Last year there were several key activities that helped to maintain my sanity. Like group watching Itaewon Class, my weekly tarot session with 2 other girl friends, and the draft I organized for the most recent season of the Great British Bake Off.
Since all of us were newbs to participating in a draft, we kept it simple. Each person voted on a baker to be the winner based only on a headshot and one-line description that was creatively written by a friend and didn’t necessarily offer any insight into the person’s baking skills. (Email me if you want a copy of the draft to reference!) Then each week we would see if our baker was still in the running. Everyone put $5 in the pot which the winner would take. All losers had to pick a bake from the season to make at home.
Two of our friends actually picked the winner! I won’t put any spoilers here but you should all know by now. The rest of us 3 had to make a bake and they all came out successfully. π
I used the recipe from IAmAFoodBlog. Below are a few of my tips
- As cited in IAmAFoodBlog, lemon juice is not necessary for this recipe
- The make or break part of this recipe is not knocking the air out of the whipped egg whites. Just use a spatula and give it no more than 5 folds to incorporate
- You can be generous with the powdered sugar (if you decide to make a design with it). The cake itself isn’t very sweet, which I like and why you definitely don’t need the lemon juice. But I enjoyed the pieces of my cake that had powdered sugar the most. It gave it a nice thin crust and some nice sweetness.
- Draw your design for the chocolate piping onto the parchment paper so you have a visual frame of reference.
- Wait for your chocolate to cool/harden a little in the piping bag before piping. This was my very first attempt at piping ever. I pour the melted milk chocolate into my piping bag and it started spilling out of the nozzle. Fortunately I had my parchment paper ready and piped multiple eyes and smiles so I could choose the best ones once they hardened.
- I followed the instructions in terms of letting the cake cool in the oven with the door open first. However, my cake still wrinkled. Next time I’ll try leaving the oven door closed for the first 15 – 20 minutes, then open oven door for the next 20 – 30 and see how that goes.
The draft was so fun that we’re going to do another one for the next season of GBBS. π
JULIENNE CARROTS 