Great British Bake Off Challenge - Week 4; Baked Cheesecake

Oh dear, it had to happen at least once in this challenge, didn't it? I had a total fail. An absolute flop. If I had been in The Tent, it  may have ended up being another Bin-Gate style scandal (Cheesecake-Gate doesn't have the same ring to it, thankfully). It was so bad it went almost straight in the bin. Dessert week got me, and it got me good. Not wanting to make crème brûlées and not really knowing what a Spanischer Windtorte was, I decided to tackle baked cheesecake. I'm not a particular fan of baked cheesecake so I've never attempted one before and well... I probably won't attempt one again any time soon. 

I had grand ideas for this; what about a chocolate and honeycomb baked cheesecake with a dark chocolate biscuit base and honeycomb crushed over the top? It'd surely look and taste amazing. Rich, creamy dark chocolate cheesecake and crackly, golden homemade honeycomb running through it. Yum. A true showstopper! 

The best laid plans eh?

That being said, I don't think it was the recipe that was the problem. It was me. I overworked the mixture, and then cooked it totally inappropriately. I ended up with this rather sad mess:

Oooph. I can hear Sue softly weeping in the background. I can feel Paul's glare. Mary would have a small heart attack trying to summon up something nice to say about this monstrosity.

Poor, poor cheesecake. I couldn't do much other than put it out of it's misery... by putting it in the bin. I did try a bit (for science!) and it made me feel thoroughly sick.

Yes, that base is burnt. The sides are burnt. The top is burnt with shards of honeycomb melted into it (apparently if you sprinkle honeycomb on top of something that's going to bake for 45 minutes it'll melt and then harden, because you know, high sugar content). The middle is strangely under AND overcooked. The honeycomb has dissolved from the mixture to nothing. It's sunk in the middle and become dense and uh, chewy. The honeycomb that I made largely stuck to the pan and ended up being abandoned until two days later when it had become a soft sticky mess.

No recipe this week because who the frick would want to recreate that mess?! Maybe I overworked the mix (I definitely overworked the mix). Maybe I had the temperature on the wrong setting (180 - would 160 have been better for my fan oven?). Maybe I set it too close to the bottom of the oven. Should I have used Tamal's bain marie method? Maybe, Should I have just eaten the chilled base and not bothered adding the mixture? I'm inclined to say yes.

Whilst I lick my wounds, I'll be sticking to chilled cheesecakes for a little while I think. Though things may take another turn for the worse as I attempt to tackle polenta cake for Week 5 - Alternative Ingredients week...

Baking bonanza

Had a bit of a baking splurge these last few days, hence the absence and lack of posts! Firstly, my Dad wanted me to make him some soft centre cupcakes to take back to work with him and then my sister requested I make a few desserts for the BBQ she held yesterday. Finally I  made a sausage pie for dinner today and some lovely little fruit pastries with the left over bits.

Boozey ganache centred cupcakes boxed up and ready to go. I got the recipe from the recipe section of the Baileys GB facebook page and adapted it slightly as I wanted a chocolate sponge and I didn't actually have any Baileys in. Instead I used 'Amarula cream' which my sister brought back from Sweden for us (more info here, if you can you should definitely get some as it's lovely!) which made it sweeter and fruitier than the original recipe would've but overall, very tasty. Poured slightly too much in which is why the buttercream was too runny; obviously if you made this measuring out your liqueur would be advisable.

Next I made a selection of muffins. My favourite, lemon and poppy seed (from this post) and some chocolate ones from a general google search. Apologies for the lack of recipe link there! I used some of the remaining ganache to fill the centres of the chocolate muffins, and put a teaspoon of lemon curd into the centres of the lemon and poppy seed ones. It's definitely how I'm going to make them from now on, as the gooey centre gives them a lovely texture and a great surprise for those who don't know how you've made them! It's also really simple, all you do is spoon a small amount of mixture into the muffin case, put a spoonful of curd/ganache on top, and then cover it with more mixture. Yum!

Lastly, my fruit tarts. So easy, so simple, so tasty! Just get some ready rolled puff pastry (cheating I know, but I don't have the time to make my own), lay it on a baking sheet in rectangles and spread some jam on it. Slice up the fruits you have - I used strawberries and nectarines -, add a pastry border to hold it all in, egg wash the exposed pastry and sprinkle with a little icing sugar! They're really summery and can be made to your own individual taste. Probably would be better with sweet pastry but for a quick throw together dessert if you're making something with puff pastry in the first place they're great. As you can see the pastry doesn't really rise very much as the ingredients are quite heavy but it doesn't really matter. Just make sure it's browned underneath.

I also made a 'cheesecake' but that went, uhm, a bit wrong and is probably best not mentioned...

What do you use your left over pastry for? Do you know of a better substitute to Baileys? And why did we get it as a gift from Sweden when it's an African drink? Mysterious.