Jessica's Bake Off Challenge

Welcome back, as always. Today, I am sharing my recent bake- cinnamon, cardamom, chocolate, and orange babka. It fulfills the chocolate loaf signature challenge from Series 7, Episode 3 of The Great British Bake Off .  What is babka? The word babka  technically refers to a sweet yeast cake, but in the Jewish tradition, is specifically filled and twisted into a loaf shape. It is something of an alternative form of a rugelach, and is usually filled with either a chocolate or a cinnamon filling. Mass produced chocolate babka is readily available (Trader Joe's has an awesome chocolate babka), but the addition of orange and spices gives my recipe a unique flair. The cake ends up just sweet enough, making it a perfect accompaniment to tea. Babka looks difficult to bake, but it is not really hard... it just takes patience. Unlike most cakes, babka needs time to rise. Like most breads, it needs two rises, but as an enriched dough, the rising time takes longer than a typical...

Sorry for the long delay, everyone. I've been busy, and have not been focusing much on baking lately. To make up for it, I am posting three times over three days. I hope you enjoy! A couple of weeks ago, I bought some bread flour and remade the bagels from series 3, episode 2. I still need to tweak the goat cheese, sage, and browned butter bagels- the amount of goat cheese I tried in the last batch was not good for the bagels' structure- but the mint chocolate bagels turned out beautifully. Besides substituting bread flour in lieu of all purpose flour, I made a few further adjustments. I added chocolate chips into the bagels to add more chocolate flavor and a little more sweetness. I also made sure to add the  fillings after the first prove, rather than before. Furthermore, I kneaded the dough for longer, and was more focused on getting it to the proper elasticity. The bagels certainly kept their shape and structure better with the changes. The only drawback is that the...

Hello again! Sorry for the late update. I baked the ciabatta for this technical a week ago, but had a migraine all week. Since I am only now getting to post, I am going to give you two posts today. This week, I purchased a cake decorating set. Considering how poor I am at decoration, I need all the supplies I can get. It came with a rotating cake stand, various frosting application knives and scrapers, a wire cake cutter, a bunch of piping tips, some reusable piping bags, silicone cupcake liners, a silicone candy mold (unfortunately heart-shaped), and more. I am very excited to have it, and look forward to using it to its optimal capacity. On to the ciabatta... My challenge last Sunday was to make Paul Hollywood's ciabatta recipe from the technical challenge of Series 5 Episode 3. I did not follow the recipe precisely, but the bread turned out pretty well. It was a little flatter than I would have liked (although I don't really know how fluffed ciabatta should be), but ...

The Showstopper Challenge from Series 3, Episode 2 (Bread Week) seemed like a good challenge to try next. This particular challenge entailed baking 12 sweet and 12 savoury (British spelling) bagels. I am no stranger to baking bread, and I have certainly eaten my fair share of bagels after synagogue services and at social functions, but I had never before attempted to make bagels. Therefore, I decided to try making some plain bagels to test technique before playing with flavors. I am glad I did so, as the resultant quality of bagels correlated to the order in which I made them. What I made are still far from perfect; I would really like to revisit this challenge and tweak my technique in the future. One of the cooking processes that makes a bagel a bagel is the boiling process... This gives the almost rubbery crust. I found that 45-60 seconds on each side works well. The boiling is a rather perilous step; I accidentally broke my first bagel trying to take it out with tongs (I the...