GBBO - Week 2.

So this week was biscuit week. One of my favourites. And just so you know I am anti-dunking. An argument my sister and I have consistently (at least every time I catch her dunking). Why would you voluntarily make a biscuit soggy and then eat it? Biscuits are meant to crunch, just ask Mary Berry.

First up the contestants had to make 24 identical biscuits. A few people failed in that their biscuits were more cake like and lacked a crunch. Others failed because they didn't do all 24. I felt sorry for Val as she ran out of time and wasn't allowed to forget it throughout. Poor woman may have got all 24 done if she hadn't dropped and broken some of them but she kept that to herself. I thought Benjamina's (pictured above) were rather pretty. A huge congratulations to Tom who got the first Paul Hollywood handshake for his chai tea biscuits.

For the technical challenge the contestants had to make 12 Viennese whirls. Last week the jaffa cake was classed as a cake although most of us Brits think of them as a biscuit. This week the whirl was questioned as some class it as a cake (thanks to Mr Kipling). It's a biscuit people. A fancy one but still a biscuit. I have to say that most of the bakers struggled with these so it was a very well done to Kate (a fellow nurse) who came first. I'm going to attempt these myself next week and you can too thanks to the recipe being available on the Bake Off website.

For the show stopper the bakers had to bake a gingerbread construction and it had to represent something important to them. I was a little disappointed with this round. In the past we have had some fabulous towers and constructions. This year was pretty poor. A few failed to stand up and a few looked rather child like.

Candice's pub won her star baker. She might not have done as well in all the other challenges (somewhere in the middle) but this bake deserved it. She put so much into it that the judges were worried she wouldn't get it done. There was a pool table and little figures and a sticky carpet made with ginger cake. It was the most impressive.

Sadly we said goodbye to Louise. It feels a bit soon for her. She was always somewhere in the middle but this week was a bad week for her. Especially when her biscuit church fell apart. Val was alongside her having a bad week but she was higher in the technical challenge and she just about saved herself with her flavours.

As always the above images are not mine and come courtesy of the Bake Off website.  The following though are mine as I attempted last weeks technical challenge.

Yep, I managed to make 12 jaffa cakes following Mary Berry's recipe. The recipe was actually fairly simple to follow but it is rather bitty.

I was impressed with my little sponges. They turned out well. More importantly I was able to get them from the tin with no problem at all (a first for me). I actually made them twice. The first time I realised that my whisk was back at my dad's. So I did the first by hand. It took me an hour to whisk the eggs up and I wasn't going to waste my jelly on cakes that might be rubbish (they weren't). I picked up a cheap whisk as I wasn't doing that again.

The jelly was actually from a packet. I was a little surprised about that. It also had some orange zest (hence the little bits). To make it extra difficult I used vegetarian friendly jelly which is made slightly differently from the normal jelly and meant I couldn't make it as per the recipe. It turned out though. I used a little cutter and then waited for the melted chocolate to cool so that it wouldn't melt the jelly.

Turned out well I think and my sister loved them (who is a huge jaffa cake fan). So high praise.

Speaking of my sister, she will be guest posting on Monday in preparation for starting out her own blog. Please look out for that.