I know what you’re thinking. The Great British Bake Off has been back on television for two weeks already and I haven’t even mentioned it. I usually attempt to bake along with the series, following the themes of each week, until I run out of time by the end of August when it’s time to go back to university for the year. I’m already two weeks behind but I’m going to give it ago.
Week one’s theme was Cake – my favourite! In previous years I’ve picked the easier recipe of the weeks, or one that I might have made before, but of this year’s cake recipes I chose to make Mary Berry’s frosted walnut layer cake. This was the technical challenge of the week, meaning all bakers had to follow the same recipe, with the same ingredients, with exactly the same amount of time. I have the full recipe from the website, so it’s not quite fair competition with the bakers but a challenge nevertheless.
For the first technical challenge of the series, it was very complex. Caramel, buttercream, layers and boiled icing all assembled in a beautiful walnut layer cake in 1 hour and 45 minutes… yeah right. This took me 3 hours on the dot. I wasn’t rushing so I probably could have done it a little faster, but I reckon in 1 hour 45 minutes I would have been presenting Mary and Paul with three cooling layers of cake and a bowl of buttercream.
I burnt my first batch of caramel. I only made caramel for my recent post of butterscotch brownies, but this time I was using unrefined caster sugar. As unrefined caster sugar has a light brown colour already, and Mary’s description of the sugar being cooked is based on colour, I was thrown off.
Second time’s a charm.
Boiled icing was entirely new territory for me which, considering my previous failures with icing cakes, filled me with dread.
I wouldn’t say I did too badly.
My boiled icing was also made with unrefined icing sugar which, I assume, is why my icing wasn’t quite as bright white as the contestants. The recipe states to whisk the icing ‘until thick’ then work ‘quickly’ to cover the top and sides as ‘the icing sets rapidly’. Either I was working too quickly, or my icing wasn’t setting as rapidly as others, but I blame it all on my unrefined caster sugar. I’m also blaming the extremely grainy texture (which you can see if you look closely at the picture above) on it too. I could literally feel every granule of sugar against the roof of my mouth. However, Paul and Mary did notice a grainy texture when judging the contestants bakes so maybe it wasn’t my sugar after all.
My cake was light, fluffy and perfectly baked if I do say so myself, but my nuts were a little bit big. The buttercream was divineeeeee! I may or may not have eaten a fair share of it off the spatula before washing up.
I’ve never come across a recipe that asked for boiled icing before, so I’m not sure if I’ll ever have a reason to make it again but I’d love to try. I attempted to make some sugar decorations with my leftover caramel but the shapes didn’t hold and they all snapped when peeling, hence my shards of random caramel around. Mary would not approve, I know I know.
Over all, I wouldn’t say it was too bad. It was a first time for me like many of the bakers on the show, and as I’m not actually that keen on walnuts, it’s probably not a recipe I would have picked on my own. Next up, biscuit week!
If you’ve no idea what The Great British Bake Off is, catch up with BBC iPlayer here now! Each episode is only available for 30 days after the original broadcast.
You can have a look at some other layer cakes I’ve made here and here.
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Harleigh Reid
I write about food and eat a lot.
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