Bake Along with Bake Off: Custard Tarts

At first I wasn’t going to write about these bad boys because they seemed a bit meh, but after eating about 6 on the trot the next morning I suppose they must be quite nice. All I can say about the absolute hash the Bakers (Bake Off-ers?) made of getting these out the tin is that they must have pretty sloppy pouring skills, as they only stick if you have a custard leak. I used a normal muffin tin for these, which needed a 9cm pastry cutter – obviously there were some leftovers, but you can heat the remaining custard until it thickens. One thing I will say is that the four technical bakes so far have required 25 eggs. That would take one hen a MONTH to lay! Even I’m growing tired of custard now…

For the pastry

165g flour

25g ground almonds

120g butter

55g sugar

1 egg

For the custard

700ml whole milk

7 egg yolks

90g sugar

nutmeg

1. Make the pastry by sifting the flour and almonds together and rubbing in the butter. Add the sugar and egg, and combine to form a soft dough. Mine was very soft indeed which is why they turned out rather rustic looking, so next time I’d definitely add a dash more flour. Chill for 30 minutes.

2. Roll out the pastry as thinly as possible and line the muffin tray. Return to the fridge while you make the custard.

3. Set the milk to warm over a low heat. Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until pale and frothy then pour over the hot milk, stirring constantly.

4. Transfer to the tart cases using a ladle or jug, then grate over a little nutmeg. You may want to do this on the oven rack, to minimise spills.

5. Bake in the centre of the oven at 200C for 10-15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 180C for a further 10 minutes. They should have a slight dome to them – Paul says a big dome is a BAD THING but I’m pretty sure mine did and they were very nice thank-you-very-much.

6. Leave to cool in their tin for at least 30 mins before transferring to a cooling rack.

 

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: English Muffin(s)

 

I suppose if you woke up at 3am on a Sunday and fancied fresh muffins with your fry up, these would be a good thing to make. The one muffin I managed to produce was lovely and fluffy and puffed up very prettily, but seriously, ONE muffin from four hours’ work? The rest were raw despite cooking for over 45 minutes, or burnt (probably not the fault of the recipe, but by that point I was a little bored with the whole endeavour.) If you really want to make these, I’d suggest rolling them out a little thinner than the suggested 1.5cm, and using a smaller cutter. In reality, you may as well just buy a pack of 6 for £1 and have a lie in. Bring on next week’s floating islands!

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.