Jessica's Bake Off Challenge

One of my cousins requested that I next make macarons for my challenge. I had not planned any stand-alone macaron challenge, but I had planned to use macarons as my biscuits for the showstopper bake of Series 6, episode 2. This particular challenge involves making 36 biscuits (cookies to us Americans) in a box made out of a different type of biscuit. As stated in the title of this blog post, I chose to make pistachio and raspberry macarons in a box made of spiced orange gingerbread. My first try at the pistachio raspberry macarons (incidentally my first time ever making macarons) turned out well, but got eaten by Vincent and some dinner guests before I even made the box. Hence, I had to start all over again. Thankfully the first batch went to a good cause. I worked first on making the macarons. The pistachio macarons are actually fairly easy to make. The dry ingredients- almond flour, ground pistachios, and confectioner's sugar- are gradually folded into whipped egg white

Good afternoon! I had a lot of fun with this bake. It looks difficult to get right on the show (because it is), but the results can be fantastic. This past weekend, I baked/created/sculpted the French opera cake. Traditionally, an opera cake is made with thin layers of coffee syrup-soaked jaconde sponge, coffee buttercream, and chocolate ganache. A la Great British Bake Off , I mixed it up a bit. I had a lot of fun going for mango syrup to soak my sponges with, passion fruit buttercream, and white chocolate ganache... and   I added two layers of mango jelly into the cake. Creating the cake and all its elements was not tricky; the assembly and sculpting was the difficult part. For the ease of assembly, I tried to make all possible elements in the same 8" x 8" brownie pan. This made for a slightly smaller cake than those seen on the show, but it enabled me to have ample control over the end result (without too much cutting). When I tried to bake the sponge in a standard j

I know I promised I would make an opera cake next, but grocery limitations prevented my plans. I am giving Vincent the benefit of the doubt... I am sure the store just didn't have any passionfruit (the alternative being that he just didn't see it). The opera cake will be forthcoming whenever I can find passionfruit. Instead, I made a Madeira cake yesterday! The Madeira cake was the signature bake for series 6, episode one. Madeira cake, named after Madeira wine rather than the island itself, is apparently a British classic. That said, I have never had it, nor have I seen it served while I was living in England. I suppose the Victoria sponge and lemon drizzle are just more classic. Therefore, I had to do some research before starting this bake, and had to hope I was doing things correctly. The Great British Bake Off described a traditional Madeira cake as being flavored with lemon, so I was expecting it to be a non-drizzly variation of a lemon drizzle cake. Surprisingly t