Bake Along with Bake Off: Tuiles

A little behind with these, thanks to a little break in Sicily – not a lack of commitment to the Bake Off cause! This post is dedicated to the memory of Howard, whose dulcet Yorkshire tones won’t grace our screens till he most probably pitches up at the final. A sad loss. Anyhoo, these aren’t too tricky so long as you don’t take the whole tray out at once and plonk it on the side – much easier to try and mould them half in the oven, so they stay nice and soft. I reduced Mary’s recipe to 1/3 as I didn’t want 8 baskets, 32 tuiles and 8 cigars, or indeed 6 egg yolks. I can’t imagine who would.

65g butter, softened

60g icing sugar

Few drops vanilla essence

2 egg whites

65g flour

1tsp cocoa powder

25g chocolate, melted

1. Beat together the butter, sugar and vanilla to form a smooth paste. Gradually add the egg whites, whisking continuously, before folding in the flour.

2. Transfer a tablespoon or so of the mixture to a small bowl, and stir in the coca. Cover both mixtures with clingfilm and leave to settle for half an hour.

3. Meanwhile, make a stencil by cutting a 7cm circle from the lid of an ice cream tub, leaving a good inch or so around the edge.

4. Place the template on a lined baking tray, and spread a dollop of  mixture over it with a pallet knife. Scrape off the excess and gently peel off the template to leave a very thin circle of paste. Repeat to make the first six tuiles.

5. Transfer the chocolate mixture to a piping bag, and pipe concentric circles onto each disc.

6. Bake at 180C until the edges begin to turn golden brown, then lift each tuile using the pallet knife and mould them around a rolling pin to cool.

7. Make six more discs, but this time mould them around wooden spoon handles to form cigars. Leave to cool before dipping both ends in the melted chocolate. Then eat all the tuiles because what else would you do with them?

Bake along with Bake Off: Floating Islands

Whew, week three done! Rather getting into this technical challenge lark. This week’s dessert, Floating Islands, probably ranks somewhere in between the previous two in that 1) it wasn’t overly tricky but 2) I still made a bit of a hash of it. And after all that, you are just left with eggs… floating in eggs… Which is all very well, but I prefer mine fried, in a sandwich. The creme anglaise was delish, but so are most things made from cream, egg yolks and sugar. The floating quenelles seemed to go quite well until the moment when you’re supposed to flip them – Mazza B doesn’t give much instruction on this, but from experience I can tell you that in an overcrowded pan they will just disintegrate. If you don’t have a wide, deep pan you would be well advised to do these in batches, straining the milk/cream each time. The recipe, as always, is on BBC Food.

For the custard

300ml whole milk
300mldouble cream
1 tsp vanilla bean paste or half a scraped pod
6 egg yolks
100g sugar

For the islands

6 egg whites
150g sugar

For the spun sugar

100g sugar

1. Set the milk, cream and vanilla to heat in a wide, deep pan over a very low heat until barely simmering.

2. Whisk the egg whites in a large bowl until stiff peaks form, then add sugar one tablespoon at a time until beautifully thick and glossy.

3. Shape your meringue into quenelles by passing a scoop from serving spoon to serving spoon until it is nice and neat.

4. Lower each quenelle onto the milk, but not so they’re as crowded as in the picture below – you need enough space to manoeuvre them about a bit.

5. Pop a lid on and poach for 10 minutes or so, flipping halfway through. It’s best to do this with a rubber serving spoon to minimise damage, but if they really don’t want to be flipped it’s not the end of the world. Just don’t let the milk boil, as terrible things will happen.

6. When they’re nice and firm, remove to a draining rack and, if necessary, strain the milk of any stray meringue and put in a second batch.

Best to focus on the front row

7. In a large bowl, whisk the yolks and sugar until pale and fluffy. Pour in the warm milk, whisking continuously, then return to the pan. Cook over a very low heat for 3-4 minutes until the custard coats the back of the spoon – it doesn’t need to be thick.

8. For the spun sugar, melt the sugar without stirring in a small metal pan until golden brown. Remove from the heat and leave to cool until it forms strands from the end of your fork (it may be worth having an ice bath on standby as mine continued to cook). Flick over a greased rolling pin, then gather into balls. Watch out for splinters. Seriously.

9. To serve, pour a little custard into a bowl, and float an island on top. Finish with the spun sugar, then wonder why you are eating egg in an eggy bath.

Bake Along with Bake Off: Angel Food Cake

Hooray for Bake Off! The show that’s soothing yet exhilarating, inspires the nation to culinary greatness, and stops Tuesday being the worst day of the week.  So far so good, although I was hasty in picking favourites who then turned out to be incompetent. My money is now on Rob, and on Howard for blossoming into the new Brendan. Such fun! This year, I plan to make the technical bake each week, because what’s the fun in doing something if it’s not difficult and you can’t feel smug about being more successful than people on TV? (Although obviously I’ll have full instructions and will be able to see where they go wrong. Still, tactics.) This week’s bake was angel food cake, the first challenge being to find a 10 inch tube pan that doesn’t have to be shipped from the States. Luckily Selfridges came through for me, although the expense incurred means I’ll be baking these pretty often to prove it was a worthy purchase. So, onto the recipe! Obviously I used Mazza B’s recipe for this, which can also be found here. It will use aaaalll your bowls, so be warned. I took the day off to make this, no jokes.

Serves 12-15

For the cake:

125g flour

300g caster sugar

10 large egg whites

Zest of 2 lemons

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp cream of tartar

1/2 tsp salt

For the lemon curd (will leave you with an extra jar):

10 large egg yolks (Hooray for Mary, a woman who appreciates how annoying leftover yolks are!)

Juice of 4 large lemons

Zest of 2 lemons

175g butter

2 passion fruit

For the topping:

300ml whipping cream

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Sift the flour and 100g of the sugar into a bowl and set aside.

2. Separate your eggs very carefully, because no-one wants to ruin 9 eggs with their 10th yolk. (By this point I had managed to use 5 bowls.) In a very large bowl, whisk the egg whites until white and frothy, but before peaks form. Add the lemon juice, zest, cream of tartar and salt and whisk again until soft peaks form. Then add the remaining sugar, one tablespoon at a time, until you have firm – but not stiff! – peaks.

3. One third at a time, gently fold in the flour and sugar mixture until combined, taking care not to beat all the air out of it.

4. Pour the batter into an ungreased, 10 inch tube pan, and run a sharp knife through the centre to remove any large pockets of air. Bake at 180C until an inserted skewer comes out clean. This can take 45-50 minutes, although mine took just under half an hour.

5. Turn it upside down immediately to cool. If your tin has little feet then good for you, but sticking it on a bottle works just as well.

6. While the cake is cooling, mix the egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice and zest in a pan over a low heat. Keep stirring until the mixture thickens to coat the back of the spoon, 5-10 minutes. Remove from the heat, stir in the butter and pour through a sieve into jam jars, reserving a ladleful for the cake.

7. When the cake is completely cool, run a palette knife around the edge and turn out onto a plate (I had to bash mine a few times but it does fall out eventually).

8. Whip the cream and vanilla to soft peaks, and spread over the cake. Mix the reserved curd with the seeds from the passion fruit, and drizzle over. Feel smug, and try to ignore the scenes of devastation around you. It’s a pretty messy bake.