Home Game Version of Great British Bake Off

One Saturday morning we decided to issue a challenge to the children, a la the technical challenges of The Great British Bake Off--make muffins for breakfast! They had to make three varieties with six muffins each. Bonus points would be awarded from adding other things like eggs to the breakfast offering, with double points for bacon!

The kids got to work right away. They made lemon muffins, pumpkin muffins (we still had an unused can from Thanksgiving), and banana muffins.

My daughter made a special glaze from the lemon muffins.

Artistically glazing the muffins!

Ready for the next batch!

To gain the extra credit (something you can't do on the Bake Off), she made both scrambled eggs and smoothies. Yum!

Cooking up the eggs

Pouring the smoothies

The only task left was plating the pastries in a delectable way. Big brother helped out, arranging the muffins in layers and making sure any "seventh" muffins were taken care of.

"I demand a recount!"

The spread was quite delicious and we were happy to have the kids take a hand in making breakfast. Feel free to use this scheme on your kids!

A fine presentation

Baking Biscuits

More Great British Baking Show inspired goodness! The toddler and the daughter were drafted into biscuit-making duties. To be clear, these were American-style biscuits, the sort served like dinner rolls (though just as often served at breakfast as at dinner), not British-style biscuits, the sort served for dessert (like Americans cookies).

Master chefs

We used a recipe from BakeWise by Shirley O. Corriher, which necessitated the use of special flour. Like we don't already have enough "special flours."

A sampling from our cabinet

Mixing up the dough was easy enough. Flour, salt, and sugar are easy to combine with a whisk or spoon.

Sister stirring up something other than trouble!

The method calls from some "hands-on" activity--mixing in the shortening by hand.

Four hands makes it go four times as fast, right?

Cream and buttermilk are added until the dough has the consistency and look of cottage cheese.

Just right

The dough is then divided into balls and coated with some flour. They are put next to each other in the final baking pan so that the biscuits will rise up rather than out.

Ready for baking?

The recipe recommends buttering them while they are hot, which we gladly did.

More butter!

Carefully brushing on with a hand method

The biscuits did come out as a big mass of biscuity goodness. When we went to separate them, it was all too easy. And all too tasty!

Easy separation!

A happy cook!

In case you want to get the book (which we highly recommend), here's the Amazon link!

Lemon Cake with Lemon Curd and Cream

In another round of cooking inspired by The Great British Baking Show, my wife and daughter decided to make the fanciest lemon cake ever. They found the recipe on the BBC web site. Here it is!

This was the destination--would you like directions?

Lemon Cake (Americanized ingredients)

• 350g/12 oz butter, softened, plus extra for greasing 
• 350g/12 oz granulated sugar
• 4 lemons, zest only, plus juice of 2 lemons
• 6 eggs
• 6 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 10 1/2 oz cake flour
• 2 oz cornstarch

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease and line with parchment paper three 8-inch cake pans.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the lemon zest and juice.

Slowly beat in the eggs, one at a time, until the mixture is well combined.

Method to ensure no shells get in the mixture

Adding the egg

Whisk the baking powder, cake flour, and cornstarch together in a bowl and fold into the cake mixture.

Combining dry ingredients

Folding

Divide the cake batter among the three pans and bake for 25-30 minutes or until risen and golden-brown. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool for 10 minutes. Run a round-bladed knife around the inside edge of the pans to loosen the cakes. Remove the cakes and set aside to cool completely on a rack.

Cool cakes

For the lemon curd

• 60g/2 1/4 oz butter
• 225g/8 oz granulated sugar
• 3 lemons, juice and zest
• 2 eggs

While the cakes are cooking, make the lemon curd. Heat the butter, sugar, lemon juice, and zest in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water, stirring occasionally until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. (Do not allow the base of the bowl to touch the surface of the water.) Remove from the heat.

Meanwhile, beat the eggs in a separate bowl. Slowly whisk the melted butter mixture into the beaten eggs until well combined.

Whisky business

Set the bowl over the pan of simmering water and cook, whisking constantly, for 2-3 minutes or until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. (It took more like 10 minutes for our curd to thicken. Possibly we used too large a bowl, which made the mixture take too long to heat. We got there eventually, though.)

Sieve the lemon curd into a clean bowl, then cover with cling film and set aside to cool.

Lemon curd almost ready

For the filling, prepare whipped cream using your favorite recipe, until soft peaks form when the whisk is removed. The British recipe uses double cream. That is a milk cream with a level of fat unavailable in America.

Place one of the cakes onto a serving plate and spread with the lemon curd.

Starting to spread the curd

Just about done

Spread over some of the whipped cream and sandwich with another cake.

Whip cream layer

Repeat the process with the remaining lemon curd, whipped cream and cake tiers. Dust with icing sugar.

Dusting the cake

Taking out a slice

Final luscious product (drizzle left over curd if you have any)

One Ingredient Challenge: Eclairs and Puffs

Part of an ongoing series of cooking from scratch. That is, we cook something from basic items that don't have multiple ingredients (e.g. store-bought spaghetti sauce includes all sorts of spices and maybe other stuff too; we'd start with tomatoes and individual spices and add them together to make our own sauce). See other challenges here.

We have been watching a lot of The Great British Baking Show  (actually known as The Great British Bake Off in the UK). A recent episode featuring eclairs inspired us to try a home version. In the following photos you can see who in the family is the biggest fan of this show and who was the driving force behind this challenge.

We used the pastry recipe found here (thanks Martha!).

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 large eggs, plus possibly 1 large egg white, if needed (we didn't)

Directions:
Boil the butter, sugar, salt and one cup of water in a medium saucepan. Using a wooden spoon, quickly stir in the flour.

Adding flour

Stirring

Cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, about three minutes until a film forms on the bottom of the pan.

Cooking over heat

Transfer to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on low speed until slightly cooled (about one minute). Raise speed to medium; add whole eggs, one at a time, until soft peaks form when batter is touched with your finger. We had a non-electric mixer:

Adding eggs

Testing for peaks

If peaks don't form, lightly beat remaining egg white and mix into a batter a little at a time until it does.

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Transfer the pastry mix (called Pate a Choux) to a pastry bag with a 5/8-inch plain tip. For puffs, pipe dough into 2-inch rounds about 1 inch apart.

Making puffs

Gently flatten the pointed peaks with a moistened finger, rounding tops to ensure even rising. Bake until puffed and golden brown, about 25 minutes. The profiteroles should feel light and airy. Remove puffs from oven and transfer sheets to wire racks to cool completely.

Cooling completely

For eclairs, pipe the dough in 3 1/2 inch lengths on the parchment-papered baking sheets. Smooth the tops and brush with egg wash as for the puffs and bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

Raw eclairs - we did 6 inch lengths, whoops

We made a simple whipped cream filling instead of bothering with a creme patisserie.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup heavy cream, chilled
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (we used our own homemade.  Single ingredients!)

Whip the cream, sugar and vanilla on low speed until frothy and the sugar has dissolved. Increase the speed to high and continue to whip until doubled in volume and soft peaks form.

What to do with any leftover cream (though you probably already knew to do this)

We were too tired to attempt a chocolate glaze by this point, so we just melted some chocolate chips in the microwave. Please don't tell Martha.

Filling with cream and covering with chocolate

A cook's privilege

Finished product