It was Tudor week last week and the quarter final.
It is now down to Selasi, Andrew, Candice, Jane and Benjamina. Very happy that my three favorites were still in (first three) but I was worried about Selasi being one of the next to go. At the end of the episode it was actually Benjamina’s time to leave. I have my favourites but I don’t see a clear winner yet.
The first challenge was to make pies. Not just any pies a display of shaped pies. I really wanted to do this but with the other half having to go on a work trip I didn’t want to be left with a big selection of pies just to myself. Hopefully we will come back to this later in the year.
The technical challenge was Paul’s Jumbles. I had never heard of jumbles before but I was hoping if I had a recipe they wouldn’t be too hard to complete. There had to be 12 jumbles in two designs. A Celtic cross and a double knot. Making the dough was fairly simple, like a standard biscuit dough with different spices. I couldn’t find any aniseed so I substituted some dill. I wasn’t looking forward to the taste as these are flavours I don’t work with that often but I enjoyed the taste in the end. This was down to adding some extra lemon zest.
The shaping of these was the hard part. I got the double knot after a quick look online but the Celtic cross took me longer than it should have to figure out. As you can see from the picture. I got it in the end and I am confident now I can do these again.
In the end I over baked these a bit much as they didn’t turn as golden as I was expecting. Overall quite a enjoyable bake. This is something I will make again and would recommend to any biscuit lover.
The showpiece was to be a marzipan structure but I just wanted to make marzipan as I have always bought this in the past. I can see now why good marzipan can be expensive as nuts are expensive. It is not a hard process to make marzipan but it can be a bit fiddly if you don’t have a powerful processor.
I turned my marzipan into mini cakes called kransekage, which is a Scandinavian marzipan cake. I got the recipie for this from my Scandinavian Baking book by Trine Hahnemann. This is a beautifully photographed book which I am looking forward to baking more from. The recipie was very quick to put together and the cakes turned out lovely. Nice and sweet with a slight chew.
This week was good but I am ready for tonights episode and the next set of challenges.
What will tonight’s semi final bring?