John Whaite Bakes

Tomorrow is the Great British Bake Off quarter final, it is getting serious now! *cue screams*

So in celebration of the fact it is nearly the GBBO quarter final and the woes that I can never enter, I did a selection of bakes from last years winner's book, John Whaite Bakes. 

Also apologies in advance about the picture quality, it is appalling and I don't really know why, except camera troubles. 

I started off by baking his "Simple Strawberry Tart" - as, let's face it summer is coming to a close...or is over altogether. 

The tart is a shortcrust pastry base filled with creme patisserie and then covered in strawberries. It was a sweet and delicious tart which I know that when summer returns, if summer returns, I will definitely be baking this again. It also meant I had to make creme pat for the first time, exciting!

I then attempted to create a plaited loaf. Which soon became two plaits of three strands which is slightly less impressive. For some reason, the dough was a complete and utter failure. And although it tasted ok, the strands didn't become one in the oven and the texture was a bit off. I don't like making bread!

In a quest to find a simple thing to bake I turned to his Caramel Shard Cookies which involves making a simple cookie dough and a slab of caramel, which is smashed. They are then combined, to make a rather dangerous cookie dough mixture. 

The odd thing about this recipe is that they are baked as balls, they are not shaped before they go in to the oven, but suprisingly enough they baked perfectly. 

They were fab and I was eating them for a whole week, the vision of health that I am. 

 Doesn't it look beautiful!

 John Whaite, if you are reading this, your book is gold, I love it. Everyone should buy a copy just for the recipes I have mentioned above, if nothing else.

I cannot wait for Bake Off, as sadly enough, along with Downton Abbey, it is the highlight of my television week.

And with that all that remains to be said is, on your marks, get set, bake!

Passion fruit Cheesecake

This post marks the first cheesecake I have ever made and it was a quite an exciting cheesecake to start with. It had passion fruit on the top, PASSION FRUIT! Before this I hadn't even eaten a passion fruit before,  having done this now I can say that they are not particularly nice... oh well.

The cheesecake is not a baked one, it is put in the fridge instead. Because of this it had to have gelatin leaves put in it, which on a side note would be great for windows in a gingerbread house, they are doused in water which make them jelly-ish. Flubbery.

Anyway the gelatin is then mixed with cream cheese (as traditional) which is then poured on top of a shortcake base. My shortbread was a little too blended which meant it was very very very crunchy when fridged. Not a word. Cool.

Once this is taken out of the fridge, it is time for the passion fruit part. Passion fruits look like this, for those who don't know. 

You scoop the middle of the fruit out and then mix them with gelatin and water to create a passion fruit jelly mixture. This is then poured on top of the cheesecake (careful not to let it overflow, problems will occur). Then the whole thing is put back in to the fridge to set. 

After a few hours it is removed and it looks like this:

It is not perfect but I think it looks pretty damn good, if I say so myself! It was quite nice but to me it looked better than it tasted. I am quite proud of it to be honest. 

Next Recipe: Summer Berry Genoise

Treacle Tart

Treacle Tart is a traditional English pudding and surprisingly enough it doesn't have any actual treacle in it. 

It is a shortcrust pastry filled with a golden syrup, lemon, apple, egg and breadcrumb mixture.

There was a bit of a pastry incident... nothing a bit of first aid couldn't fix....

I had so much mixture I had to make little ones too but I have no pictures of them.

It is very sweet and perfect with cream as it takes away some of the sugary sweetness.

Next Recipe: Carrot Cake