#holly watches gbbo

[morganaspendragonss]

‘the sausage was a bit thick’ prue has never had a proper sausage sandwich in her life

[tricksterrune]

Random Rogues Thought

Which cooking shows do they watch?

Roy yells Chocolate Guy! so much some Rogues were convinced he was a supervillain for some time. Or a really weird superhero.

James loves Dylan Hollis and his 'that sounds strange, it can't possibly turn out well' videos. Sometimes he tries out the recipes.....sometimes he pretends he's trying out a new recipe and just makes things up to mess with people.

Maybe Sam and Digger watch Kitchen Nightmares; Digger for the insults and Sam for the 'this can't possibly the worse than the last one' and yet is always is

Mick likes old school GBBO and is not ashamed to admit it.

But for the rest? What do you think? I don't really know more cooking shows but the thought wouldn't leave me alone

[musette22]

B Dylan Hollis - Could he apply for GBBO because he’s a citizen of Bermuda? Like, do they have UK citizenship too as a territory (like Puerto Ricans are technically US citizens)? Because listen… I already watch the hell out of GBBO. But can you imagine the tent chaos with him there????!

OH MY GOD. Well, I think if your a citizen of Bermuda you have or can get a British Overseas Territory passport, which I think he does have because he basically said he's British, right? I don't know if GBBO allows people with that passport on the show but I don't see why they wouldn't, so........ this could totally happen. Oh god, it NEEDS to happen 🙀 I haven't watched GBBO in years but I would watch the shit out of it if Dylan was on it, obviously 😍 Who do we tal to to make this happen??

[quynhtessentials]

Rules: tag nine people you want to get to know better or catch up with, then answer these questions:

tagged by @morallygreywaren thanks love 🖤🖤

three ships: simplifying this for my smol brain bc i thought it would be easy but i overthought it and now it’s hard so, most recent ships: immortal wives, chidi/eleanor from the good place, alex/henry from rwrb

last song: drop dead by holly humberstone

last movie: i’m going to be very honest with u all the answer to this is the old guard and that is because i rarely watch movies but also because i’ve watched it at least 19 times

currently craving: new eps of gbbo to soothe my soul and also, inevitably, all the bakes made on gbbo

currently reading: i am about to start cemetery boys by aiden thomas so i’m gonna go with that (i am. so excited)

tagging: @kielogram @i-am-not-a-mouse @catriionaa @itsme-imhere @nylesniall @gloriovsly (if you feel like it!!!!) (that’s nine i’m sure of it i’m really good at counting math is so fun)

[robin-in-the-tulip-tree]

Thanks for the tag and happy Thanksgiving, @secretplanstofightinflation! Sending all of my love, old friend!

Not tagging a soul; not even sure who's still on here and it's a holiday but I'm just procrastinating starting the potatoes. Aaaaaaanyway.

3 ships:

Julia and Mary Jo from Designing Women. Now, don't google that fanfic because it belongs in horny jail, but you watch the show and there is. Definitely. Some. Energy. There.

Kathryn Janeway and 7 of 9, Chakotay, Somebody, please. (In that order) There's a lot of romantic energy on ST:VOY and it's a damn shame that my captain gets none of it.

Alphyne: it's the first canon lesbian couple I experienced after coming out and also I have been compared to Undyne, apropos of nothing, more than once. I'd be a fool not to get attached to this ship.

Currently reading: insofar as I can cudgel my brain into submission long enough to read, I'm reading "Dreamer's Pool" by Juliet Marillier, a story about a healer in ancient Ireland bent on revenge on an evil chieftain and cursed by the Fae.

Currently watching: a LOT of cooking shows. You don't understand. I have recurring dreams about cooking with Alex Guarnaschelli. There's an episode of Chopped on right now, and I can't wait to see the final of GBBO either.

Currently consuming: chardonnay, water crackers, and Boursin garlic and herb cheese. Our typical appetizer while prepping a big dinner.

Currently craving: some more garlic cheese tbh but it's gone.

Last song listened to: Holly Jolly Christmas by Dolly Parton

[allycryz]

Get to know me

tagged by @kunstpause

Last Song: I had on my Disney Villains playlist before I switched to podcasts so it was Poor Unfortunate Souls from the Little Mermaid

Last Movie: The Mummy lol and putting on The Mummy Returns today

Currently Reading: Physical Book: Dragonwyck by Anya Seton. Audiobook: Wicked King by Holly Black

Currently Watching: Working on Bly Manor and the new Aggrestsuko, watching GBBO as it comes out, also have been rewatching Kitchen Nightmares and it is wild to go back to when American audiences wanted shows where British people came and yelled at them (Restaurant Impossible, Tabitha Takes Over, Hell’s Kitchen, etc. etc.)  Meanwhile if you had BBC and saw him on there, you were stunned how nice he was! And then Masterchef happened where he was no longer the “mean” judge because they had (ugh) Joe and Americans learned to no longer fear him

Craving: I made buffalo chicken dip last night and gonna have the rest today Tagging anyone who wants in!

[great-jenna-bake-off]

Season 2 Episode 1: Coffee Walnut Battenberg

Welcome to season 2 of The Great Jenna Bake Off! The bakes are getting harder, my kitchen is getting fuller, and Matt is getting hungrier. We’re kicking things off with a classic British cake that, as per usual, I had never heard of before this bake. So we were off to a great start. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/coffee_and_walnut_88342

The Battenberg is a checkerboard cake wrapped in marzipan. Ordinarily I don’t post the photos of Mary or Paul’s example bakes until I’m ready to reveal my results, but I feel like it’s important to see what I was up against from the beginning:

Yeah. To use Mary’s term, this cake looked “fiddly.” AKA, annoyingly complicated for not very much cake. Needless to say, I was not especially psyched abut this bake at the beginning.

My first concern was actually finding marizpan to form the outer layer of my cake. I had never seen marzipan on a grocery store shelf - where on earth would I buy this weird almond paste confection? I was in the midst of looking up specialty baking shops in the Los Angeles area when I wandered into my local Bristol Farms (a fancy grocery store chain) and lo and behold - there it was, just casually chilling in the baking aisle. Problem. Solved. 

Score. 

The next challenge came in the form of setting up my cake pan for optimal Battenberg baking. The idea of this cake is to bake two different flavors / colors, in this case vanilla and coffee walnut, but to do them both in the same 8-inch square cake pan. This involved carefully cutting and folding a piece of parchment paper so that it fit perfectly in the pan while also providing a barrier between the two sections of cake batter. 

Baking origami. 

Next it was actually time to make my cake batter, which involved the expensive addition of “ground almonds,” or for the lazy like me, a $7 bag of almond flour. I couldn’t help but think this cake was far more effort and expense than it was worth. I had to divide my batter into two parts, adding vanilla to one and coffee and chopped walnuts to the other. I then poured each batter into one side of the pan. 

A tale of two batters...

Here’s hoping my homemade divider doesn’t collapse in the oven...

And then, time to bake! As per usual, I took this time to check in to see how our new set of competitors was handling the challenge. Let me tell you, this was maybe the BEST season of GBBO, contestant-wise. There are so many great candidates in this batch. 

This delightful human on the right is Mary-Ann, possibly my favorite bake-off contestant of all time. She is currently explaining to Sue that she shall let her batter marinate to allow the coffee flavor to develop, before collapsing into giggles at how “chef-y” that sounds. What an angel.

Here we have Ian, explaining in classic British sarcastic fashion that he’s never made a Battenberg before but has always wanted to try, so why not have his first attempt be on television in front of millions of people?

And of course, how could we forget Rob, the first (and perhaps only?) GBBO heartthrob. Here he is rolling his eyes at Sue and Mel’s introduction to the challenge:

Rob eventually manages to drop an entire cake layer on the ground and somehow stays on the show for like 6 weeks. It’s the power of his side-swept bangs, probably. 

As I’m watching the episode, I’m starting to get the feeling that the marizpan is going to be the trickiest part of this bake. Some, like perfectionist Holly, seem to have no trouble getting their marizpan the exact right size and consistency to wrap around their cake:

Bloody perfect, that is.

Others seem to have serious difficulty getting the sticky marzipan smoothly transferred to the cake. Something tells me I will be in this latter group. 

When Mary and Paul step out to judge the Battenbergs, it’s very apparently that there is a wide range of talent and experience in this group. Holly of the above photo takes first prize, but other bakers flounder. 

I am reasonably confident that my cake will look nicer than Keith’s squished mess. 

Even eventual season 2 winner Jo is criticized for overly thick marzipan.

Finally, my cakes are baked. Will they have congealed into a vanilla coffee mess?

Ignoring the fact that I accidentally stuck my thumb into the corner of the coffee cake while pulling it out of the oven, I will say that this bake made for some great pictures. 

Look, I own a cooling rack now!

While my cakes cooled, I whipped up a bit of coffee buttercream. And when I say a bit, I mean the tiniest possible amount of buttercream on the planet. 

Why so stingy with the buttercream, Mary??

Next, it was time to create a checkerboard pattern out of cake. No biggie. I cut each flavor of cake into two long, thin rectangles and then stacked them on top of each other in an alternating pattern, using buttercream as the glue holding them together. However, my sponge was extremely delicate and did not take kindly to being jostled around. The layers started breaking apart as I put them on top of each other. Oh well, nothing a little more buttercream can’t fix?

I hastily wrapped my now-assembled cake in tinfoil and shoved it in the fridge in the hopes that cold air would somehow convince it to bind together. Meanwhile, it was time to turn my attention to the marzipan. I used (unflavored) dental floss to measure the length and circumference of my cake and attempted to roll out my marzipan into a square that would be large enough to fit around it. This went... poorly. Marzipan is freaking sticky, and my measuring attempts were pretty unscientific. 

Fingers crossed this is big enough to cover the cake!

I pulled my weird loaf cake thing out of the fridge, covered it as best I could with the teensy tiny amount of remaining buttercream, and started trying to coax the marzipan around it. This took several failed attempts, and several bits of cake lost to the battle as I attempted to slice off the less-attractive parts of the cake. Eventually, I ended up with something that looked more or less right-ish:

I mean, it’s a thing. 

All that remained was the final details - using my fingers to pinch the marzipan into a crimped pattern on the top, and sticking some walnuts on with the last drops of buttercream I could scrape from my mixing bowl. So what was the final result?

Significantly better than expected, I would say!

Matt was on his way to my apartment for the taste test, and I waited with baited breath. After all the freaking effort that went into the Battenberg, I was just hoping it didn’t totally suck. 

***

Matt’s review: So we’ve cycled back to an episode one challenge. Jenna seemed to make this without a sweat despite the weird design specifications (checkers and crimped edges, huh?).  The cake innards were baked evenly—I wouldn’t know they were different if I lost the ability to taste and and see but was still reviewing Jenna’s baking for some reason—and the flavors all worked. Which is impressive, because I really thought I hated marzipan; I just had it down in my memory that way. But Jenna’s Battenberg made me a believer. Vanilla, coffee, marzipan. It works. I gotta say, I would eat this regularly. Definitely a contender for favorite dish so far, along with the souffle. This is barely a note, but the edges were not as clean as the ones from the show. They must have some special cutting tool, because damn. That would have definitely upped the “wow” factor with the checkerboard pattern. But whatever. I’d eat some more right now.

Soggy bottom? Hell no. 

****

Final thoughts: Guys. GUYS. This stupid little cake was stupidly delicious. I think Matt and I were both very surprised that it tasted as good as it did. But holy crap, I took one bite and went, yeah that entire process was totally worth it. It was almond-y and coffee-y and moist and yummy. It’s too bad the cake was so tiny, because I wanted to eat so much more of it. My one critique is that I definitely needed more coffee buttercream. I made the amount specified by Mary’s recipe, but it was soooo stingy. I could easily have doubled it and gotten a better construction of the cake, plus more coffee flavor. But still. This cake was amazing. 

So is a Battenberg going to become a staple of my baking arsenal? Probably not, because it took forever and was annoyingly intricate. But I would definitely not hesitate to order one if I saw it in a tea shop somewhere. It just goes to show: don’t judge a cake by its marzipan cover. 

[morganaspendragonss]

@ paul hollywood

[morganaspendragonss]

personally my favourite autumn festival is the weekly tumblr gatherings praying for the downfall of paul hollywood

[morganaspendragonss]

nelly putting a triple chin on her iced woman has done more against fatphobia than literally anything else

[morganaspendragonss]

is this a fucking joke????? it’s week fucking one and they’re not giving them a recipe???????

[morganaspendragonss]

‘do not confer with other bakers’

the bakers the entire time:

[morganaspendragonss]

MATTY MY BOY 🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹

[morganaspendragonss]

shitting hell what went on in biscuit week 😳

[morganaspendragonss]

i see the handshake economy is in shambles again

[morganaspendragonss]

oh this is what heartbreak feels like