Get Baking

The Great British Bake Off is on our TV screens once more – albeit on Channel 4 with an almost new team, Prue Leith is now judging alongside baking stalwart Paul Hollywood, while Sandi Toksvig and Noel Fielding interject with their witty comments and words of support for the bakers.  We also now have adverts between the challenges – you could look on the advert breaks during the Bake Off as an interruption, or embrace them and use the time to make a cuppa, or something stronger and reflect on how the bakers are doing.

It’s still early days with just two episodes and two bakers gone but there have already been some impressive creations. It was cakes in the first week. The technical challenge resulted in a variety of chocolate mini rolls – they looked very fiddly to make, especially as the bakers didn’t have all the instructions - as is usual for the technical challenge.

The showstopper challenge was an Illusion Cake – resulting in some really impressive cakes. Perhaps the best were the ones that were made to look like food. The ‘Watermelon’ cake, painted in that recognisable washed green of a watermelon and loaded with ‘pips’ made of chocolate chips in the red sponge.

The ‘Ramen Noodle’ cake must have been especially confusing to taste, the eyes said it was a savoury dish of fried chicken, sweet vegetables, fish roe and noodles when it was infact made of banana cake, melted marshmallow and fondant icing.

There was also a ‘Raised pork pie with egg surprise’ – all cunningly made from cake and icing.  It was so clever – when the judges cut a slice it looked just like a slice of pork pie, complete with boiled egg.

It was the ‘loaf’ and ‘sandwich’ that won over the judges.  Steven Carter-Bailey made the most impressive illusion cake – it didn’t look like a cake at all – eating it must have been very strange as the eyes were saying here comes a BLT sandwich when infact it was cake, not the same thing at all!

This week was biscuit week – the judges were looking for a snap and flavour. The bakers created some impressive looking biscuits in the signature bake of biscuits sandwiched with a cream filling. The technical challenge was indeed a challenge, after all who has ever made fortune cookies? The showstopper of a board game made entirely of biscuit produced some very imaginative and some not so impressive results. Overall there were hundreds of biscuits created in one tent over one weekend and congratulations to Steven who was, once again, Star Baker.

We’ve got some great gadgets for baking, all these products are easy to use, so they are popular with children too. Our baking products include a fabulous Cookie Press; it presses cookies into different designs to make a professional selection of biscuits. We also have Decorating Sets and a Frosting Deco Pen Set in our Baking section – for decorating cakes, bakes and desserts. The Pocket Maker set is great for making little sweet or savoury pies – take a look at this recipe for Apple Pie Pockets.

We’re running a Great British Bake Off sweepstake in the office, whoever has drawn the baker that leaves the tent has to then bake for the rest of us - we’re looking forward to lots of cake over the coming weeks. Keep a look out on our social media for our baked creations. We’d love to see your cakes and bakes too – so please post them on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter pages. Enjoy your bakes, whatever you choose to make.

Read more about the Bake Off, the bakers and the recipes on the Great British Bake Off website.