I couldn’t be bothered to juice, into the mixture, and chuck in the currants and 100g of sugar. An unmeasured shake of cinnamon joins the proceedings. I add vaguely 150g of milk to the bowl of nonsense, realise I’d lent on my scales funny and that I’ve actually added 200g of milk, shrug, and stir it together hoping for the best. The resulting bowl of goop does, vaguely, look like a dough rather than a cake batter. I assume I’ve not fucked up horribly.
I do not have a pudding basin, which I do feel is really the main thing wrong with my life. (Well, that and, y’know, everything else.) I have, instead, buttered a small mixing bowl. It does not look like I can get this much nonsense into the mixing bowl. I try, and miracle of miracles, it fits.
I begin the joyous pain in the arse of covering the pudding with foil and paper, hunting down string (I never don’t have string, but knowing where the string has taken up residence is another matter entirely), finding a pan big enough to hold my pudding and a plate, and generally making sure my dick is ready to steam. At the 1 hour 53 mark, my pudding is cooking. I’m on schedule, and I’ll have time to spare at the end.
As far as steamed pudding challenges go, this isn’t an incredibly unfair time limit. Assuming a contestant wants ten minutes to faff at the end, that still gives over half an hour to assemble the pudding and get it cooking. This is why I like Prue Leith.
Next, golden syrup. This is a less fair part of the challenge. Not that I think it’s particularly difficult to make, it’s just a pointless thing to make when it’s so readily available. The contestants have already been thoroughly tested on caramel, do they need to make another one? Do I?
I do, because I feel it is my duty to suffer alongside these total strangers. I’m assuming that the best way to make golden syrup is to make a caramel, and use that to flavour a sugar syrup. Water and sugar go in a plan, I put it on a medium heat and fight the urge to stir. It moves at a glacial pace, but eventually looks about the right colour. Perhaps, perhaps, I’m getting the hang of this? (Probably not)
I add some almost-boiling water to the caramel, and successfully avoid getting any skin-graft-worthy burns in the process when the caramel spits at me like a particularly rude cobra. I add some sugar, leave it to simmer, squeeze in some lemon juice and take a little break.
I normally wouldn’t mention my little breaks, but this week during those breaks I’ve been reading The Shepherd’s Crown - the final Discworld novel - in preparation for the next few episodes of The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret. I like to think that Nanny Ogg is watching over me during this process, approving of the dick of it all.
Syrup done, and I tackle custard. I whip egg yolks and sugar, and diligently save the leftover egg whites, which I will definitely use for something, and which certainly won’t end up languishing in the bottom of my freezer. I set milk and cream to simmer, having checked the milk is in date to avoid the indignities of last year’s custard. I go to add vanilla. I realise I am out of vanilla extract. I appear to have 4 bottles of Valencian Orange extract, but no vanilla. This really sums up my life. I think about flavouring the custard with something else exciting, like bay leaves or cinnamon. Then, I accept that this is not true to the challenge. While on the show, the contestants were instructed to make a ‘creme Anglaise’ - that thin, french interpretation of custard that misses the point - I want this custard to be thick, and non-fancy, and slightly reminiscent of school dinners. I’m tempted to ditch the ‘making from scratch’ process entirely and grab out the Birds custard powder, but I’m scared of how luminously yellow that one looks.
The milk and cream is combined with the egg yolks and sugar without incident, and the custard is done. I have over an hour left to go, and nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs.
This is why I get annoyed about the contestants being given tasks that are clearly just busy work. Custard’s a decent challenge, but the golden syrup was pointless. It’s not busy work that particularly fills up the time for the challenge either - If it takes over an hour to make syrup and custard then that contestant probably should never have made it to the tent. So it’s literally just there for…filming? I know Bake Off is a TV show first, but watching someone cry over crystallised caramel for the 100th time just isn’t entertaining. Give someone a relevant challenge, and leave the rest.
Anyway, with twenty two minutes to go I (carefully) remove the pudding bowl from the steaming pan. I appear to have had some kind of rise, which is a delight. The faff of removing the vast amounts of string does lead to some profanity from me, but quite frankly so does waking up, getting dressed and generally existing.
I attempt to turn my pudding out. It stays where it is. I carefully loosen it with a knife and turn it upside down again. (I’d like to be clear at this point, that the bowl I am trying to turn upside down is very hot, and slightly greasy due to my steaming pan usually doing its duty as a deep-fryer. It’s an unnecessary added risk! The Bake Off producers would love it.) The pudding still does not come out. I aggressively loosen the pudding with a knife. This time, most of it comes out. The top has been left behind. I loosen it separately and pile the crumbs on, before dousing the whole lot in syrup. I may resent incorporating caramel into this task, but it does make my broken dick more attractive. With my custard reheated and run through a sieve, and five minutes left on the timer, I am done.
The Judging
My partner gives me a 10/10, although only a 9/10 for appearance thanks to the dodgy top. I don’t argue, I like a bit of validation. He tells me it’s ‘the best dick he’s ever eaten’, but as he’s fairly heterosexual I don’t take that part as a compliment.
I’m giving myself a 6/10 for appearance, and an 8/10 for flavour. I definitely lose marks for the dodgy bit on top, and I think that it could do with a bit more citrussy flavour. It’s also still a bit stodgy in the middle, which is definitely Prue’s fault. But these are small nitpicks, in the grand scheme of things, and at least I can say that I know how to prepare a spotted dick. And really, isn’t that what matters?
Next week is seventies week. I might dress accordingly. (I will not.)
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 quilting supplies - I’ve accidentally picked up another hobby.)