The Great British Bake Off is one my favorite shows, inspiring new bakes, new flavors, and new techniques! Join me on my journey to bake through all the Season 13 Challenges.
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!
THIS IS IT. I have made it to the final challenge of my season 13 GBBO challenge. And after this I do think I need a break from these challenges. There is just too much to keep track of and they just get so complex. Like this challenge.
It is the finale showstopper, and the challenge was to create a large, edible sculpture based off the theme “Our Beautiful Planet”. I am not going to lie, when I first heard the theme, my brain was like… I should make a world on fire. But after playing some Dave the Diver, I decided to go in a different direction.
The Sculpture Idea
I decided to make a sculpture of the ocean. Since I needed to make multiple baked components, I went slightly insane and chose to make six different aspects of this cake. The base floor of the ocean is made from chocolate cake topped with a sheet of gingerbread cookie.
On top of the cookie a sugar case that mimics the ocean water, a mini croquembouche on the inside, and topped with another layer of gingerbread and topped with brandysnap and meringue trees. Yea… I think I lost my mind. But hey! It was a fun time. The recipe at the bottom of this post just contains the cake while the post does talk briefly about all the steps.
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
This plan was already insane but then I saw the ingredient list. While there are quite of few of overlapping ingredients between all the components, there is an excessive amount of ingredients. I estimated about 28 eggs, 6 pounds of sugar, and 3 pounds of flour. Just to name a few. I feel like I was swimming in baked goods. Swimming…. Get it?
Process
The Cake Batter
The core of the sculpture is the cake. I wanted to make a chocolate cake because I feel like that fits well with the idea of the earth beneath the ocean floor. This was also a little bit of a redemption cake for me because I had recently made this cake and it did not work as well as I had hoped it would.
To start, I decided to make an obscene amount of batter. For the original recipe, I felt like it was for two cake pans but it didn’t feel like enough. I decided to double the recipe and then split them batter between three cake pans. What I didn’t think about is how the bowl would handle holding the double batter.
I started by beating the butter and sugar together. It took up half of the bowl and I probably should have realized what nightmare I had just signed up for. Then I added all the eggs in. There were quite a few eggs. At this point, I scraped the sides of the bowl and realized what trouble I was in.
Sunk cost fallacy kicked in so I kept going. I measured out all of the dry ingredients and mixed them together. I alternated adding in the dry mixture and yogurt to get a nice batter consistency. At the end, I think my mixer was ready to give up on me. I would not have been surprised if it had.
Then I divided the batter into the three pans and popped them into the oven. Looking back, I probably should have made two batches of batter and then combined them before putting them in the pans. That would have been easier on the mixer and probably would have looked less ridiculous.
Putting the Cake Together
To layer the cake, I wanted to make it a little more interesting. I decided to do alternating layers of frosting and cherry filling. I ended up blending a can of cherry pie filling because I had some on hand. The frosting was a quick mix of heavy whipping cream, vegetable shortening, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract.
I cut each cake in half, so I had six layers of cake. Using the frosting, I made a dam around the edge of the three layers and filled them with the cherry filling. The stack cake felt huge! But this is a showstopper, so I want to make it big! And I felt it was a good base for the sculpture. Finally, I used whipped cream frosting to surround the cake.
The Gingerbread Floor
I decided to make gingerbread as the layer between the cake and the “ocean” because it has a sand like effect that I really liked. I also thought it would add some stability to the sculpture and make the whole dessert easier to work with. Especially if the components were able to have stable bases. I was worried that putting the “ocean” on top of the cake would cause it to sink into the cake and then cause sections of the cake to collapse.
The recipe for the gingerbread will be available in a later post. Keep an eye out!
The “Ocean”
The ocean is made from sugar glass with a bit of blue dye. This aesthetic took a while to get right because I wanted something to give the ocean effect. The first pour I made of the candy felt thick. So, I did it again. This time, I added too much dye, and the panels were too dark. They did not get the see through color that I wanted. So, I did it again.
The final time came out well! It has a good thickness and clarity. The only downside is that it came out greener than I would have liked. I think having the sugar getting a little browning made it harder to get a proper blue.
But the green reminded me of sea glass, so I was kind of into it. But to make this look like an ocean scene, I decided to use food markers to draw fish along the inside of the panels so make it more of an underwater scene.
The last step was melting the edges to get them to stick together and create a box. This was done by heating up the edges and then just sticking the sugar together. I feel like this is the core of my sculpture. It’s the most interesting thing in the design, And that is my ocean! I will be writing a post on sugar glass candy in a later post as well.
Cream Puff Rocks
Because I want to make my life as difficult as possible, I decided to make cream puffs to fill the ocean box. I picked cream puffs because I thought they could give a similar vibe to rocks and that would create a more interesting scene that having nothing inside of the box.
I have not really made cream puffs before. There was one similar pastry in another Bake-Off challenge, but I have not worked with this specific type of pastry. I knew that I would be working over a stove so I was very interested in seeing where this would take me.
I started by mixing butter and water together in a pot. Water is a strange ingredient. Or at least it was until I thought about it a little longer and realized a lot of pastries use water (hot water crust pastry has it in the name!) After the liquid came to a boil, I removed it from the stove, added in the dry ingredients and stirred like crazy. I really wanted the dough to come together properly.
The mixture was transferred into a bowl, and I waited for it to stop steaming. Then it was time to add eggs. Soooo many eggs. After the whole mixture came together, I piped the dough and baked them off. While the pastry was cooking, I went ahead and made the cream.
I filled each puff with cream before putting them into the glass candy box. Now the ocean has a little bit more depth! A post on cream puffs will be coming out soon.
Meringue Bushes
The last component of my insane sculpture is creating meringue mounds to create bushes. I had originally had grander plans for trees, but I actually struggle quite a bit with the meringue. Which is weird because I thought that meringue would be easy to make. I ended up making multiple batches until I decided to go with this result.
I started by whisking egg whites until they are foamy. Then I added some cream of tartar to give some stability to the egg whites. I wanted to continue whisking until I reached soft peaks.
Then it’s time to add the sugar. I only added the sugar in a little at a time. Trying to build on the sugar but get it combined enough that the graininess of the sugar would not be noticeable. There is still some graininess in the batter, but this method reduces it as much as possible.
Lastly, I added in the extract and green food coloring. Next was to put the batter into a piping bag and bake them!
Assembly
To make the final, I added more frosting along the outside of the cake to make a more sea like effect. I placed one gingerbread disc on top of the cake and then the sugar glass case on top of that. The ring gingerbread disc was placed on top. I filled the glass case with cream puffs. Finally, I used some frosting to make a grass like effect on the top ring and places the meringue on top. I finished my sculpture!
Reflections
This whole sculpture was a massive challenge. One I should have expected but I still was caught off guard by. I redid some of the recipes multiple times because I wanted to get it right (which is why it took so long for me to get this post up). I really love the way that it turned out. The inside of the cake really got a stunning look!
I enjoyed eating every component of this sculpture. The cake was chocolatey with a cherry flavor, the cream puff filling was soooo good, the sugar glass was sweet but yummy, and the meringue is crunchy and creamy all at once.
I do feel like this sculpture was a good way to end my Season 13 Great British Bake Off journey. I love how I had to bake multiple components and got to use my knowledge from previous challenges. The only thing I would do differently is add another sugar glass and gingerbread ring layer to make it even taller!
recipe
Chocolate & Cherry Cake
Ingredients
Cake
- 4 Cup Sugar
- 2 Cup Butter
- 4 Cup Flour
- 12 Eggs beaten
- 1 Cup Chocolate Powder
- 2 Teaspoon Baking Powder
- 2 Teaspoon Baking Soda
- 2 Cup Yogurt
Filling
- 1 Can Cherry Pie filling blended
Frosting
- 2 Cup Heavy Whipping Cream
- 1 Cup Powdered Sugar
- 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat the oven 350° Fahrenheit.
- Combine butter & sugar until light and fluffy. Combine all eggs. Add the eggs slowly into the butter mixture.
- In another bowl, whisk together flour, chocolate powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. (This is the dry mixture)
- Add ⅓ dry mixture into the butter mix. Then add 1 cup yogurt, then ⅓ dry, then 1 cup yogurt, and then ⅓ dry. Allow the ingredients to just mix until combined before adding then next step.
- Distribute the batter between three 9-inch baking pans. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
- Let cool for 10 minutes before removing it from the pan.
Frosting
- In a large bowl, whisk heavy whipping cream until soft peaks are reached.
- Add in powdered sugar and vanilla extract, whisk until hard peaks are reached.
Assembly
- Cut each cake in half horizontally.
- Place one cake layer. Use the frosting to create a circle around the top edge of the cake layer. Fill with ⅓ of the cherry filling. Add another layer of cake, spread frosting across the top. Repeat 2 more times (the last time will not have the second layer of cake).
- Use frosting to cover the outside of the cake.
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