With batter week behind us, bake off travels onwards to pastry week!
Pastry is used in baking in so many ways across the world and our signature challenge this week focuses on Danish pastries!
The task being to produce two types of Danish pastries and make twelve of both of them, a nice puff with a couple of great flavour combinations are what the judges are looking for. Puff pastry is a big challenge and really tough to get right! It’s all folds and turns and folds and turns over and over (I’d forgive them for bringing in shop brought pastry this week).
Tom, coming off the back of a bad week, seems to have continued his poor run of form and produced a dry breakfast themed bake and a raw one too!
Rav made a mistake in only making 11 of one of his bakes but made up for it in his flavours! Last weeks star baker got off to a poor start this week as Benjamina’s underprooved bake was raw and lost the butter from the inside.
This weeks technical is an absolute classic, Bakewell tart. The judges want no soggy bottoms, a nice thin pastry a good layer of frangipane and a beautiful decorative icing.
Andrew had an absolute nightmare this challenge as he spent quarter of an hour with his oven off! This meant he wasn’t able to finish his Bakewell and consequently came 6th of the 8 bakers.
Rav, for a third week running, managed to finish bottom of the pile in the technical and it clearly needs to be something he works on for next week of he gets through!
Jane has managed another great technical and earned herself a first place!
Pastry week’s showstopper this week is 48 filo pastry amuse-bouche, half sweet and half savoury! What are amuse-bouche? They are small bite-size delicacies which literally, and quite aptly, translate to mouth amusers.
Tom managed to split the judges this week, with Mary enjoy the flavours and Paul not so much, they did both agree it was too big to be an amuse-bouche leaving him at risk of not coming back; this happened to be a bit of a theme with both Jane and Val making their bakes too big, and Val only making 6 because the rest were not done!
Candice and Rav had an absolutely great showstopper both wowing the judges with their bakes.
With a consistent showing throughout the week and a fantastic showstopper Candice ended up taking the accolades for pastry week.
Unfortunately Val’s fate wasn’t quite as good as Candice’s and struggling with her pastries, she ended up having to leave this week. Next week we can’t wait to see what bake off will bring us in a new week for the show, botanical week!
But before next week can we tempt you with our Gourmet Cookware selection of Mixing Bowls, Rolling Pins & cooling racks ?