Join me as I bake through the Great British Bake Off.
Named after Queen Victoria herself, the Victoria sandwich was said to be Her Majesty's favorite. This light sponge sandwiched with jam and buttercream is often used as a standard of baking for the British home cook, so it's fitting that this was the final technical challenge in the 2016 season of The Great British Baking Show.
Mary Berry's marjolaine is a 7-layered delight featuring four layers of almond-hazelnut dacquoise sandwiched with praline buttercream and chocolate ganache. Overall, a delightfully nutty, crunchy, creamy concoction that presents itself with elegance and panache!
The classic Bakewell tart, with its layers of short crust pastry, jam, frangipane and icing, hails from the town of Bakewell in Derbyshire, England. While its origins may be the source of some contention, most such arguments fade over a cup of tea and a warm slice.
Viennese whirls, though not Viennese, were probably inspired by Spritzgebäck, a German butter cookie that's extruded through a cookie press. But Viennese whirls take butter cookies to the next level, with a swirl of buttercream and a spoonful of jam sandwiched between two melt-in-your-mouth cookies!
Is the Jaffa cake a biscuit (i.e. cookie) or a cake? That was the subject of a 1991 court case, but you can decide for yourself if you make your own! These chocolate-covered mini-cakes with an orange center are made from Mary Berry's recipe, which was the technical challenge during Biscuit Week in GBBO 2016.
The texture of a soufflé is hard to describe. It’s much more cake-like than I imagined it would be — soft and moist, yet light as air, it almost melts in the mouth. Every bite was like a soft pillow of rich, creamy chocolatey heaven.
Mary Berry’s mokatines feature a genoise sponge sandwiching a layer of coffee buttercream, surrounded by almonds and decorated with coffee-flavored crème au beurre, then topped with fondant icing. These tiny cakes pack quite a punch with coffee flavor. But for a coffee lover like me, that's not a problem!
Tennis cakes were a big hit in the late 1800s, when lawn tennis became a popular sport that men and women could play together. The cakes were elaborately decorated with candied fruit or royal icing in the shape of tennis balls and racquets. This was the technical challenge for Victorian week in The Great British Bake Off 2015.
Spanische Windtorte, the precursor to Pavlova, Schaum Torte and Eton mess, consists of an intricately decorated meringue shell filled with whipped cream and berries. Even Sigmund Freud's fiancée called it "the fanciest cake ever created in Vienna."
Mary Berry's walnut layer cake features three layers of light, moist sponge with bits of walnut throughout, filled with vanilla buttercream and covered with what she calls "boiled icing" but what I recall from my childhood as "seven-minute frosting."
