GBBO

Prior to my recent silence I was in the midst of baking all the technical bakes from last years Great British Bake Off. I had made three of these before radio silence, lemon tart, iced buns and the pork pies. I do intend to do the others but in the meantime there has been another GBBO! And this time it was even better, if that is possible. I just loved it and was happy with the result, although my favourite was Jamie. So that means another lot of technical challenges to add to last years unfinished list. Looking at the list from this series there are is one that I don't think I will even try and that is the hand raised pies, might leave that one!
However, I find that I have done two of them already! The eight plait loaf, I've not only made it once, I've made it twice! I posted a picture in my comeback blog roundup. You do have to have the instructions in front of you when you are doing it or else it will be a disaster, even with them it's pretty brain achey. But I managed and it looked amazing.
The second one is the treacle tart. I had friends over for lunch a couple of weeks ago and Mary Berry happened to be doing her Bake Off Masterclass on the treacle tart so I thought I would have a go. I never realised that treacle tart doesn't contain any treacle and it's pretty much made out of breadcrumbs!
The tricky thing about this one is the pastry, well that's just one of the tricky things. Unlike many other tarts, the pastry isn't baked blind. This means that avoiding the first deadly sin of pastry making, the soggy bottom, is very difficult. Mary's tip for this is to preheat a baking sheet in the oven and place the tart on it,this way the pastry bottom has a good chance of cooking through.



Of course, the most tricky thing is the lattice. Mary's tip for this was to place the five vertical pastry strips on the tart and then weave the other five under and over. This seems easy, right? Well, not if the filling is still warm when you do it. My middle strip melted a bit and broke when I tried to move it, but I managed to mend it and then the other stips were easier to do as you can lift them up at the side to help with the weaving.
The result wouldn't have passed muster in the Bake Off tent, I think I would have been mid-table. But it didn't have a soggy bottom (YAY), the lattice was pretty much ok and it tasted lovely. Served with a pomegranite ice cream, dreamy.