The Bake Off Bake Along: Week 4 – Dessert

Unusual for me, I’m posting this on a Friday rather than the link up Tuesday. To tell the truth, I’ve been really busy, we decided to take the rest of this week off – only needing 4 days due to the bank holiday = yes please! Hoping to go sailing, but using a yacht without a boom, main sail or working engine is nearby impossible so we’ve instead been to Norfolk to visit Adam’s Dad, got lots of errands done around both houses, visited a few lovely local places and still have a nice full weekend to achieve lots of bits and bobs we’ve been meaning to for ages.

Anyway…I babble on…this weeks Bake Off…Desserts!!

For anyone that has ever met me, they know that I LOVE pudding so I was really excited for this weeks episode. A case of creme brû-lake, a flurry of meringues and the leaning tower of cheesecakes later and I was doubting my initial choice for my bake along (fyi we have a huge number of blackberries out at the moment and I’d thought I’d do either a blackberry cheesecake or creme brûlée. Think again I guess…)

I had rather limited time, and was distracted by also deciding to make tea for the whole family whilst also making my creme brûlées – how hard can it be? Turns out, pretty hard…

I’ve never actually made a creme brûlée before, which is a surprise as I love them and would often choose one from a restuarant menu. Although on the show this week they looked quite tricky, I was sure I’d be able to master them easily – turns out I’m wrong.

In fact, I’m not even going to post the recipe this week as I’m convinced something was wrong with it – it just didn’t thicken! My attempts at white chocolate and raspberry creme brûlée involved me continuing to stir the cream, milk, chocolate and egg mixture over a simmering bowl of water whilst simultaneously standing and eating my dinner whilst the rest of my family were sat around the table. I can only be thankful that my eggs didn’t scramble!

In desperate measures to thicken it, I even used a bit of cornflour, but to no avail. So regardless of what the strange recipe I used (found here), I thought I’d take some advice from Bake Off and try them in a bain-marie in the oven for 40 mins or so at 150 degrees. I sat and waited, and when I took them out, they didn’t actually look that bad. Definitely stiffer at least. So into the fridge until the next morning.

In another stroke of terrible brûlée luck, when Mum opened the fridge the next day, the whole lot fell out, smashing 4 of the 8 that I’d made. Still, a galliant 4 were salvaged and I merrily sprinkled them with sugar at breakfast, really not expecting much, but with the flickering hope that perhaps they would turn out to be perfect once grilled…

…yet again, my hopes were dashed! A seconds distraction away from the grill and they were certainly overdone. But at least they had a good crack of sugar right?!

Despite the burnt sugar and brû-lake, Ned, Jack, Adam and I still very much enjoyed them for breakfast, they were really delicious – if you happen to like white chocolate soup with occasional surprise raspberries!

Something tells me I won’t be whipping these up again for a dinner party dessert any time soon!