Bake With Bake Off

Do you watch the Great British Bake Off? I’m such an addict, and of course so is my little chef Boo. As it’s the school holidays I’m even allowing her to stay up late and watch it. Although, she sat and watched the repeat again today!

The show has already been surrounded in controversy. First up there was the change of mixers for the bakers which had the viewers up in arms. The show swapped the Kitchen Aid Mixers for the cheaper Kenwood ones. Then there has been the uproar over contestant Marie who was claimed to have a professional background….if you can call a certificate for a one week course more than 30 years ago and selling cupcakes from your own kitchen a professional background. It’s all good for getting the show in the news though.

We all like a bit of controversy so I’m sure there will be plenty more to come.

This year I’ve decided to bake along with the Great British Bake Off and  Silver Mushroom. I will try to join in each week and bake something that has featured on the show. I’m also taking part in the Twitter chats after the show with the #bwbo, feel free to join in and tell us what you thought about the show or share your baking questions.

So this weeks show introduced us to the new contestants and we had some successes and failures as usual. Poor Little Dorret’s show stopper Black Forest Gateaux was a big flop, but it was Stu who was sent home when he failed to follow instructions and produced a Beetroot Forest Gateaux with no chocolate decoration.

Personally, I think it’s too early to have a favourite but Boo is already fond of Ugne so I hope she does well.

So for the first weeks show the Signature Bake was a madeira cake and the tent was filled with much fussing over the size of the cracks. The Technical Bake was Mary’s Walnut Cake which had Alvin refusing to be beaten by the caramel covered nuts and Stu’s first go at blatantly disobeying the instructions. Then the Showstopper of course was the Black Forest Gateaux which we all know is chocolate and cherries….not beetroot.

My challenge this week was to make a Madeira Cake.

It was a bit of a challenge because I already had a cake to bake this week for the Little Man’s birthday. Then I read, somewhere, that a madeira cake is good for icing and decorating…so that’s what I did.

I made a traditional madeira cake, slightly lemon flavoured. then covered it in butter cream and icing and decorated it for the birthday boy. So, although my cake had a great crack when it came out of the oven, it didn’t really matter, because I turned it upside down to give me a nice flat top!

Here’s my recipe.

Madeira Cake.

Makes an 8 inch round cake.

Ingredients:

375g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
315g caster sugar
315g soft butter
5 medium eggs
45ml lemon juice

Method

preheat over to 160C/gas mark 3
place flour, baking powder, sugar, butter, eggs and juice in a mixing bowl
beat together until smooth and glossy
place mixture into prepared tin
cook for 1 1/2 hours

Easy really 🙂

Here is my finished cake when it came out of the oven, and then when decorated with an Animal Jam theme.

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