The Not-So-Great Bake-Along - Week 1
The Classic Chocolate Cake
Bake Off is back. It’s a sentence that used to fill me with pure joy. Another season of a reality show where people are nice to each other? Cakes and biscuits and pastries galore? An excuse to sit on the sofa shouting “those choux buns will never rise” through a mouthful of my incredibly lazy pasta dinner? Glorious. After the last few seasons though, there’s trepidation as well as joy. Will we have to sit through another insensitive culturally-themed week? What fresh hell will these poor contestants be put through in the name of baking? Are we going to have to pretend that anyone would ever think to make a sugar-glass piñata again?
Thankfully, this year comes with the promise that Bake Off is going back to basics. No forcing the British idea of Mexican food on an unsuspecting public. Distinctly less nonsense. More good, honest baking.
The season began on Tuesday. Unfortunately, the sad sketches continue, with new (and absolutely charming and delightful, to be fair) presenter Alison Hammond introduced in a sad mafia-themed opening skit that had me wanting to run for parliament on the platform of banning Paul Hollywood from, well, everything. The first episode, Cake Week, did seem simpler than the chaos of the recent past, although I’m fascinated by the apparent mass delusion in the tent that a “vertical layered cake” is a normal thing that anyone has heard of. Can the season continue along the same lines?
That brings me then, to my challenge. Every week, I’ll be attempting to recreate the Technical Challenge. My credentials: I was a professional chef for ten years, my last job required a certain amount of baking, and I’m obsessed with food. I am, at least, as good as a very talented home baker who might qualify for the show. In the last few seasons of Bake Off, there were plenty of technical challenges that I would absolutely not have had the knowledge to do. If Bake Off is a show about finding the best home baker, then someone with a decent amount of professional food knowledge should have little to no trouble. (I’m absolutely talking myself up too much here, and this project will inevitably be a disaster as a result.)
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. For example, this week I’m baking a smaller cake. It takes less time to bake and to cool, so I allowed myself 1 hour 40 minutes, instead of the full two hours.
The judging: Look, I’m doing this for a nonsense bit of fun. I lack a gingham altar and the professional eyes of Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith. The judging will be done by my partner, anyone else who wanders near me while I’m baking, and myself. I am, however, my own incredibly harsh critic.
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.
So - On to the first recipe.
Cake Week - The Classic Bake Off Chocolate Cake.
Right off the bat, I cheat and start pre-heating my oven before I set my timer. In my defence, the ovens they have on Bake Off look, well, decent. Mine on the other hand, is old, temperamental and what I can only describe as fucky. I need the head start.
After running through one last mental checklist of how I’m going about this, I set a timer for 1 hour and 40 minutes, and I begin.
Having looked at Paul Hollywood’s recipe after the fact, I wasn’t far off. Honestly, my chocolate fudge cake recipe is just an ever-so-slightly modified brownie recipe. I get 100g of dark chocolate, 50g of creme fraiche, 140g of butter melting over a double boiler with a teaspoon of instant coffee thrown in for good measure. I stand there, waiting, and curse my inefficient hob.
I also, to be fair, measure out 150g of self-raising flour and 50g of cocoa powder. Mostly though, I’m just waiting.
After what seems like an eternity, everything’s finally melted and I stir in 150g caster sugar. (Originally, I was going to use 200g. But I only had 150g in the house and didn’t feel like going to the corner shop. I’m taking this very seriously.) I sift in my dry ingredients, throw the mixture into 9 inch cake tins, chuck them in the oven, set a timer for 20 minutes and cross my fingers.
While the cakes bake, I tackle the ganache. I’ve made plenty of chocolate ganache in my time. Just like my hero, Janusz, I love a drip cake. I have, however, never measured the ingredients for my ganache. I’m more of a throw-things-together-and-hope kind of being. Still, I’m being diligent and vaguely trying to keep track of what I’m doing, so I measure out 200g of dark chocolate and bring 250ml of double cream up to the boil. I’ve never added butter to ganache before and while it would have been the right thing to do, I didn’t trust myself not to somehow fuck it up. The cream gets poured on the chocolate, I whisk the mixture, reassure myself that it looks fine and put it to one side.
Ganache made and cakes baking, I have a minor existential crisis - just for something to do. I wash up the mixing bowls and swear, mentally, at the Bake Off contestants who I’m assuming don’t have to deal with such nonsense.
The cakes come out of the oven. At first glance, they look perfect. At second glance, I start to worry that the oven was too high and they’re slightly overbaked. Nevertheless, I persevere, flipping them onto a cooling rack and putting them in the fridge.
At this point, I realise that there’s an hour left on the timer, and nothing left to do but hope my cakes and ganache cool in time. They edit most of this bit out on the show. At a loss, I start preparing dinner.
I also realise, at this point, I should probably have taken a photo of the cakes or something. But I was so concerned about time.
With 20 minutes left on the clock, I optimistically decide that my clearly not-cool-enough ganache will be fine. The cakes are cool, at least. I take them out and prepare to start covering the cake.
My tendency to forge ahead with things that clearly aren’t working is one of my most toxic traits, and has led to the creation of some awful knitwear, dresses and cakes. I am incredibly stubborn. That’s why I forge ahead, and why I’ll never change.
Unsurprisingly, the ganache is too runny to ice the cake. Instead, it pours, slowly, off the sides. I open a beer. I go for a last-minute gamble and put the cake in the fridge, hoping that a few minutes will make the ganache workable without destroying the precious shine.
I pace anxiously, like a worried loved one in a hospital waiting room. (I don’t, actually, I go for a cigarette, but that kills the dramatic tension).
With just 8 minutes left on the clock, I grab the cake out of the fridge. The gamble has paid off, and with a palette knife in hand and a stunning litany of expletives running through my head, I force the ganache to sit somewhat prettily on the sides of the cake.
There’s just three minutes left. I grab the raspberries and start placing them, hopefully not too haphazardly. The film lid on the second punnet of fruit refuses to come off and the swearing returns, louder this time. Bake Off contestants never have to fight with cheap Tesco packaging.
With just thirty seconds on the clock, I place the last raspberry, with a gap left to honour the cake in the Bake Off titles. (Honestly I hadn’t actually noticed the missing raspberry until I saw someone talking about it on Twitter a year ago.)
I am very proud of myself. My partner honours my endeavours by singing the countdown theme as my timer reaches zero. He means well.
The Judging:
The official verdict: “That’s a fucking tasty cake.”
His score: 8/10
My score: 6/10
Sadly, I was right about my temperamental oven. The sponges were overbaked, and just a bit too dry. Also my stubborn forge-ahead meant really, there wasn’t enough ganache on the cake. According to my partner, it was still an excellent cake. As I said, however, I am my own harshest critic. I’m glad I didn’t have to place this one on the gingham altar.
Did I do a great job? No. Do I think this is a fair and doable challenge? Absolutely. It would absolutely have been possible to do it in the time-frame if I hadn’t tried to rush, and I think pretty much any home baker can knock up a chocolate fudge cake and a half-decent ganache without too much trouble.
Next week - biscuits! Let’s see if I can redeem myself.
It's cake. My philosophy is that some cake is better than no cake. Honestly, it looks delicious and I would have been delighted to accept a slice.