A Break from the Bakes

You may have been shocked, outraged and appalled (or you didn't even notice because we are not as famous as we would like to believe) that there was no technical challenge post this past week. We are sorry that you did not get to laugh at our crazy antics and roll your eyes at our limited knowledge of all things British last week. Hopefully you will not be quite as outraged when you learn that the reason there was no technical is that Stephanie added another member to the Cunningham clan on Sunday when Callen Cunningham was born!

In case you didn't know, Stephanie has been completing all of these technical challenges while being around 8 months pregnant which basically means she deserves every Paul Hollywood handshake and Mary Berry scrumptious comment that there is to give in the baking world. She probably could have even mastered the Princesstarta in the hospital after 10 hours of labor but we are pretty sure rolling out fondant on your hospital tray would be against Hungarian doctor's orders. Since none of us speak Hungarian though who really knows what they would allow or not, rules can be easily broken when babies are involved in Eastern Europe (although not putting a hat on a baby is a rule that cannot be broken and you will get a hat forced on your babies head if you try).

Stephanie had her baby in Budapest, Hungary and it just so happened that Megan was coaching at a basketball tournament there this past week. Therefore in this post you will get to hear about a Hungarian dessert called  Kürtöskalács (Kurtos for short) or as we unsophisticated English speakers like to call them chimney cakes. Sadly, Devin could not come to Budapest because she is not quite Ellen famous yet (we'll get there) so you won't get to hear her take on them.

The different versions of the Chimney Cake from around Eastern Europe (we're testing your flag knowledge with this one)

                                           
In true bake off fashion we will begin with a little bit of history behind the Kurtos (we'll call it that from now on because accents are hard but it's better than being a basic American and saying chimney cake). You can find different versions of this dessert all over Eastern Europe but all in all in its simplest form it is pretty much pastry dough wrapped around a stick to form a long tubular shape, covered in sugar and toasted over charcoal.

The Kurtos being roasted at Molnar's

The Kurtos is said to originate in Transylvania (now Romania) in the late 18th century and was reserved for the nobility. The very first Kurtos did not have a caramelized sugar glaze on the outside. It took 100 years for the Hungarians to realize that sugar makes everything better (something I think Americans realize coming out of the womb, Callen especially) and finally add sugar to the outside of the Kurtos dough before roasting. This newly sugared up, way more delicious Kurtos was a traditional item to serve at weddings in Hungarian culture.

Today, as you will see from our Kurtos experience, there are a variety of toppings that can be added and they even take it a step further at the bakery we visited by adding ice cream. The toppings and the ice cream were definitely a game changer for us. We had both eaten Kurtos and versions of it in various Eastern European countries but had never been super impressed until we visited this bakery.

The bakery is called Molnar's and we were thoroughly impressed by the whole experience there. We could not stop talking about the dough and how crispy it was on the outside but pillowy soft on the inside. The dough held it's shape perfectly even after being soaked with the the ice cream. Our past experiences, have been Kurtos versions that are hard as rocks and lacking flavor but these were completely different.

You are able to order a Kurtos with whichever toppings you would like and can add ice cream to it as well. Megan refuses to eat vanilla ice cream because it is not worth the calories and therefore just got a Kurtos covered in chocolate. Stephanie went with a cinnamon Kurtos filled with vanilla ice cream. You can watch them make the Kurtos right in front of you at Molnar's and watch them spin around on the spit as they turn a delicious golden brown.

All of the delicious toppings available

They brought out Stephanie's Kurtos first with two spoons (apparently this dessert was meant for two people which lucky for her, Callen was there to help in her stomach). We loved that they brought out an adorable tray filled with additional toppings to add to your Kurtos ice cream (who doesn't love a build your own sundae). The only complaint we had with her Kurtos was that it was not warm which we understood wouldn't mix well with the ice cream but still a disappointment.

Megan's Kurtos came out next and the warm dough completely covered in chocolate looked like it would definitely be worth the calories and was probably meant for like 15 people (sharing and dessert are two words that should never go together though). It was the perfect combination of fluffy dough and melty chocolate.

Obviously we really liked Molnar's and would recommend it to anyone visiting Budapest. It was definitely the best Kurtos experience that we've had and we can't wait to go back. Budapest is probably our favorite Eastern European city as well so if you're more famous than us, then you should just go ahead and hop on a plane to Budapest to visit Molnar's.

Pie and Tart Week: Paul's Mini Pear Pies

There are no words to completely convey how this technical messed with our minds. Devin is still shaking in the corner. It may be adorable and seem like a practical, light dessert but it's not. If the blog was awarded a nickel for every time the phrase, "This is a hot mess" was used, we could eat Levain cookies everyday for the rest of our lives. How could something so dainty and pretty make you want to rip your hair out? Two words...puff and leaf!

Mini Pear Pies : Picture from BBC Food 

I'm sure Mary Berry thought this dessert could be the perfect end to a heavy meal, but all we wanted to do was to add different elements that would have made it more delicious or worth the calories. There may have been a comment thrown out about caramel being too good for the mini pear pie. Two out of three of us have experienced European desserts first hand and the mini pear pie seems like a good symbol of what the British like in a baked dish; puff pastry and white wine.As an American though, I'll take my chocolate and peanut butter over it any day.

First Baker: Megan

My Thoughts: My baking routine for these technical challenges has been to bake them on Sunday and have The Greatest Showman soundtrack blaring in the kitchen to motivate me through each bake. Well during this bake as the song Never Enough began to play, I started to sing as loudly as possible "Never agaaaaain! Never! Never! Never again, will I make these!" That's how I felt pretty much through this whole bake. Never again did I want to fold and turn and chill and fold and turn and chill a billion times to make my own rough puff. Never again did I want to poach pears for years just for them to turn out bland and taste well, like pears. Never again did I want to use a ruler while I was baking because bringing reminders of school home, is just the worst (even though as a teacher I have to do it all the time). Never again did I want to wrap very poorly cut strips of dough around a slippery pear that just didn't want to be mummified that day. Never again did I want to have to watch all my hard work be demolished by a tipsy pear in the oven that clearly had absorbed too much poaching wine and decided standing up was just too bloody hard.

Ingredients, cutting those rough strips, pears before the oven, my makeshift rolling pin, and that drunken pear taking out the others in the oven.

 Result: 

I'm a little mad just looking at this picture and thinking of all of that wasted time. Did I mention how much I already loathed fruit desserts before this because well, you know, a lack of chocolate.

Fake Paul and Mary Thoughts: There were definitely some mixed feelings on these amongst my judges but I think they're just a little too nice to say these were disgusting. One judge thought that the pear tasted nice while another thought that something went terribly wrong with them. One of them thought that the appearance with that little baked leaf was perfect (she did receive the best looking one) while the other thought that there is no way pastry would ever adhere to a soggy pear so theirs was a mess. Finally one judge thought that adding whipped cream helped make these edible.

Average Taste Score: 5

Average Appearance Score: 7

 

Second Baker: Stephanie

My Thoughts: Mini pear pies, sounds so cute! If you could have been in our group text this week it didn't sound as delightful. There were talks of "literal hell" of cutting pastry in 1/8 in strips, and of pears going down and taking others as casualties with them. It's a war zone this baking thing! To be honest I wasn't expecting a ton from this bake because making rough puff pastry sounded daunting, and for once I was in agreeance with Megs where this dessert didn't seem to be worth the calories, but maybe Paul would surprise me.
The bake wasn't difficult, but it was involved. There were many turns, rolls,and chills of the pastry, and the pears had to be peeled, poached, cored, cooled, wrapped, bathed, baked, and drizzled before they could be consumed.
 Going into the oven I was pretty impressed with myself! The leaves were adorable, the pastry, although stretched, was in perfect mummy fashion...things are looking up! Then...they went into the oven, and some sorcery of pear temperature and pastry temperature happened and everything started to fall apart! No matter how long I baked them I couldn't get them to brown nicely, and one pear even decided to defect from the mummy-pear army and tip over. Oh boy.

Ingredients, pastry measuring, adorable leaves! 

The pear army ready to be baked, and the beginning of the end of this losing battle in the oven

Result:

My attempts at plating well to distract the judges from the disaster on the back lines. 

Sad little tattered pear army 

Fake Paul and Mary Thoughts: In the end they didn't turn out as catastrophic as I thought. We all agreed they were a bit on the bland side for a dessert, but the remarks were that the flavors were great, the pastry was actually nice, but the pears could have been a bit softer.

Average Taste Score: 8

Average Appearance Score: 6

Third Baker: Devin

My Thoughts: I had no desire to do this technical. I'm in love with puff pastry and I love fruity desserts, but there's no pizazz found in this dish. I put it off for as long as I could, I may have literally run to get away from doing it. Once I started the bake everything felt okay and not daunting at all. I just want to say on the record, this was my first time rolling out dough..and I was not a complete failure! The poaching on the other hand reminded me too much of candying the peel from the Florentine technical. I had to take some therapeutic sips from the white wine used. I felt pretty good about this going in and it was the first of the bakes that I could taste. 

Result: Why did I just put this in my belly? I never thought I could like something less than the snicker doodle cookie. The British can keep this dessert and I'm giving them the silent treatment until they redeem themselves.

Fake Paul and Mary Thoughts: The puff pastry could have have been crispier. The pear was cooked to perfection, but does not hold any flavor from it's poaching.

Average Taste Score: 4

Average Appearance Score: 9

                                                                                    And the Star Baker is...
            

Dessert Week: Mary Berry's Tiramisu

Dessert week! Everyone's favorite week!

We decided that dessert week should be entitled Treat yo self 2018 (said in our best Tom and Donna voices). We each have a different idea of what our treat yo self days would look like but of course they would all include watching as much GBBO as possible. Two contestants definitely believe that dessert is way better than "real" food any day and would spend a whole treat yo self day baking and eating desserts (but of course having someone else clean up the mess because nothing says treat yo self like your own personal dishwasher/maid for the day). While the other contestant (the Ben of the group who we don't understand with the Batman costume on treat yo self day) would fill her day with chicken wings and more chicken wings because savory is life for her. 

                                                    

Tiramisu seemed like the ultimate treat yo self dessert because it's caffeine, liquor and mounds of cream all rolled into one dessert. Some of us knew that Tom and Donna would see our zerts as insta worthy while others knew that they would not be impressed with our pack of socks presentation (just go and watch the Parks and Rec Treat yo self episode if none of this is making sense to you and you can thank us later). 

Tiramisu - Picture Courtesy BBC

All in all this treat yo self week included some serious brandy discussions as some of us weren't even sure what it looked like much less what it tasted like. We also wanted a professional chocolate temperer (don't worry I'm sure Paul Hollywood has given himself this title, he just wants to make sure no one else can take it by having everyone think its not a real word) this week at our beck and call because honestly it's just the worst. This treat yo self week will definitely never be forgotten as one contestant has promised to reveal a secret about her tiramisu in this post, which I'm sure will shock us just as much as Paul Hollywood continuing on GBBO without Mary Berry by his side (we knew his cutthroat nature could lead him down some slippery slopes but not so far as to leave the Queen of baking behind).

First Baker: Megan

Norman (the resemblance is uncanny)

My Thoughts: I realized this week after watching the first few episodes of GBBO Season 5 again, that I am Norman. This was solidified after watching the dessert week episode and seeing him throw cocoa powder around the outside of his tiramisu, staring at it and saying, "I'm surprised at how good it looks." He has a that'll do (I cant help but think of the farmer in Babe every time he says this and I love him even more for it) attitude that I feel like I have a lot of time in my bakes (sometimes I do let the perfectionist Luis in me take over and things go horribly wrong). At each step of making this tiramisu, I pretty much thought that'll have to do because I refuse to make it again. First, when my cake came out of the oven and it was about as tall as a pancake so nearly impossible to cut in half, I thought that'll have to do. Next, I thought that'll have to do when I realized that I only had a very short serrated knife to cut the cake with (also knowing I can barely cut a straight line with scissors), and while looking at the hack job I had done on my cake afterwards. The that'll do's continued as I covered every surface in grated chocolate (worst idea ever as chocolate melts immediately while grating it), pieced together my broken cake layers in a too large square pan, had no sifter for my cocoa powder on top so clumps ensued and microwaved my chocolate to temper it (at that point I was pretty much in full on Norman mode just thinking eh I'll throw on my adorable old man Norman smile and they'll let me slide by another week).

Ingredients including that pesky Brandy that there were a million different brands of at the store, my arch nemesis - grated chocolate, my cake hack job, and a dessert that would be way better for treat yo self day than tiramisu

Result: My favorite thing about this tiramisu is the treat yo self that I piped out of my poorly tempered chocolate and really the rest is very much a that'll do effort (plus coffee, liquor and a tiny amount of chocolate are not my idea of a treat yo self dessert).

Fake Paul and Mary Thoughts: The judges thought that mine definitely had a homemade look to it and could have been neater. They thought that the sponge was thoroughly soaked and that it had a delightful flavor. They wanted a little more coffee flavor and less brandy though for sure.

Average Taste Score: 8

Average Appearance Score: 7

 

Second Baker: Stephanie

My Thoughts: Well first of all, I could not stop singing Macklemore's "Downtown" song during this bake. You know (actually, I'm sure you don't know since if you're reading this blog you're probably way more civilized and upstanding than I am and don't listen to terrible pop music), the line that says "There\s layers to this [stuff] player, Tiramisu, Tiramisu." So I was head bobbing along trying to make all of these layers somehow turn out. I borrowed pans for this bake from a friend, only to find out that one of them was too big for my small Bosnian oven. (Another appropriate moment to insert the face palm emoji). So I had to make a double batch of sponge to be baked in two separate rounds. Sponge must be in the rabbit family because there was sponge everywhere, which is a much more enjoyable problem to have than last week's flour fiasco. (Also, why is it so much more satisfying to call it sponge than cake?? Craig might have made fun of me a few times for that. 'Would you like to try the leftover sponge?' 'Uh, I'm not sure why you're calling that but yes, please give me some cake.') There was more math involved this week as I determined down to the gram and milliliter how to divide the layers, and how to cut the sponge out of it's original sheet pan state. Chocolate tempering is not for the weak, or the impatient, but if you're really treating yo self, then you should get someone else to do it for you.
Overall after I pulled my Tiramisu out of the too-small, wrong-style, square-ish pan, I was pleasantly surprised with the overall look and decided I could maybe be a brick layer in my future life. (hah!). Aside from sponges that were a tad on the thin and over soaked side (I refuse to admit to sogginess, may it never be so!)  because of no self-rising flour, I thought it tasted exactly as it should and was a very delicious Tiramisu. I'm very pleased!

Ingredients, pan size struggles, sponge multiplying all over my kitchen, and more pan issues as my tiramisu explodes over the top of my dish.

Result:

My "Instagram husband" helping me get the best lighting for my pictures, and the finished product!

Fake Paul and Mary Thoughts: Overall this was a top bake in the eyes of my judges. They oohed and aahed over the taste of the cream and the overall cake, but said there could have been a better balance between amount of sponge and amount of cream (not that they were complaining about the cream level!) In his best Paul impression Craig shared that the sponge was a perfect level of moist, but my Mary (and I) thought it was a tad on the soggy side. When I took it to church the next day it was devoured with wide eyes and nods of approval through full mouths.

Average Taste Score: 8

Average Appearance Score: 8.75

Third Baker: Devin

My Thoughts: I was determined to do better this week. I read the recipe throughout the week and started collecting things I would need, like a better understanding of what heck I'd be doing. So, I re-watched the GBBO episode where they made tiramisu. I admitted that I watched the episode to Megan and Stephanie but what I didn't admit, was that after seeing the struggle of cutting the sponge several times, I just went and bought four different pans and called it a day, so surprise! I felt like a badass and to be honest, I needed all the help that I could get because... MY TIRAMISU WAS STILL AWFUL!

My Official Frosting Tester

Result: "Oh... this was supposed to be tiramisu? It tasted like an uninteresting cake that I wouldn't waste my calories on." I'm paraphrasing but a judge said that in real life to my face. She may be my Paul Hollywood.

Fake Paul and Mary Thoughts: 
Paul - "I don't know what this is, but it's not tiramisu." (Walks off, possibly disgusted.)
Mary - "Good sponge, nice even layers, good look overall but there's no brandy or coffee flavor. And I need my brandy to deal with him... (Mel whispers something to Mary) YOU CHEATED??? We'll need to deliberate."

Average Taste Score: 6

Average Appearance Score: 8

And the Star Baker for the best week of the year is...

Stephanie

Come back next week for Pies and Tarts...