The Bake Off Bake Along: Week 8 – Patisserie

Can you believe we’re already on week 8?! It’s got to the stage where I really don’t want anyone to leave, I love them all for their own reasons, so I was sad when Paul had to go (although I still prefer Flora so if it was between them both, I’d pick Flozza every time). Also – Paul – too much banana mate, you failed the first time, don’t bother to try again, especially as it then went wrong for a second time. Beaten by a banana huh?!

I liked this week’s challenges as they produced some interesting bakes with awesome flavours (minus the banana eh Paul?!). Although, I’ve got a slight dairy intolerance so cream horns and éclairs are a bit of a no no, as much as I LOVE éclairs, I knew they’d probably end up making me a bit sick. By the way, did anyone else not see any resemblance whatsoever with the éclair mountain and a nun? What was that about?

As I am yet to do a technical and this weeks was especially fiddly and fun, I thought a mokatine would be a great bake to try. I’ve never done patisseries myself, despite eating plenty, and these at first seemed quite easy…then again, since when was three types of coffee icing easy/sensible/necessary on one little square of cake. I must admit, they were delicious, but I did feel that they could have happily had just one icing, no judging!

As it was a technical, I stuck to this recipe and only change two little things – rather than using fondant icing from a packet I made my own from icing sugar, espresso and Kahlua (a coffee liqueur that is to die for – because how to make a dessert even better – adding alcohol of course!) Plus- check out that shine on the top 🙂 I also went for the extra sweet option and caramelised the chopped nuts in a pan with a little butter and sugar.

The first thing I did was crack all the nuts – as we’ve had a big bag of shelled nuits in the cupboard for a while, I thought it would be fun to get out our little nutcracker and Mum and I sat at the table, chatting and breaking them all out. A quick whizz in the magimix and they were ready to go! The genoise sponge was pretty simple and came out well, though ever so slightly wonky because I didn’t have a square tin of the right size so used a larger tin and just bunched up the baking parchment and hoped the mixture wouldn’t run.

I then prepared my coffee buttercream which was so tasty I reckon I ate about half of it straight from the bowl! We then popped out for a bit, which turned out to be about 4 hours, so it was returned to later in the day. Creme du buerre moka was a weird one, I had to reread the instructions so many times as I didn’t really think it would work – adding coffee to butter – wouldn’t it separate? If you drizzle hot sugar into cold egg yolk wouldn’t it scramble? Neither of these fears happened and  came out with a tasty but very buttery crème which actually piped beautifully, although it can only be consumed in tiny quantities as it’s basically 80% butter.

I’ve got a new palette knife (exciting or what…) so constructing the patisserie was fun. I like the whole decorative process and the spreading, dipping, piping and pooling of the three different icings was really enjoyable. Most especially as they came out beautifully and I actually felt quite proud of my eight little beauties.

The response from my colleagues was fantastic and Mum and Dad  enjoyed them tonight for pud (mum needed a sweet treat as she found out today she’s got her Ofsted inspection tomorrow…every teacher’s nightmare!). Overall, a fiddly over complicated recipe for the outcome, but they looked super fancy and tasted really really good, so it was totally worth it!