Tea Cakes & Octo Bread

So that telly show that I tried out for last year - the one that called for an interview, then didn't call back - ya'll know the one. Well, it's started back on telly a few weeks ago. Needless to say, I've been inspired more than ever to bakebakebake and apply again this year.

Last weekend I bit the bullet & finally baked for team knitwear. Flipping through the pages of Peyton & Byrne's British Baking - a little birthday pressie from the team - I landed on a recipe for teacakes. A cousin to the American s'more, teacakes are a concoction of crumbly biscuits topped with whipped marshmallow and drowned in chocolate. All that's missing is an open campfire and a rogue flame-engolfed marshmallow. 

whip it!

drownin.

On a tea cake high, I attempted to bake a loaf of three-plait friendship bread on the following Tuesday. Note to self: baking bread on a work day is disastrous! It's near impossible to allow dough to both rise & proof (let alone bake the darn thing) in the one hour you have between arriving home and going to bed. The result of my mother's beloved recipe* could have been used as a chopping block in one of mr. bluebirdcage's kiddy taekwondo classes.

*I will be baking this recipe again…don't wanna let mama down. Watch this space.

After learning it was bread week on GBBO, I decided to try out another loaf - and why not up the ante by trying out the same loaf the contestants had to bake for a technical challenge? Enter Paul Hollywood's monstrous octo-bread: an eight plait loaf of deliciously fluffy, golden bread. The resulting loaf (which I baked using whole wheat bread flour) more than kicked my flat, rock solid friendship loaf's ass:

on the rise

after the bake

Until next time...