GBBO

[VikingVagine]

Seeing as the first thread is almost full, I thought I'd start a new one

For good measure, here is Monkseal's blog for this week.

Sure, no problem onestepcloser We should have a GBBO inspired recipe thread.
This is from a Sainsbury's magazine about 2-3 years ago.

Sweet potato and honey cupcakes

50 g honey
100 g light brown sugar
100 g soft butter
1 teaspoon orange essence
2 medium eggs
150 g sweet potatoes, coarsly grated (peeled weight)
200 g self raising flour
1 teaspoon mixed spice
125 g chopped dried apricots

Beat butter, sugar, honey, orange essence until fluffy, add eggs, mix well, add all dry ingredients. I only use about half of the apricots because I find it a bit much otherwise.
I didn't write down oven temperature and time but I bake them at ~175 C until they look done.

Icing (I'm not very fond of icing so I usually eat them as they are):

75 g soft butter
150 g icing sugar
zest of 2 oranges
25 g clear honey

I HONESTLY DONT think the judging is biased AT ALL and I luuuuuuuved Ruby's plot and shack .....cant decide now if she's really nervous and/or fishing for compliments tho

I'm certain she's not fishing for compliments. I have known many young women with ingrained lack of confidence (I was like that myself). She seems fairly typical of a very standard personality type. On top of that, she is absolutely lovely on twitter - very polite and just basically, a totally nice girl. Several of the bakers actually seem to be realy lovely, going by their twitter feeds and blogs. Ad most of them seem to get on with each other too which is lovely. It's just a really nice show, which attracts nice contestants. I bet if there was a knitting show it would be full of nice people too - knitters are always nice.

Ooh, if there are any producers out there, could we have a Great British Knit Off please?

As you know I agree Russians.

WRF to 'free from' baking it's important to put in maple syrup or honey etc. and ground almonds because they stop the cake crumbling up .You can buy good gluten free\wheat free baking powder now which works well. Because I cook entirely like that I noticed that Kamut flour wasn't mentioned which makes amazing bread (i mix it with rice flour) It has a small amount of gluten though as does spelt but DH is miles better on it. normal wheat makes him exhausted and grumpy .

I accept that she was probably provoked , but I don't think calling someone an evil witch is very nice behaviour which is apparently what Ruby did yesterday on Twitter

I do think that she is pretty clever and Sussed quite quickly that the doe eyed , silly me approach was working very well with the judges , shame really because she would still be leader of the pack without that stuff.

She has modelled at a very high level and is at UCL , I doubt she lacks that much confidence .

Great British knitting would be fantastic but rather slow for the viewers I would think, maybe crochet?

I don't reckon anyone can act THAT well though outtolunch.

I don't think she is acting , it's just her way of getting attention , if someone gets positive feedback from acting a certain way then they continue doing it . But it is annoying for others and I think that she does young women a disservice .

unfortunately I think she is getting more stick because the whole PH leering thing has taken on an unpleasant flavour given his recent history

Also plenty of people can act that well , look at all the actors out there , if she's tried modelling and her photos are very good ( think top glossies) then she can act .

I'm still stomping my feet at all the indignity this year.

The whole Ruby, PH and dodgy judging affair is ruining it.

It's meant o be a gentle program with lovely people and no more controversy then mild arguments on how to best make your meringues glossy.

outtolunch She modelled briefly. Being at UCL (indeed, being a model) does not in any way preclude lack of self confidence. Often, the highest achievers are the least confident (sometimes because of Tall Poppy Syndrome, which is clearly at play in this thread). My cambridge college was full of women with shot self confidence and esteem issues, as it happens.

Well neither of us know her or her motivations and I am sure she is lovely , however there is no doubt that her manner is making her unpopular with viewers and provoking comment and that is unfortunate as she is clearly very talented.

As I say I think part of this stems from people seeing PHs behaviour in a different light .

VikingVagine - I would love a Great British Knit Off too - especially in the wake of the Great British Sewing Bee - but I am not sure you could complete a project in time for it to fit into the programme. I know I couldn't. Though if they were small projects, perhaps...

I am coming round to Ruby, but I was utterly aghast at the judges talking about style over substance, to Frances, in a round where they were specifically asking for the sort of style that she does so well. Humph!

I am beginning to think that Ruby might win - partly because I am seeing a bit of bias towards her from PH, but also partly because she is getting better, and she is good at the technical bakes.

One last thing - a question for you (and I will abide by your judgement). Given that I have not one, but two GBBO books from previous series, and have baked nothing from either book, can I still get myself this series' book - please?!

Of course you can. Books are always good.

I don't quite understand what you mean about Ruby getting better since going on the technical rounds alone (so avoiding the possibility of bias) she has been clearly the best from about week 3. She really does have by far the strongest performance in that blind tasted, fully ranked, round.

SDTG I have the original GBBO book and make about 2 things from it regularly, and the Jo Wheatley book which I have made about 2 things from, but I can spend ages thumbing through the pages looking at the pictures and imagining that I am going to make them someday. They are worth it just for that! Buy it! ( I may not though- I find Jo Wheatley a bit simpering for my liking too, even in book form so I don't think I could take Rubys book!)

Gracelo Thanks for posting the recipie, I will have a go at this this weekend, I have a sweet potato sitting waiting to be used

I still say that PH looks at most people in that way; play back the other GBBO's he does it ALL the time i will not have a word said against Ruby (stamps foot too!!!)

I would like to know if Ruby's chocolate was dairy free or not. If it was then fine but if not then it should have been taken into account when judging.

I missed if she said what it was either way

I wanted to know the same thing about Frances's chocolate sauce, too. They didn't say about either. However it is perfectly easy to get vegan dark chocolate, you can get it from any supermarket, so I'm guessing it was. And I'm not actually 100% sure the brief was a vegan cake, it was a vegetable cake. From what they were saying, vegetable cakes always use oil because that's what you use for vegetable cakes. After all, they could've done a dairy free cake that wasn't a vegetable cake. So I think it was the ability to bake with vegetables that was being tested not the ability to bake something I'd want to eat (I wouldn't have wanted to eat any of them!)

The description given the contestants was confusing tbh (although they'd obviously been primed so didn't seem to be confused) it wasn't just me then?

I think I am confused as to what the cake was supposed to be free from as some of the other contestants made a point of saying they were making dairy free icing (I think I remember) could be wrong thou

I've got both GBBO books, the first one in paper, the second on kindle. I never use the kindle one as you can't just flick through it. I do make quite a few things from the first one though, and will probably buy the next one too.

Icing is dairy free anyway. Frances said she was making dairy free chocolate sauce BUT she was referring to the coconut cream she was using, the chocolate looked suspiciously pale to me. Which was what got me thinking.