Entremet Baking Fails

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 gone back to the drawing board in order to achieve more balanced flavors.

This just goes to show that there are elements of trial and error when developing new recipes... Things do not always come out perfectly every time. That is why we assess our mistakes and try again.

I have since made the orange, mango, and lychee entremets more successfully. Keep an eye out for them in the near future!

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Welcome!

Welcome to my blog. I, Jessica, have had a long-time love of baking, and would like to share it with you. How did this start? My Savta (my grandmother) would let me help her bake cakes and brownies when I visited her house as a child. Looking back, I realize we were just making boxed cakes, and she only really let me stir... But it was a start. Years later, though, she started me with baking from scratch. When I was a teenager, she taught me how to make my great-great-grandmother's mandelbrodt recipe. Ever since, I have insisted on baking almost everything from scratch... and I have had to make mandelbrodt for my Savta every time I visit. Let's fast forward a few years to university. I first heard about The Great British Bake Off (henceforth referred to lovingly as GBBO) when I did a semester abroad in Nottingham in 2013. Sadly, I was in Nottingham in Spring, and did not see the show. When I went back to England for a Master's, though, I watched GBBO and quickly became...

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Jessica's Bake Off Challenge

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