Jessica's Bake Off Challenge

 A couple of weeks ago, I got it into my head to try entremets, the showstopper challenge from Series 5, Episode 9 of The Great British Bake Off . The challenge was to make 24 total entremets, 12 each of two different types. A visiting friend and I were going to make one type, and my friend Caitlin, two time zones away, was going to develop her own recipe for another type. We coordinated enough to make sure we wouldn’t have too-similar entremets, but each developed our own recipes.  The results were amusingly disastrous for all of us. Caitlin’s camping-inspired s’mores entremets, which she assures me were delicious, frankly looked like bulging piles of brown stuff.  My own orange, mango, and lychee entremets were thoroughly unappetizing and visually unappealing. The whipped cream broke in my mango mousse, and it ended up looking like mango-infused spit-up (I know; I have a mango-loving baby). Outside of the visuals ruining the experience, the mango overpowered the orange. I have since

Welcome back! This post and the next two posts will reflect challenges that I completed for Pi Day a month ago. Of course, Pi Day is my absolute favorite holiday of the year... And Vincent's and my anniversary. Yes, we did have wedding pie instead of cake. We usually have a Pi Day party every year. It didn't happen this year due to the pandemic. However, I did still manage to bake pies for a few local friends and neighbors. Today, I am sharing my experience baking Mary Berry's tarte au citron, the technical challenge from Series 2, Episode 2 of Great British Bake Off . Tarte au citron is just French for lemon tart. I absolutely love a good lemon tart, so I made this as one of the two pies for Vincent and me to keep. When I go back to a bake from one of the early series of GBBO , it is immediately evident that the show creators did not yet know how obscure or technically-difficult they could push the contestants. By my standards, this tarte au citron was incredibly simple. T

 A few weeks ago, I made Mary Berry's walnut cake. This cake was the technical challenge from Series 6, Episode 1 of The Great British Bake Off. The cake itself isn't tricky. It was my first time making caramel, but even that went surprisingly smoothly. The trickiest part was the boiled icing. I wasn't satisfied with my first attempt, so I ended up doing it twice. I also learned a little bit about food storage and sugarwork. The cake was positively simple. Of course it is important to start off by properly lining one's baking pans. I always line mine with carefully-cut parchment paper and rub the sides with butter. The batter was fairly straightforward. The wet ingredients and the dry ingredients need to be mixed separately, and then the dry ingredients must be folded into the wet carefully, so as not to lose volume. One of the aspects of the batter with which many of the show's contestants had difficulty was chopping the walnuts to the appropriate size. If the waln

 Following the success of my llama cookies a couple of weeks ago, I decided to make these iced lavender biscuits for my take on the 24 Iced Biscuits challenge from Series 7, Episode 2 of The Great British Bake Off. Mind you, these are biscuits in the English sense of the word- a.k.a. cookies to us Americans. Not American biscuits, which are more like English scones in shape and texture. And let's not get into the nonsensical things that Americans call scones... These lavender biscuits are a flavorful variation of the typical sugar cookie. The lavender gives a light floral flavor. Also, my addition of fresh lemon juice to the royal icing helps to balance out the earthiness of the lavender. In order to get a substantial lavender flavor in these biscuits, I added both dried lavender and lavender extract to the cookie dough. I desiccated the dried lavender and mixed it in with the granulated sugar. Although it would be possible to break down the lavender with a mortar and pestle, I do

 Wow. I have had quite a hiatus from this blog... from baking as a whole, really. My entire world has turned upside down since October 2019. I got pregnant shortly after that point, and my early pregnancy nausea and sensitivity to smells definitely caused me to cut back on my baking for a little while. Once I was over that, the pandemic started. As much as I love baking, I prefer not to bake when I cannot give the finished products away. Now I have a wonderful 6-month-old baby, who takes up all my time. I made some cookies the other day, and it took most of the day to bake and decorate them due to the fact that I had to keep stopping to take care of the baby. I still am not baking that much. It's too much that I cannot share easily, and it typically takes more time and/or energy than I have. I will, however, try to make something and post it every once in a while. We just might not have any massive showstoppers until I can invite some people over to partake. I did, however, bake a

Today I am going to share with you three of the random-ish bakes I did over the summer. All three were meant to fulfill Bake Off challenges... Except I didn't write down the recipes. Regardless, one was nearly a complete failure, and only one came out amazingly well. Therefore, it is no loss that I shall have to try to recreate them, and in one case, very much improve on it. I will try not to distress you too much, dear readers, so I will start with the bake in the middle of the pack... a white peach and raspberry pie. This bake was meant to fulfill the double-crusted fruit pie signature challenge from Series 4, Episode 4. I was very excited about this pie because I love white peaches. They are only available during summer months, so I went a little crazy with them for a while. For the double-crusted white peach raspberry pie, the fruit is mixed with white and brown sugar, a little lemon juice, some spices, and a little cornstarch as a thickening agent. The slits are cu