I love baked cheesecakes, I much prefer them to the no-bake variety They have more body and taste much more indulgent, with their velvety texture. I’ve recently made a blueberry cheesecake for someone at work, so I have a bit of practise with them.

Neapolitan nouveau
For this showstopper I decided to the make something with a twist. I like the ideas that Nadiya and Ian had by creating flavours inspired by drinks or sweet, so I’m going to do something a little similar. The main inspiration was a the retro frozen dessert, a Neapolitan ice cream with a chocolate, vanilla and strawberry layer. To keep to the basic flavours seems a bit boring so to make them a little be more interesting, I am going to use the other retro ice cream flavours of mint choc chip, rum raisin and raspberry ripple. The rum raisin, and raspberry fillings were easier to get recipe references for, however the mint chocolate layer was a little harder to find. Most of the recipes I could find were American, and had artificial colour green to them. I had to dig around for a chocolate based filling, and then adapt it for my idea.

After a bit of reading there are a few variations on the type cheese to use for the filling of cheesecakes. It could be just the sole use of mascarpone, or cream cheese (like Philidepha) or a mixture of one of these with crème fraiche, double cream and or soured cream. It’s difficult to remember what I tasted before and what one taste better than another, so I’m going to use a different combination for each cheesecake.

Buttery biscuit base
When watching the show last Wednesday the bakers used either a biscuit or pastry base for the cheesecake. I don’t think I have ever had a pastry crust, in fact when I presented the idea to the fiance I was met with a look of disgust, and the word “Never! It’s biscuits and nothing else!”. Taking that comment to heart, I could only go with one option. All of the recipes I looked through, and what I would normally use, required digestive biscuits. Usually I would buy these from the shop, but this being bake off, I couldn’t get away with that, so I chose to make a large batch to use for all the bases.

These biscuits are quite frugal when it comes to making them, and thankfully I had most of the ingredients in the cupboard. The main dry ingredients are wholemeal flour, mixed with oatmeal and sugar. The oatmeal required was the medium grain, however I thought that this would make them a bit more oaty and grainy than I would of liked, so I halved the required amount the the finer grain too. Plus this meant I could use them both up, and make more room in the already packed baking cupboard! The dry ingredients are then rubbed into butter, and once the breadcrumb stage is reached, milk is added to bind it altogether. The dough was then wrapped and packed into the fridge to chill for 30 minutes to harden up.

Once the dough is firm enough to roll out, I did so and cut out the biscuits for baking. In order to get them nice, crunchy and fully dried out, they had to be baked for 15-18 minutes and then cooled before bashing and mixing with the melted butter for the bases. Each base was then baked again, to ensure it was hard and crispy, before pouring over the fillings. I even brushed egg wash over a few to ensure it didn’t get soggy by the filling, similar to what you would do for a pastry case. When all the bases were ready it was time ot get started on the first of many layers.

Pink layer
In a true neapolitan ice-cream this is usually strawberry flavoured, I don’t mind strawberries, but I much prefer raspberries and they are in season at the moment, so I’ve decided to go these instead. For this filling I used solely mascarpone, and to get the vital pink colour I made a raspberry coulis that could also be used for the ripple and serving.  The coulis was pretty simple, it was just a case of boiling some water with sugar, lime juice and adding some frozen raspberries to it until they soften.  Once they were nice and squishy I blended them with the stick blender until smooth and left it to cool while the rest of the filling was prepped and the oven heated up.  

On top of the base of the biscuits, I placed some fresh raspberries in circles, in the hope that when you cut into the baked dessert you would also get a nice pattern with the fruit.  This hope was soon dashed when I poured the filling over the top, making them go all over the place! Next time I think I’ll pour a little of the filling on the base first so that the fruit has something to stick too.  I used some of the remaining coulis to decorate the top with a design I found on pintrest; Squeezing little dots of the coulis into circles on the top of the cake and dragging a cocktail stick through the. You are then left with a pretty heart shaped pattern, I just hoped it would stay this pretty after an hour long bake.

As well as experimenting with the various fillings that can be used as the base of the cheesecakes, I also decided to try the two different methods used for baking them.  One method is the water-bath, which helps to keep an even temperature around the cake while it bakes. The other is a dry bake, with just the cake in the oven, and no water-bath. This raspberry cheesecake along with the rum and Raisin flavour were baked with the water-bath method.  In order to ensure that the water doesn’t get to the cake, or more importantly the base, the tin needs to be wrapped prior to baking (and before you put the filling in). Once everything is ready and the filling is ready to pour, the tin is placed in the roasting tin, so that you don’t have to do any needless moving of the cake tin when its full! After the filling is in and it’s ready to bake, boiling water is poured into the roasting tin, so that it comes half way up the side of the tin, then bake.

White layer
While the pink payer was baking I moved onto the white, boozy, layer.  For this layer I could have gone with the family favourite of lemon and raisin, but I wanted to tart it up slightly, and what better way to do this than with a splash of alcohol.  Three days before baking this adult treat, I soaked all the raisins I had in the cupboard (about 200g) with a nice healthy lashing of spiced dark rum.  

For this recipe I thought I would try using one of the previous bake off contestant recipes, and found one by Jo Wheatley. Her filling uses cream cheese and sour cream, with half of the sour cream going on top of the baked cheesecake 10 minutes before the end of the bake. It was an interesting concept but I’m to sure what it was supposed to add to the cake.  For the baked decoration on this cake I wanted to replicate the heart design of the raspberry ripple, so I decided to make a caramel, with addition of a little rum. As you can see from the pictures, this didn’t go as well as I would have liked, probably because I didn’t leave it to cool down for long enough. Instead of a nice even pattern, I was left with something that looked like a Jackson Pollack painting. Oh well, on with the third…

Brown layer
Other than the tweaks to the recipe for the raspberry laker, this was the layer I felt was more tricky.  I wanted a mint infused filling, that reminded you of the ice cream but a bit more subtle, so that over-riding flavour was the chocolate. For this recipe I found an American one, that I decided to adapt.  The base for this filling was cream cheese, and double cream, mixed with some luxurious melted chocolate.  The first this I decided to change with this recipe was the amount of sugar as it seemed like an awful lot, however looking back this may have been to sweeten up the chocolate content.  The Chocolate needed to be melted with the cream and some cocoa, however what I was left with was not pourable and did not taste good.  Instead, after going out to buy more chocolate, I chose to melt the chocolate first, then mix in the cream so that I was left with a pourable ganache.  

This was then added to whipped up cream cheese, eggs and sugar. For the mint infusion I added freshly chopped mint and some home mint sugar syrup. The decoration on the top of this cake was to use of the chocolate chips  that were used inside the cake too.  The recipe calls for Nordstrom Makers Dark Chocolate Mint candies, which being in the UK i didn’t have, so instead I used regular chocolate chips.

This last layer was to be baked using the dry bake method, without the use of the water bath

Bakes the difference
All of the bakes needed to be cooked until there was still a little wobble in the middle of the cake.  For the ones cooked in the water bath this seemed to take a little longer than the dry bake method.  I have to remove the water-bath bakes from the oven so that I could continue with the other bakes, so in order for them not to cool down too quickly and crack I left them in the waterbaths.  The chocolate cheesecake however I took out of the oven, forgetting about the cracking (as it was late) and predictably it did crack! Damn!

Layer it up
Usually the presentation stage of the showstopper doesn’t really worry me however with each cake looking slightly different, I had my doubts on how to make these look good, let alone stand on three tiers!

First I tried using straws, like they did on the show, with near disastrous results. Pushing them into the raspberry layer lead to my thumb going into the filling. When I tried to balance the first layer onto it there was no way it was going to hold.

My next option was short lived. I had some plastic cake dowels, but they were too long and I was worried I would have more than my thumb in the cake if I tried push down on them.

The last idea I came up with was something that I spied out of the corner of my eye, shot glasses!  I placed on in the middle of the raspberry and the rum raisin layer, after having to scoop out some of the filling first and voila! I had a slightly messy (especially on the bottom layer) 3 tiered cheesecake, that balanced long enough to take a few pictures.

Saving grace
Thankfully, especially when it comes to overall presentation,  i am not on the bake off, and as such I could play with my presentation skills.  Instead of the tiered versions, I used the remaining coulis and caramel to decorate the slices. For the chocolate layer I added a whipped cream, with added chopped mint.

In hindsight I now think that I should have just cut the biscuit dough to fit the cake tins. I could then have used the same dough to make a high crust around the sides to prevent any filling from escaping.

Using the waterbath method created a creamier texture to the bake, and the edges were not as coloured as it would have been with a dry bake.  Leaving them to cool in the waterbath, lead to the edge of the bases to get a little soggy, but this may have been a poor seal with the tin foil. The chocolate bake was definitely drier and more dense, and closer to the regular baked cheesecake. I prefer this latter texture, however I found the chocolate a bit too rich,and I couldn’t taste the mint.  I’ll have to tweak this one, although I went down well with friends and family. The Rum and Raisin was my favourite, although I think it needed a bit longer in the oven. The overall favourite was the raspberry cheesecake. I’d be interested to see if what the results would be if I baked them all using the opposite methods, but I have had enough cheesecake now for at least a few months!

After last weeks savoury we are are back to the sweet things this week, Dessert. Full of sugar, fat and all the things that are bad for you.  Thankfully it’s a bank holiday weekend, so lots of people to see who can eat this weeks showstopper, 3 tiered cheesecakes!

Signature Bake – 12 Crème Brûlée
They do like to bring back the retro in bake off and this week is no exception, in fact it’s deceptively delicate according to Paul.  The bakers had to keep to the more traditional methods of using a grill instead of a fancy blow torch to create the crunchy caramel topping, which proved tricky to get an even colour across all 12 dishes.

Key Points:

1. Adding hot milk to cold eggs needs to be done slowly, otherwise you’ll end up cooking the eggs.
2. Baking it a water bath will guarantee an even bake thoughout each pot.
   
3. When you baking it your looking for a little wobble meaning it just set, over set it will split and under baked it will pour out like soup

Flora was certainly out to impress with some added accompaniments to her rhubarb and custard versions. Ugne was the only one this week that produced a perfect consistency on her custard, although the caramel on the top wasn’t crunchy enough.  the rest of the bakers seemed to suffer from either over baking or underbaking. Paul’s ended up looking like scrambled eggs, while Sandy’s looked like custard.

Technical Bake – Spanische Windtorte
There are times when a recipe like this comes up, I wish I was still doing the technicals.  I like that they are always something new, often retro bakes that have otherwise been forgotten. Plus I love meringue, but I have a feeling my dentist wouldn’t be too pleased with this sugary concoction!

Key Points:

1. French meringue the sugar needs to added to stiff egg whites until smooth, glossy and pipe-able. It is then cooked in the oven making sure it is not overbaked which would cause it to loose it’s bright whitness. The end result should be a crisp, dry meringue 
2. Swiss meringue is when the egg whites and sugar are cooked over a ban-marie leaving you with a marshmellowy texture that is cooked in the oven to set.

Most of the bakers this week seemed to get away relatively unscathed in this challenge, and where they did fall down it was usually on the same thing, the meringues.  The French meringue was chewy rather than crisp and dry and the swiss was too sticky. Alvin seemed to suffer the worst, his meringue had lost it whiteness, and there was no distinction between the meringues.  Tamal was marked down for only using one style of piping and Flora’s was too chewy.  I was good to see that Paul managed to get first prize with his attempt, even when he was unconfident most of the way through

Showstopper: 3 tiered baked cheesecake
I know I can’t taste it and I don’t have smell-o-vision but flavour wise Ian managed to pull it off once again.  As I have said before I love how he combines herbs and spices into his sweet bakes. HIs apple and tarragon would definitely be interesting to try, I’m not so sure about Paul’s suggestion of basil and banana though.  Tamal was another one with some interesting combinations, honey and rosemary would be a winner in my house and I loved the colour of the mango one.  He’s definitely working his way to star baker, if Ian ever lets it go! I loved the idea of Nadiya’s and Matt’s inspiration of using sweet favourites, whether it was from a soda or chocolate bar.  The presentation of Ugne’s bake let her down a bit but the rest of the bake saved her.  Flora’s presentation saved her slightly but I think she be careful next week, sticking with only one flavour was certainly surprising for her, especially compared to the crème brûlée! It was sad to see Sandy go, she was a strong character in the tent, but sadly everything this week everything went against her.

3 tiers, 3 sizes, 3 baking times and potentially 3 different flavours too, this weekend we certainly full on, and not just on the hips!  I have an idea to focus the flavours on retro ice cream flavours, similar to neapolitan but with a bit of a twist, this is bake off after all!

Seeing all the sculptures from this weeks show, definitely opened the imagination from what I could do this weekend.  Do I make one thing, with the different doughs and bake it all at the same time, like Pauls Lion or different things and bring them together in the final build.  After spending some time reading up on the different possible breads that I could make I decided to go with the latter.

The main inspiration for the sculpture came from one of the breads that I found online. It reminded me of some breads I’d tried in Hong Kong a few years ago while on holiday.  Some were really nice, the coconut cocktail buns were my favourite while others were slightly more questionable, like the red bean curd buns! The dough of the cocktail buns was similar to brioche, light, slightly sweet and after a bit of research I managed to find the  recipe for this unique bread. This dough was enriched with egg, milk, and butter the same as brioche but this dough had a special starter added too.  

This starter, called Tangzhong,  is made from a roux of flour and water heated to 65℃ until it is thick, and then cooled to room temperature.   The roux helps to keep the bread it soft and fluffy, even after a couple of days apparently.  This method seems to have been introduced by Yvonne Chen 陳郁芬 who wrote a Chinese book, entitled “65°C湯種麵包” (Bread Doctor). She wrote about how this method originated from Japan, to help keep their breads fluffy and bouncy.  The science behind it is that the gluten in the roux will absorb the moisture in the bread and making become leavened (rise more).

Getting back to the point, while researching the breads to use, I found a recipe for Tangzhong Matcha Green Tea Milk bread.  I had bought some matcha powder recently and not had a chance to use it yet, so this would  be a good excuse for some experimentation. Inspired by the use of green tea I then decided to make a tea cup and saucer sculpture, filled with green tea (or a version of). Along with the chinese bread, I had to think of another two breads to bake to make the sculpture.

The starting point for this had to be a bread that would hold its manipulated shape during the second prove as well as during the bake. For the cup I wanted to do the lattice weave that I had attempted the previous week with the biscuit box, so I started looking at doughs that have a good history of plaiting. The ideal bread for this seemed to be the Jewish challah, it’s sturdy and easy to manipulate and had a good sheen in it two. I decided that in order to keep the nice smooth shape of the bowl I’d keep the dough plain and just and he seeds on the outside for decoration.

The third bread needed to be a filled loaf, and as the fiancé has a likeness for spice, and because we’re going on holiday there soon, I chose to use Spanish chorizo and smoked paprika. To give the dough an extra bit of umph I added tomato purée and cooked onions. This bread made up the saucer of the sculpture and to ensure that I had enough I made double! With all the breads decided on it was time to start.

Easy Dough’s it
As I mentioned previously I need to make a flour and water starter for the tangzhong chinese bread, so this was the first thing to do so that it could cool to room temperature before using. While this was cooling I made a start on the challah.  I’d read through a few recipes, some used fresh yeast others active dry yeast.  I decided to go with the latter, because that’s what I had in the fridge and feel more confident with.  The yeast had to be activated with warm water and sugar, until a foamy substance appeared on the surface.  While this was activating a mixture of eggs, milk and melted butter was then added to the rest of the dry ingredients and with the help of my dough hook and Ken Jnr set to work bringing it all together. The active yeast mix was meant to create a stiffish dough, that needed to be worked for a further 8-10minutes until I was left with a smooth, silky dough. The dough was then transferrred to a clean oiled bowl and left to prove.

The saucer was next. This bread used two different types of flour, wholemeal and plain, which would hopefully make a nice robust bread.  Sometimes using wholemeal flour can make the bread a bit dry. I was hoping to counter this with the use of the cooked onions adding some much moisture to the dough. However this may have added a little too much moisture as I needed to add a little more flour towards the end of the kneading process to bring it all together and making it less sticky. After a good 10 minutes kneading it with the dough hook I did the end part with my hands so that it was easier to judge the consistency of the dough.  Once I was happy with the smooth elastic dough, it was transferred another clean oiled bowl and left to prove.

Back to the chinese bread. As I mentioned earlier I wanted to use the matcha green tea powder that I  had sitting in my cupboard, not just to experiment but to get a  good colour too.  The plan was to make the bread look like a big whirl of alternating white and green, so that it would look like the swirl you would find on the top of a cappuccino.  However are reading a few recipes on this new style of bread I was concerned that trying to roll it in this way would restrict the rise of the dough.  Instead I went with the method’s in the recipes I was using, best stick to the experts knowledge especially a first attempt. In order to make enough bread to fill the challah cup, I made two doughs, one plain and the other green.  The doughs were enriched with egg and milk similar to the challah, but the final kneaded dough is softer and feels more elastic.

With these final two doughs made, there was nothing left to do for another few hours, while they proved to double their size.

Knead to rise
After a tidy up and trip out to grab some breakfast I returned to 4 bowls fully risen dough.  In the case of the chorizo dough it was a monster, however the challah looked like it could do with a little longer.

Starting with the nicely orange dough, I punched it down and split it into three.  Being inspired by a picture I found on pintrest, I decided that the ‘saucer’ should have an open middle so that the cup would be able to balance on it.  The middle circle of the sauce was a 3 strand plait, of which the ends needed to be tucked away under the start of the plait.  The next part was strand of dough with the ends rolled clockwise and anti-clockwise. As you can see from the pictures these were places all the way around the outside of the plaited ring. The last part to bring it all together was to twist a rope of dough to keep everything together.  I needed to leave some air around each element so that it had space to rise in the second prove.  Due to the shear size of this structure, I construct it on two baking trays and leave to proof in the giant proving bag I had from last year.

Time for tea
With the saucer left to prove while the oven heated up I moved onto the green tea milk breads. This dough was so smooth and silky, quite unlike the filled wholemeal dough of the saucer. Each dough needed to be cut into 6 and rolled into a ball.  A ball of each was then rolled out to an oval shape and laid, one on top of the other.  The two layers were rolled again, to ensure that they were stuck together, and then folded into third, similar to if you were making puff pastry. The fold was rolled again and lastly the dough was rolled up, into a wheel.  I chose to then cut the roll in half to help the design in the tin.  I did this again with the rest of the dough alternating outer colour of the rolls as I went. Once they were all in the tin it too was a left to rise until doubled once again

Last but not Lattice
I’d left this bread until the end because the rise on the dough appeared to be a lot slower than the other breads, possibly because I used active dry yeast as opposed to the instant quick yeast. Regardless of the rise though the dough was nice and soft, silky and very elastic.  I separated it into 2 equal portions and rolled out to the same size , or and close as I could get.  Each one was then cut into strips with a pizza roller, one vertically and the other horizontally. The next step was to start the weaving in.  The easiest method, and the one that stretched the dough the least was to fold back alternate lines of the vertical strips and lay a horizontal strip over the top. The strips were then unfolded over the top of hte horizontal stip and and the process repeated but by folding back the alternate vertical strips.  To ensure each strip bonded with the other I brushed a little egg white on the joins too.  After a good 20 minutes I had something that looked like a bread blanket!  

Transferring this to the foil covered bowl required a bit of magic of hand eye coordination and quick flipping but I managed to do it on the first go without any breakages. The edges were then trimmed and re-rolled to create a twisted rope edging. The final piece was then left to prove again before the weave was brushed with egg white and sprinkled with sesame and poppy seeds.

Bake & Build.
The first to bake was the chorizo bread which needed a little extra time than the allotted amount as it didn’t seem to have that nice hollow sound in the middle.  The consequence of this extended time did mean that the crust was a little darker than I would have like, but at least it wasn’t burnt. The second bake was the chinese green tea loaf, which came out with a lovely colour from the egg wash glaze and the smell was amazing! The cup was the last to go in, and for me the most impressive in design.  I was a little worried that it would collapse when I removed the bowl, but luckily it didn’t.  Everything held it’s shape, even when it was all put together,

Open for interpretation
As you can see from the pictures below the finishing piece held together well. However you will also see that the handle of the cup is missing, mainly due to a lack of dough. If this happened on the bake off I would certainly have lost points. Instead, as I’m not, I’m leaving it open for interpretation. It could be an egg cup, or a hanging basket, I prefer to see it as a Chinese cup and saucer that doesn’t have handles.

It’s Pauls week, and he’s taking no prisoners, what with irregular baguettes, unpractised bakes and Mary was left with being the good cop this week.

Signature – Quick Bread
A first for the bake off, but then again isn’t everything we see on it? The definition of this bread is a very speedy bread made without yeast.  Instead it uses baking powder or bicarbonate for soda as a raising agent.

Key points:

1. Crumbly texture of the soda bread depends on the ratio of bicarb to buttermilk correct. Not enough will create a densely packed loaf, too much and it won’t hold it’s shape.
2. The dough doesn’t need to be kneaded, over-worked dough will lead to a tough chewy texture not the crumbliness that is iconic with soda breads
3. Cut the bread with a cross, almost to the bottom, which will help distribute the heat in the middle of the loaf.

Dispersal of the filling it needs to be even, but Dorret blended her’s too much, leaving the flavour but making the texture too tight.  Tamal on the other hand had big lumps that could be seen in the final loaf. Ugne was pushing the limit by using both Bicarb and baking powder, it could have been a disaster, but it worked well in the end, without a hint of bitterness. Once again Ian has added the home grown element with his wild garlic, in words of Mel “delish”

Technical – French Baguette
Granted Paul is the bread man and he knows his rolls, but nothing could seemed to please him much with this bake. It’s all about the crust in the outside and the open irregular, chewy texture of the dough similar to a ciabatta

Key points:

1. Pouring water into a tray in the oven when putting the dough will help to create the steam needed to create the crust.
2. Proving is important, and using the plastic tub helped to create the irregular structure, its the same method that was used for last years ciabatta.

There was a lot more failed bakes this week than successful ones.  Most of them needed more time in the oven, they were underproved and soft, especially Paul who came last. Flora was ahead of the game in this challenge, having made them before and she came 2nd once again in the technical, she’s certainly a confident little baker.

Showstopper – 3D Bread.
Alvin’s was by the most impressive, he may have gone overboard but he did it with style. Everything kept it’s shape, even the horn, that held a variety of rolls, loaves and plaits.  Paul adventurous lion showed that he knew how his bread worked, and he was able to produce a lion, complete with mane claws and flaring nostrils.  It was a shame that Sandy’s bread sculpture wasn’t as moving as it’s inspiration of the Tower of London Poppies. I take my hat off to Flora and her corseted dress, I thought the bodice looked beautiful. Along with Ian’s flowerpot, Nadiya snake and Tamals ‘bread-cycle’ it was a great composition. From the start of the show it seemed that Dorret could not please both the judges, and finishing off with an unpractised bake was certainly the last straw.

I’m not sure of the structure of this weeks bake yet, but I have a giant pot of basil growing in the kitchen so I might take some inspiration from the bakers in the show and do a pesto dough. Once again, everything will happen on Saturday, so not so much practise for me, instead there will be plenty of research and wine consumed through-out!

Oneliner of the week comes from the host Sue: “If you don’t know what a baguette is, it’s over, get out of the tent now!”