bake off bake along, week 7

hey friends. as some of you may have gathered, i’m participating in the 2+ month bake off bake along, a cooking and baking challenge where participants bake along with the BBC program, the great british bake off. i know some of you, dear readers, may not all be not digging all of the attention to baking on this here expat lifestyle blog of mine, but i assure you… i am starting to see the light at the end of the baking tunnel!

this is the seventh week, which takes us into the dreaded victorian week. and hoo boy. i am not using dreaded lightly. as soon as i watched the last episode, i have been flopping back and forth. three options, not a single one appealing in the least to me.

cue nadiya’s stink-face.

if i liked meat or savory pies, the first and easier challenge of a game pie would be it. (in hindsight, i should have just gone for it!) as i am inexperienced with gelatin living here in the czech republic (i’ve had actual fails just making jello from a box here!), anything with gelatin in it was right out.

which leaves us with the technical challenge: mary berry’s victorian tennis cake. oh goodness. i have no feelings about tennis. totally neutral about it; can count on one hand the amount of times i’ve played.

so i decided to tweak the sport and turn it into a sarcastic football cake. i am far too cheeky to go quietly into the tennis cake night!
i went in with the best intentions and will save you the boring details, but it was not really a success. although it looked kind of cool!

what went wrong? using the wrong kind of butter. alex accidentally grabbed a butter/margarine mix at the store (this can happen when you are living in another language!) and i did not figure that out until, one hour in the bake, the entire cake basically exploded with “butter” in the oven.  you have to use an entire package (250g – gag!) of butter for this cake which grossed me out to no end, and a lot of it just melted and came bubbling up, causing a near crisis complete with plenty of smoke.

however, most things were salvaged and i put the cake together okay!
upon tasting: extreme disappointment. much, much too greasy. alex offered that he liked it and it had a good flavor, which i think i agree with. too much fruit to my liking!

victorian week nearly, and still has a chance to break me, you guys. i have to be honest with you: i stayed strong just to finish, but i am starting to become disenchanted and nearly quit the challenge this weekend. i love healthy baking projects with very little butter and sugar, so this week didn’t suit me at all and it pains me to throw food away. i am hoping for the best for next week and that i manage to complete the challenge.

but at least victorian week left us with this quote: “this is a disappointment. just like the NFL.”