Following in the solitary footsteps of Botanical Week, Batter Week and Caramel Week, Bake Off’s annual attempt to try ‘something different’ brings us to the first ever Spice Week.
The signature is a ginger cake, which Prue says is her favourite spice. However, Prue warns of the danger of using fresh ginger, which she tells us loses flavour when baked. Immediately ignoring this advice, Manon cheerfully grates fresh ginger into her sponge batter, though wisely adds more to her lemon curd filling and pristine Italian meringue buttercream. Briony supplements the fresh ginger in her cake with some dried spice, hoping the flavour will still endure an encounter with honey, apricots and dark chocolate ganache.
Dan aims to transform his mother’s recipe into a four-layered ginger and lemon drip cake filled with lemon Swiss meringue buttercream. However, he’s horrified to discover some odd flecks of ‘cheese’ in his batter, which he guesses are a sign of curdling. He briefly agonises over what to do with his already-full cake tins. I’m shouting ‘Bake them!’ at the TV, but to no avail. Dan’s dilemma occurred four months ago in Berkshire and here am I in Yorkshire… plus I don’t possess one of those two-way TVs anyway. Dan bins his batter and begins again.
Rahul has also opted for Swiss meringue buttercream in his Bonfire Night ginger cake with cinder toffee and salted caramel, whilst Karen looks forward to a boozy November the fifth, adding a generous glug of brandy to her traditional Yorkshire parkin. Noel confides that it’s his role to keep Prue’s hip flask topped up with brandy. He alleges it’s a full-time job.
Ruby is also hitting the bottle with her ‘Jamaican Me Crazy’ ginger cake. The rummy sponge is sandwiched with orange mascarpone cream, drizzled in toffee and topped with ginger snaps. Jon’s ‘Family Christmas’ cake features a festive gathering of gingerbread folk atop his stem ginger sponge and lemon Italian meringue buttercream. Following last week’s lesson in creating fruit juice ‘egg yolks’, Jon gets his chemistry kit out again to make gobs of glittery lemon globules.
Kim-Joy and Terry seem to start off with similar ambitions for their cakes – stem ginger, poached pears and cream cheese frosting. Sadly it’s a cruel fact of the Bake Off tent that recipes that begin with so much in common rarely finish that way. She crowns her creation with a little forest of poplar-shaped pears and a perfect snow-capped gingerbread house in miniature. Terry’s ‘upside-down’ cake seems destined to disorientate the poor baker – as he bravely pipes filling on the still warm cake, it melts and slides towards an inevitable avalanche of disappointment.