The Not So Great Bake Along - Week 10
Lardy Cakes
Finally, we’ve reached the Bake Off final. Well, technically we reached it a week ago, but I was on holiday and thus, the technical challenge had to wait. I was curious what the final would hold - the lack of theme to the episode in theory allows for vast amounts of creativity. Not so much, this time. I was hoping the eclairs in the previews would be the technical challenge, but alas, it was just an uninspired signature. There is, with the best will in the world, only so much one can fancy up an eclair. I’ve got nothing against a big, 3-tiered cake as a showstopper, but god did it inspire a rant about oven space for me. I can’t imagine how frustrating it is for the bakers in the tent, knowing there are extra ovens about the place and not being permitted to use them. Yes, home bakers would be stuck with just one oven, but I assume very few home bakers tasked with a 3-tier cake have to suffer a 4 hour time limit.
I went into the episode fully assuming Josh would win. I think we all did. But a disappointing showstopper took him out of the running and gave Matty the crown - despite coming last in the technical challenge. I have Thoughts, especially on these bloody Lardy cakes. (The main thought being that “Lardy Cakes” would make an excellent name for a girl band.)
Honestly, this felt like a weird technical. It required skills a home baker should have - a rich, yeasted dough, lamination, candying orange peel to fill camera time - but it’s something the bakers wouldn’t have even a passing familiarity with. For a finale episode, I’d expect the challenge to involve the bakers writing their own lyrics to one of RuPaul’s songs and then performing in the music video after a painfully dull interview and…wrong show, sorry. Seriously, I’d expect something technically complex, that bakers should theoretically have a passing familiarity with, and limited instructions. Instead, we got lard, Paul Hollywood getting smug about proving times, and an abundance of dried fruit. For a show that was so rude about the classic beige buffet a few weeks ago, it would have been nice to end on a more colourful note. Alas, Lardy cakes it is, and thus Lardy cakes were attempted.
A reminder of 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. This week, I’ve made the full batch and shall be living off them for a week.
The judging: I still have a distinct lack of gingham altar and (thankfully) Paul Hollywood in my life. My partner has done the honours, one final time.
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. This week, things were kept reassuringly simple.
Lardy Cakes
I go into this challenge with a minor amount of bread. Proving dough generally requires warmth, and with the arrival of winter my flat has become an ice box. I’ve just spent three days in the south west, marvelling at sparkling hoarfrost as far as the eye can see before curling up in front of a fire in a beautiful old inn. Now, I’ve returned to normal life, the lardy cakes, and living in a fridge. I resent this.
For some reason, on Bake Off, the bakers were instructed to start by lining the tin with lard and sugar, before cracking on with the dough. I can see literally no reason for not starting the dough first, so I ignore that step for now. While I’m boiling the kettle for some warm water to wake up my yeast, I realise I’m almost completely out of flour. I turn off the timer, and brave the icy drizzle to acquire some more. The bakers never have to do this. I’m now committed to using plain flour, instead of bread flour, thanks to the lack of selection in my local Spar. Somehow, I think everything will be alright.
Take two then, and the timer starts. I’m guessing I want around 500g of flour for the dough, and it looks about 50% hydration, so 250ml of warm water gets mixed with a couple of teaspoons of yeast and a shake of sugar. (Baking is a precise science. I am a chaos gremlin.) I’ve measured out 50g of lard, and I briefly debate slowly crumbing it into the flour before realising I can’t be arsed, and it’ll get worked in just fine when I knead the dough. Everything gets mixed together and, miracle upon miracles, comes together into a rough dough.
I start kneading, and I’m idly disappointed that I’ve got so little to be furious about right now. Kneading dough is excellent anger management, so I take out my ire at Paul Hollywood’s smug face as I strengthen up the gluten. When my arms start to ache, I assume the bread is ready to prove, and I stick it in the oven on a low heat and pray. 18 minutes have passed.
Next, I crack on with candying the orange peel. My boning knife (har har) proves perfect for peeling a couple of oranges, and my long-dodgy wrist reminds me that chopping things is a horror as I cut tiny pieces of peel. Still, I manage, and get the lot boiling. I go to soak my dried fruit - helpfully, as the supermarket was out of small bags, my grocery order subbed in a kilo of the stuff. There is no chance I will get through a kilo of the stuff. I don’t have a microwave to “speed things along”, and resort to my kettle. I have English Breakfast tea bags, and even Paul’s recipe doesn’t specify a type of tea, but I want something fancier, so I stick some loose-leaf spiced black tea into an infuser and pop it in. (This stuff - for the curious - not a paid promotion but I am friendly with the company.)
Half an hour has passed since I started proving the dough, and it doesn’t seem to have risen enough. Memories of the cursed Devonshire Splits play out in my mind, and I give it an extra ten minutes along with a healthy dose of cautious optimism. The orange peel is stubbornly taking forever to candy, and I have nothing to do but pace and contemplate the futile nature of existence. Until, at least, I remember that I have to line a baking tray with lard and sugar.
Finally, after 40 minutes, the dough appears to have risen. Enough to be useable, at least. I roll it out, sprinkle it with sugar, and lay out slices of butter and lard - roughly 100g of each. I’m not sure if this is too much, but I’m going with the logic that there’s no such thing. I consider Matty’s endearing smearing technique, and again decide to go the way of least effort. To do this properly, I should be adding ingredients between each roll and turn. I forget this, and add all of the fruit and peel. It’s fine. It will all be fine. I do a couple more letter folds, and put the giant slab of dough in its tray to, hopefully, rise again. I have an hour and 50 minutes left.
I start reverse-engineering the proving time, based on the cooling time I want at the end. The absolute maximum I can get away with is putting the dough in a warmish spot for another 40 minutes. Putting something laminated in a warm spot feels counterintuitive, but my icebox of a kitchen isn’t going to let the yeast do anything. The optimism remains cautious as I reduce the syrup leftover from candying my orange peel.
There is nothing else to do. Well, there is. Technically, I could have started this write up. Mentally, however, I’m still on holiday and refuse to sit at a computer for anything other than Baldur’s Gate 3 and my ongoing love affair with a vampire twink and a bear. I do not start this write up. (Honestly, I’ve also procrastinated doing this for most of today.)
After 40 minutes, my big dough slab looks…slightly bigger. Maybe. It’ll do. I chuck it in the oven. Based on Josh’s performance in the technical, I guess 35 minutes should do the trick and, lo and behold, it does! Just over half an hour later I have a large slab of cooked dough that smells slightly magnificent. It looks terrible, to be fair, and I should have flattened the whole lot out more, but I’ve made my piece with making ugly, delicious things. I brush it with the syrup and with 28 minutes left, transfer it to the cooling rack.
This is the part of the challenge I’ve been focused on - the cooling. Bread continues to cook, as it cools, and slicing it too early can ruin the structure. I was heckling as the bakers went along that they’d need that cooling time at the end - it’s as important as the proving, if not more. I could sense Paul Hollywood, waiting in the wings, ready to be smug about the bread not getting enough time. (On the show, at least, thankfully Paul Hollywood has never lurked near my kitchen - at least to my knowledge.)
I wait til the last possible moment, and slice the bastard with three minutes to go. It’s not cool, but it’s had enough time to settle down. It’s sliceable, and the insides look, miraculously, layered. With a minute to go, my ten weeks of self-imposed baking nonsense are over. I expected to feel a profound sense of achievement, or at least deep relief. Mostly I feel…hungry. It really does smell great.
The Judging
My partner’s thoughts:
“I can feel my arteries closing but it tastes good.”
Flavour: 10/10
Appearance: 8/10
My thoughts:
I can’t argue. It tastes great, and looks slightly skewiff. I’m calling this a win.
That’s the thing though - beyond worrying that my oven could successfully replace the consistent temperatures of a proving drawer, this didn’t feel like a challenge. I’m not complaining that the bakers were given enough time - that should always be the case - but that the finale could have been something that involved a bit of fun, a slightly more dazzling showcase of skill.
Then again, Matty losing the technical and going on to win the thing confirms just how unimportant these challenges are. I wouldn’t begrudge him his win, especially considering the prize is a large plate and braggin rights, and his final cake looked fantastic. (If wonky, but it should be clear by now that I’m a big supporter of wonky baking.)
That’s the thing, with Bake Off. The stakes are stunningly low. Yes, it’s been life-changing for some of its competitors, but at the end of the day it’s a nice, relaxed, baking show. These technical challenges clearly bear little weight on the final judging so what purpose do they serve? Theoretically, it’s a test of the baker's technical skills. In reality, the technical challenges have become a way to forcibly insert drama, and catastrophe. They’re a way to add a little meanness to a show that doesn’t need it. This season of Bake Off was a big improvement on previous years, and hopefully, that trend continues.
It’s possible that, by spending ten weeks tearing my hair out and recreating these challenges, I’ve taken this silly baking show more seriously than it was ever intended. Maybe there are better uses of my time and energy. Maybe I don’t need to dislike Paul Hollywood’s face quite so much. Maybe, I care too much about cake.
Sometimes, though, it’s worthwhile to get serious about something silly. The end results might be occasionally horrifying (I’m still so sorry about the caterpillar) but, more often than not, they’re delicious.