Join me as I bake through the Great British Bake Off.
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.
This gingerbread Mad Hatter's hat is filled with 36 Queen of Hearts Linzer Tarts, perfect for an Alice in Wonderland themed tea party. I hope this will inspire you to make your own!
Black Forest cherry cake is made of multiple layers of chocolate cake filled with cherries and whipped cream and garnished with additional cream, cherries and chocolate. My retro interpretation incorporates a chocolate chiffon cake and dark sweet cherries with the traditional German flavor of kirschwasser.
The pièce montée was the pièce de resistance for the 2014 season of the Great British Bake Off. I dubbed mine The Magic of Halloween. It features a dark chocolate cake with cherry filling topped with a pumpkin cake, which in turn is topped with a croquembouche. The profiteroles in the croquembouche are filled with orange pastry cream, drizzled with dark chocolate and spiraled with spun sugar. Spiced macarons and gingerbread black cats round out this tower of treats.
Entremets are desserts with multiple layers of different flavors, textures and colors meant to show off the pastry chef’s prowess. My Chocolate Cherry Bombes and "Twofer Tea" Blackberry Pistachio Entremets feature complementary flavors and bright colors that are a feast for the eyes as well as the tastebuds.
Here's the Dish 