Each week, budding baker and fashion designer Ben Wykes tackled the Great British Bake-Off's technical challenges. We posted the results here and on Instagram...find out how he got on...
A few years ago fashion designer Ben Wykes felt inspired by the Great British Bake Off and on a nightly basis started swapping sketching and scissors for sifting flour and tackling, erm, soggy bottoms.
Little did he know he was actually very good at this baking lark. And it became a bit of an obsession. So much so that for last year’s GBBO we couldn’t wait to see Ben’s weekly Instagram trials of Mary and Paul’s technical challenges – some of which he even adapted to suit the voracious gluten-free club.
From the super-hard Swedish Prinsesstårta to perfecting the classic Florentine, in 2014 Ben did the lot. Suffering from a strain of GBBO fatigue after the final – honestly, the pressure is intense – he hung up his apron… until now.
Dusting it down exclusively for Grazia, he’ll gave each week's tricky bakes a go in real-time, in a real kitchen, with Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood watching over him via the medium of BBC iPlayer on an iPad.
Week Seven's Technical Challenge - Chocolate Souffle
Here is the penultimate bake - chocolate souffle! To be honest I'd never made a souffle before, or even eaten one so I wasn't really sure how it was supposed to look, feel, behave or anything!
It's actually quite straightforward - a creme patisserie mixture, and a meringue mixture which are then combined. I got the 'rise' in the oven, but the souffle cracked as it rose.
I think that this is because I didn't combine my meringue into the creme pat well enough which left larger bits of the meringue in the end mixture.
As for the taste...I don't think that it's something for me! The texture is a bit like eating a wet sponge...unless I just really got it wrong!
**
Week Six's Technical Challenge - Mokatines**
Week Five's Technical Challenge - Flaounes
To be honest it was really straightforward. The filling is cheese meltdown, the pastry is quite simple (although I haven't made a pastry with yeast before but see now that it needs it to rise in the oven).
The assembly was all fine although my kitchen is now COVERED in Sesame Seeds... I think perhaps the challenge for the bakers in the tent would have actually been not knowing what a Flaoune was...but of course I had the benefit of Google... ;)
Week Five's Technical Challenge – Gluten Free Pitta.
So, here is this week's bake, the gluten free pitta!
I think it was surprisingly simple for so far along in the competition? Especially after the Windtorte last week!
It took me a little while to track down the specialist ingredient Psyllium - I eventually located it in a Healthfood shop, in the colon aid section...
The dough was a bit strange to work with as the Psyllium is left to react with water, in which it becomes an almost jelly-like consistency [imagine those stock pot things...] and getting it to work into the flour and eggs etc was a bit if a lengthy process.
The main disappointment for me was the TASTE! All I could really taste was the Psyllium powder to be honest - a sort of yeasty, earthy taste. I definitely will not be bringing these into the office…!
Week Four's Technical Challenge, the Austrian 'Spanische Windtorte' (with Swiss and French meringue):
Commenting on the bake, Ben said: 'I think this one LOOKS trickier than it is – as long as you're handy with a meringue, it's not too bad. The spirals and rings that you begin with, end up being pretty fragile, so it's a bit of a gentle game when it comes to stacking them.
'Then, it just a LOT of baking. I made a mistake during the second baking point (when you cover the stack of rings with the rest of the meringue). I thought I hadn't cooked it enough, so I turned up my oven and ended up (ever so slightly) browning the meringue, which spoiled the crisp white appearance.
'The flowers took a little while to make – lots of rolling and shaping of tiny pieces of icing. But the piping wasn't too bad.
'I didn't taste it right away – I thought that amount of sugar would be good for no one at that time of night.'
So that was Week Four.
Week Three's Technical Challenge – Baguettes:
'Overall, it was a fairly straightforward bake,' he said of it. 'I managed to handle the dough well after proving, to avoid knocking the air out [which resulted] in the open texture you can see on the inside when it is cut. The one thing I would change next time, however, is that once I divided and shaped the dough, I should have left it to prove directly in the oven tray – when I transferred it, a lot of the shape was lost and the dough stretched…
'I also [did] not have a ‘linen couche’, [which] they used on the show – but it didn’t seem to make a huge difference. I also may or may not have eaten an entire baguette fresh from the oven at midnight…'
Week Two Technical Challenge – Arlettes
Week One's Technical Challenge: Frosted Walnut Cake
His comment on the bake:
‘Pretty straightforward, however, I suffered the pitfall of 'graining frosting’ as I didn’t have the meringue mixture over the heat for quite long enough. My dad’s polished most of it off though…’
Be sure to keep up with his efforts via Grazia’s Instagram account @grazia_live and the hashtag #graziabakeoff