Hello week 7, it’s a pleasure to meet you! So close to the final, yet still so far – week 7 saw the 6 remaining Bakers tackle yet more pastry in the tent of dreams, but who would leave our lovely baking bunch at this late stage?
We started the pastry filled weekend with suet pudding for the signature challenge, either sweet or savoury – what ever takes your fancy and I fancied a little bit of lamb and some yummy gravy! I don’t automatically think about what Welsh recipe can I incorporate into this week’s #gbbo, but roast lamb is a favourite and I knew that it would work well in a suet pudding and any excuse to eat gravy is fine by me! I was a little surprised to be the only baker making a savoury pudding, but I don’t have a sweet tooth so happily chose to make mine savoury, much to the delight of the production crew!
Here’s one I made earlier, with some posh gravy in the background for effect.
Paul and Mary loved my pudding and were very impressed with how I’d cooked it, with Paul commenting that my gravy was beautiful. A great start to the weekend for me, now I just needed to concentrate on the technical…but who knows what that was going to be!
We were tasked at making 8 Religieuse and I had never seen or heard of the dessert before, but I do make choux pastry often as well as ganache, all I needed to do now was not make slack crème patisserie then all would be good! I kept my head down during the technical and really pushed myself to make the best gaggle of nuns ever seen in choux form…and guess what? I only came top of the technical! Wow! I was and still am very chuffed with myself. Have a go at making this fabulously posh team of profiteroles, great for a dinner party…or wow the ladies at the next coffee morning!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/religieuse_46431
The final challenge of the weekend was going to be tough. I had written out a timetable of what I needed to do and when, because there was just so much to do and I had no time to rest. We were tasked to make proper puff pastry, not rough puff, not flaky pastry…not even shop bought! We then had to make 3 different kinds of delicacies from the pastry, all within 4 hours!! Normally you need to leave at least 24 hours to make puff pastry because the gluten needs to rest and the butter needs to be cold so that when it does hit the heat of the oven the pastry will puff up.
My 3 puffs of choice were, Chocolate & Hazelnut Vol au Vents, Pistachio Frangipane with Nectarines and Strawberries & Cream Mille Feuille. I was ok, until hour 3 arrived and then I felt like I’d gone into a Bake-Off Black-Hole…no idea what was happening or where the time was going, but I appeared the other side with 36 pieces of puff that I was sort of happy with. I was kicking myself so much that I’d run out of time to glaze my pastries…I had everything ready, but I had to decide between finishing the Mille Feuille or glazing the other two. I could go on and on, but although they weren’t quite ‘finished’, Paul and Mary were very impressed with the rise in my pastry and said that it was yummy and buttery.
The challenges this week kept us all very busy and there was little or no banter in the tent to prove this. It also meant that you couldn’t really check in with each other to see if everything was ok. At the end of the showstopper we had a look around at each other and everyone was knackered and covered in icing sugar…we had truly been through the (flour) mill.
Frances, my lovely Frangipane was crowned Star Baker this week, a well deserved accolade to a very talented lady. Sadly, it was my buddy Glenn’s last bake in the tent. Losing Glenn, definitely changed the mood in the tent and I was gutted that he left. But I know that it would not be the last of Glenn’s antics, as I knew he would be loved by all #gbbo fans.
Next week is the quarter finals…now it’s getting serious.
You were so brilliant this week! You and Frances are our faves 😀
I’m blown away by the baking each week but this week the showstopper…wow! Such a challenge to fit it all in in 4 hours!
Thank you!! It was one heck of a crazy weekend, but I really enjoyed it!!
Your lamb pudding looked absolutely delicious. I really felt for you all in the showstopper, the quantity and attention to detail required made it one of the toughest challenges to date in the competition.
Thank you! It was the busiest showstopper so far, think we were all glad it was over!!
Good luck for the rest of the competition. Although I’m guessing it’s filmed already, so I might be a bit late, but good luck anyway. The Bake Off really is addictive viewing. And it’s getting tense…
Thank you for your lovely message!!! Hope you enjoy the rest of the series, with only 3 episodes left there will be a big gap in my tv viewing on Tuesday night!! X
I am a huge fan of bake off, and think you are all brilliant – I could never imagine being able to put together the creative and beautiful bakes that all of you manage. Xxx
You’ve done really well so far, and I wish you all the best for tonight’s quarter final, and hope you get to the final! Xxx
That suet pudding looked fantastic- have you made the recipe available anywhere?