It’s finally time!!!!! Although, if I’m honest, the “finally” comes with mixed emotions. On Sunday night, we signed up for a month of Netflix – our Christmas present to us – and we’re already binging The Great British Bake Off, a delight for both of us. Just like it was Tim asking to listen to Harry Potter during dinner, it was Tim who first voiced that he wanted to binge GBBO after we got our TV. Funny how we rub off on each other! 😄
suaimhneas (n): a silent sense of contentedness; tranquility
By Episode 4 (Chocolate Week, if you remember), Tim and I already had our favorite bakers:
Matty: He started a bit rough and ready, there’s potential there, and we LOVE potential. Though the bakers who blow things away with perfection are fun to watch, it’s the ones we get to see grow over the (hopefully) 10 weeks that we usually end up rooting for in the end.
Dan: Though he quickly put himself on top as the one to beat, we like how he doesn’t just take that crown and settle. He’s in that tent challenging himself, sometimes in ways that are beyond the challenges that are set. Take his platted bread, for example. Though it was a flop, he tried something none of the other bakers did.
Josh: We weren’t quite sold on Josh in the first episode (though we by no means wrote him off), but his biscuit burger for Biscuit Week was STUNNING. Talk about illusions! I don’t know how he pulled it off with biscuits, but I’m still impressed. It’ll be exciting to see where he goes from here.
Tasha: She immediately had our hearts. I don’t know if it’s her sense of humor, her personality, or her beautiful baking, but she’s already my favorite to win (no spoilers, please!). Loved her robin cake and was beyond impressed with her medusa bread (did you see those hands!?).
We can always count on Nicky and Saku for a laugh, which makes this season even more of a joy to watch. And the first person we were very disappointed to see leave was Abbi. Abbi loved using garden-grown or foraged ingredients, and we were excited about seeing some very new flavor combos in the tent. But it was not to be. 😕 I hope she keeps experimenting at home, though!
By Episode 7 (Dessert Week), we were very happy that Matty, Dan, Josh, and Tasha were still in the running! We’re both guessing that Dan, Josh, and Tasha will be in the final. Fingers crossed! 🤞 And we’ll both miss the laughs that Nicky and Saku inspire. Seriously, when Nicky said her final week was “like a bag of pants” (that’s underwear for us Americans), we lost it! 🤣 Can’t believe it’s almost over already, though.
And because watching Bake Off always makes me jealous of everything they get to eat, I caved and made my own tasty treat. In a hurried frenzy between two episodes, I threw together a batch of mocha cookies. Using a Pinterest recipe as inspiration, I made a couple of changes:
- Traded 2 tsp instant espresso powder for 1/4 cup brewed espresso
- Added an extra 1/3 cup of flour to balance out the additional liquid
- Rolled the dough in cocoa powder (think crinkle cookies) instead of dusting with cocoa and powder sugar post-bake
They had a lovely crunchy outside and a perfectly chewy inside. I’ll send the majority of them with Tim this weekend (he’s throwing his brother’s bachelor party) and they’ll be devoured. However, for us, who enjoy strong flavors (and bread more than anything), they were, overall, just a meh bake. But it was fun, and that’s what counts!
So, now, here’s the second “finally.” My last bake along for the ’23 season.
Week 10: Finals Week
I didn’t choose this week’s bake. Mom did. It was her birthday, and she’d been eyeing a rosemary & orange cake in Victoria magazine (as a result, I don’t have a link), so I took a special trip to the store for fresh rosemary and some oranges, so she’d have this beauty for dessert.
It was a very straightforward bake. A simple white cake with chopped rosemary. The orange was all in the buttercream. It was a very good buttercream! It’s not my favorite kind of icing, because I find that the butter flavor is often too strong, but this rendition was excellent. The orange was strong enough to taste, and the icing was creamy without much butter taste.
The most challenging part of this cake was the bake/assembly. The recipe asked for it to be baked in three round cake tins. I only had two, so I overfilled both and increased the bake time. As a result, they were a bit over-baked; the outermost parts of the cake were crumbly but the centers remained moist. And once I sliced them in half, creating four layers, and added the icing, you couldn’t even tell!
And, for the first time ever, I made extra icing. What??? I know. Since it was only supposed to be a three-layer cake, there wasn’t quite enough icing for a naked cake, and Mom loves her icing, so I made an extra half-batch to finish it off.
Finally, because it was the final, I decorated it with some sugared rosemary (which looks lovely! 😍) and sugared orange slices. The orange slices didn’t turn out the greatest – the orange juice kept melting the sugar, turning them into a bit of a sticky mess. So, they went on the cake right before serving and all was well!
And that’s that. The end of my GBBO bake along ’23. I’ll be back to share my thoughts on the season post-binge, but it’s time to say goodbye to a season more successful than the last. I’ll still be baking until the fall, so stay tuned!
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