Since replicating Season 8 of the Great British Bake Off wasn’t enough, I decided to try my hand at a different season! This time, I am working on season 13 which is the most recent season! This season had some great bake ideas as well as some not-so-great ones (but we’ll get there when we get there).
So, I figured, let’s do this all again! One of the big challenges I wanted to attempt this time around was coming up with original ideas for the signature and showstopper challenges instead of doing a recreation. On your mark… Get set… Bake!
The final challenge of Week 1 (Cake Week) is a 3-dimensional sculpture of a house or home. Some contestants made sculptures of their childhood homes while others made their apartment buildings. After some consideration of all the homes I have lived in, I decided to do a cake based on my current home.
When Guerric and I first moved into our house, there was a lot of changes we wanted to make. While the bones of the structure were relatively good, there was a lot of aesthetic changes that I we wanted to do. And giving this history, I wanted the cake to reflect that,
So, I decided to split the cake into two halves, one representing what the house was and one representing all the changes we’ve made! The past side of the cake has a brown chocolate frosting exterior with a spice cake as the foundation while the present side is vanilla frosting with a blueberry cake foundation.
This cake was a beast to make! So much of a beast that I had a mental breakdown making it! There were so many levels and layers that needed to be taking into consideration. Plus, I just had to make a ton of cake to get the design right. And I have never sculpted a cake before so that was a new adventurer!
While I will take about my adventures in making the house cake for the post, a recipe for the spice cake and chocolate frosting are located at the bottom of the page will not go into details about assembly and will treat this recipe as a normal cake. Not a house shaped abomination.
Check out the Season 13 Great British Bake-Off Page to see other bakes from this series or the Make section for more recipes! Leave a comment below and let me know what you think and how the recipe works for you!
Ingredients
There were a lot of ingredients needed to make this cake! I mean, I effectively made four cakes so it’s unsurprising that an obscene amount of ingredients was needed. The only unique ingredient needed for this cake is yogurt! Yup! I wanted to make this a yogurt cake because I thought that would be interesting. One challenge isn’t enough so why not add another?
One thing you might notice is that I don’t have any butter in what might be seen as a traditional buttercream recipe. I started out making buttercream with only butter and have slowly cut farther and farther back, replacing it with vegetable shortening.
I have now reached the stage where I have removed butter entirely as I just don’t like the taste of butter in frosting.
Process
Spice Cake
The first step of the process is making the cakes. For this recipe, I decided to make four cakes using a 9-inch by 13-inch pan. So many cakes… I made two spice cakes and two blueberry cakes. I’m going to focus on the spice cake in this section. This process was repeated twice to produce the two cakes.
In a large bowl, I whisked the eggs and sugar until they became light and frothy. I’m always surprised by how bright of a color the eggs get when getting whisked. They because almost a creamy white the longer you mix.
Then, I added the yogurt, oil, and vanilla extract. This will cause the mixture to become more liquid in nature. I like to scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure all the ingredients are combined. Don’t want any butter chunks!
In a small separate bowl, I whisked together the flour, baking powder, salt, ground clove, all-spice, ground ginger, and ground cinnamon. I wanted all the spices to be thoroughly mixed into the flour so it would spread evenly throughout the cake. While I love cinnamon, I would not want to get a cinnamon clump.
I added the flour mixture into the wet mixture in batches. This was done to ensure that the flour was fully spread throughout the wet ingredients and not to tax the mixer with the influx of ingredients. I like adding ingredients in batches, the cakes typically turn out better.
A single batch will fill up the entire 9-inch by 13-inch pan. The cake will then bake for about forty minutes. A toothpick should come out cleanly when the cake is fully cooked. I would err on overcooking this cake. The yogurt will keep the cake moist even if cooked a little more but, on the opposite side, it will accentuate a slightly underbaked cake into feeling uncooked.
Blueberry Cake
The blueberry cake is an almost identical process to the spice cake. Just take out the spices and add in blueberries. This process was repeated twice to produce the two cakes.
Before starting to make the cake, I put a pint of blueberries (about 2 cups) into a blender. And then I blended everything until it was as liquid as possible. I strained the blueberries to remove all the chunks which was mainly the blueberry skins. Then I set the blueberry puree aside.
In a large bowl, I whisked the eggs and sugar until they became light and frothy. I’m always surprised by how bright of a color the eggs get when getting whisked. They because almost a creamy white the longer you mix.
Then, I added the yogurt, oil, vanilla extract, and blueberry puree. This will cause the mixture to become more liquid in nature. I like to scrape down the sides of the bowl to make sure all the ingredients are combined. The blueberry puree in this recipe will cause the mixture to be more wet than the spice cake.
In a small separate bowl, I whisked together the flour, baking powder, and salt. I wanted the baking powder to be thoroughly mixed into the flour so it would spread evenly throughout the cake.
I added the flour mixture into the wet mixture in batches. This was done to ensure that the flour was fully spread throughout the wet ingredients and not to tax the mixer with the influx of ingredients. I like adding ingredients in batches, the cakes typically turn out better.
A single batch will fill up the entire 9-inch by 13-inch pan. The cake will then bake for about forty minutes. A toothpick should come out cleanly when the cake is fully cooked. I would err on overcooking this cake. The yogurt will keep the cake moist even if cooked a little more but, on the opposite side, it will accentuate a slightly underbaked cake into feeling uncooked.
The blueberry cake ended up cooking a little longer than the spice cake since there was more liquid in the blueberry batter.
Vanilla Frosting
Vanilla Frosting is easy to make! Just throw everything into a bowl and mix like crazy! Well, there is a little more nuance than that but not much more. I started by putting the heavy whipping cream, vegetable shortening, and vanilla extract in a bowl and mixing it all together.
Mixing just enough to get everything combined. Then I added in the powdered sugar. Adding the sugar all at once will result in a powdered mess all over the kitchen counter and floor. I like to add about 2 teaspoons at a time just to keep the dust levels low.
Once all the ingredients are in the bowl, then it’s time to mix everything! I like to mix the frosting for about 5 minutes. Frosting always needs longer to mix than I anticipate so the five-minute mark seems like a good place to start.
Chocolate Frosting
The chocolate frosting is extremely like the vanilla frosting in terms of process. I started by adding in the heavy whipping cream, vegetable shortening, and vanilla extra in a bowl and creaming it together. That when I added in the cocoa powder and made a chocolate slurry.
The addition of powdered sugar really helps change the slurry mixture into frosting. Again, I like to add the sugar in batches to keep the kitchen (relatively) clean. Two tablespoons are enough to keep the dust levels low.
Once all the ingredients are in the bowl, then it’s time to mix everything! I like to mix the frosting for about 5 minutes. Frosting always needs longer to mix than I anticipate so the five-minute mark seems like a good place to start.
Assembling the Layers
Once all the ingredients are made, it is on to the thing I dread the most: Assembly. The first part of assembling the cake is simple. I cut each cake in half. Both horizontally and vertically. This should result in four squares, about 9-inches by 6.5 inches. All in all, I had sixteen cakes after cutting everything.
Then I stacked the cakes and put a layer of frosting in between. I matched the chocolate frosting with the spice cake and the vanilla frosting with the blueberry cake. Then I placed the cakes size by side to recreate the 9-inch by 13-inch original shaped cake. And now it’s time for carving!
shaping and design
I did my best to carve the cake into the shape of my house. Giving it the roofing details, keeping some areas extended while receding others. I couldn’t create all the details on the back of the house, but I did my best to capture some of them. Eh, who’s really going to see back there anyway?
I attempted to do a crumb coat on both cakes with their frosting before putting on the final layer of frosting. This proved to be challenging because I wanted to keep the frosting separate, but the cakes were now supposed to merge into one unified mass.
At this point, I was not having it. There was too much of a mess and the cake was not cooperating. In hindsight, this cake may not have been the best pairing for this challenge. And honestly, my ambition for this challenge was far too grand.
I had planned to create detailing out of cookies and frosting but I was too overwhelmed to make that happen. So instead, enjoy this cake monstrosity with some lines drawn on top of it for the detailing I would have liked to do. Not my finest hour.
Reflections
There were clearing a lot of mistakes going on in this cake. And I’m a bit embarrassed to post this as it’s not up to my usual standard for baking. I know I’ve had messes in the past, but I think this one takes the cake (pun intended 😉).
I was overly ambition with the cake design and looking back, I should have done one of the apartments I lived in. Then the shape could have been a square instead of this topsy turvy house shape.
I do feel that I completely missed the mark on decoration because I just wasn’t able to do any. I needed to plan that out more and give myself more time to explore that arena. Which would have been easier if I had scaled back the cake.
The yogurt cake was an interesting choice for this recipe and while it did hold its structure well, I’m still not convinced it was the right cake for this challenge. I almost wanted a cake that would give more of a rise to give the structure even more height.
The spice cake was delicious! It had spice and paired well with the chocolate. Although some might feel the chocolate frosting overwhelmed the cake. I probably could have held back a bit on the chocolate frosting.
The blueberry cake was surprisingly bland (which is why I didn’t include the recipe below). I don’t think the blueberry puree really carried over the flavor as much as I was hoping. Next time, I would like to use some blueberry extract to really give the cake a punch of flavor.
Lessons
Keep Calm and Carry On
This was one of the hardest challenges for me. No component was challenging but all together, the challenge became paralyzingly daunting. And I became an emotional wreck. Even though I couldn’t finish the challenge in the way I wanted, I was able to finish more of the challenge that I thought I could.
I was very lucky to have someone constantly pushing me and cheering me on from the sidelines. But I also underestimated what I was capable. Give more time and emotional stability, I probably could turn this shape into a full-fledged cake house.
recipe
Yogurt Spice Cake with Chocolate Frosting
Ingredients
Yogurt Spice Cake
- 2 Eggs
- ¾ Cup Granulated Sugar
- 1 Cup Greek Yogurt
- ½ Cup Vegetable Oil
- 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- 2 Teaspoon Baking Powder
- ½ Teaspoon Salt
- 1 ½ Cup All-Purpose Flour
- 1 Teaspoon Ground Clove
- 1 Tablespoon All-Spice
- 1 Teaspoon Ground Ginger
- 1 Teaspoon Cinnamon
Chocolate Frosting
- ½ Cup Vegetable Shortening
- ⅔ Cup Cocoa Powder
- 3 Cup Powdered Sugar
- ⅓ Cup Heavy Whipping Cream
- 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Instructions
Spice Yogurt Cake
- Preheat 350°F. Grease two round 9-inch pans.
- In a large bowl, combine eggs and sugar until pale and frothy. Whisk in yogurt, oil, and vanilla extract.
- In a separate bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, salt, ground clove, all-spice, ground ginger, and ground cinnamon.
- In batches, add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and mix until fully combined.
- Transfer into the prepared pans. Bake for 40-45 minutes.
- Let cool for 5 minutes in the pan before turning out. Let cool completely before frosting.
Chocolate Frosting
- In a large bowl, mix vegetable shortening, heavy whipping cream, and vanilla extract.
- Add in cocoa powder and allow to fully incorporate, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
- Two Tablespoons at a time, add in powdered sugar and mix until light and fluffy (about five minutes of mixing after all the powdered sugar has been added.
Assembly
- Cover the top of the cake in a thin layer of frosting.
- Enjoy!!