Join me as I bake through the Great British Bake Off.
Fondant fancies two ways: Champagne and rose fancies feature a rose-flavored sponge brushed with champagne syrup and sandwiched with raspberry curd. Orange blossom and marmalade fancies are scented with orange blossom water and filled with a dollop of orange marmalade. Two for tea, anyone?
An early form of marzipan, marchpane was used in Tudor times to create elaborate centerpieces. This marzipan pumpkin patch sits atop a disk of marchpane, which sits on an olive oil orange marmalade cake, made with a whole orange and lemon.
These mini mousse cakes are light as a feather but pack a real flavor punch. Caramel Macchiato Mousse Cakes have both coffee and vanilla mousse layered atop a chocolate sponge, with a salted caramel ganache on top. Lemon-Berry Mousse Cakes feature a berry-flavored mousse on a lemon sponge, with raspberry gelée hidden inside!
An amuse-bouche is a bite-sized hors d'oeuvre served by chefs at the beginning of a meal. These Crab Rangoon Parcels and Rhubarb-Ricotta Tartlets both feature my Practically Painless and Almost Perfect Phyllo Pastry. Even better, they can be made in advance!
These churros are flavored with a blend of chai spices and scented with orange zest, accompanied by a blood orange caramel dipping sauce. Churros make a great snack any time of day, or eat them for breakfast with a mug of thick, hot chocolate, like the Spanish do!
Moby Dick’s Bubble Bath, my chocolate centerpiece, consists of a white chocolate whale sitting in a chocolate gingerbread bathtub, surrounded by towers of dark chocolate bubbles.
Vol-au-vents are delicate shells of puff pastry that can be filled with almost anything your tastebuds fancy. Some of these are filled with succulent beef tenderloin, and the rest with melted brie and cranberry chutney.
You'd never know this rich and creamy frozen dessert is dairy free! The pistachio ice cream is made with coconut milk and coconut cream. The hurricane roll is flavored with purple ube. And sandwiched between the two is a thin layer of blackberry jam, all topped off with luscious, marshmallowy Swiss meringue!
For my three-tiered cheesecake, I chose: pumpkin spice with a gingersnap crust, rhubarb ripple with a Biscoff cookie crust, and lemon poppyseed with a shortbread cookie crust. Obviously, it’s not necessary to stack your cheesecakes; that was only a requirement for the Great British Bake Off.
Who can forget the famous lion bread sculpture from the 2015 season of The Great British Bake Off? That's what inspired me to make this sun-moon medallion bread sculpture, featuring a dark rye moon and turmeric-basil bread for the sun, surrounded by pesto and mozzarella stuffed rolls for the sun's rays.
Here's the Dish 