Signature Bake: Mary Berry’s Tiramisu Cake

Transcendental Baking

I came to The Great British Bake Off to eat cakes with my eyes, but I stayed for the life lessons. No joke, I have spun a personal zen-ish life philosophy from meditating continuously on the four seasons of #GBBO. What has #GBBO taught me? That even though you can practice and prepare, study your methods, and be the best baker you can be, any week can be your week to say goodbye, so you might as well enjoy your time in the tent. Baking is the perfect balance of art and impartiality. You want to present something flavorful, inventive and beautiful, but a lot of the quality of your bake comes down to the indisputable. Is your bread properly risen? Is your pastry flakey? Are the cherries in your cake properly distributed? And so on. There is a certain amount you can control for your bread’s risen-ness or your pastry’s flakiness through proper technique, but there is chaos in the universe, and that chaos can choose to express itself in your bake. There can be disappointment, but there can be no hard feelings. You just have to let it go and move on to the next bake. Scones have literally become the “chop wood, carry water” of my mini-baking enlightenment.

It’s this enlightenment that has inspired me to make all of the Technical Bakes of The Great British Bake Off, starting with Series 5 (American Season 1) and I have just reached Series 5, Episode 4. This is the episode that contains one of the great parables in my Tao of Dough, my Zen and the Art of Mascarpone Maintenance – the one that starts with Martha’s cookie crumbling and Iain presenting a bin to the judges.

Martha started the weekend with signature self-saucing pudds that had no structural integrity. Despite having practiced at home, her chocolate fondants were cracked and oozing their peanut butter carnage all over their plates. Judge Hollywood exclaimed “Oh, dear!” at the sight of them. Judge Berry, being a classy dame, focused on the lightness sponge, but Hollywood, pouring self-sauce in her wound, pointed out that the dryness of the peanut butter was welding his mouth shut.

In the post-pudd interview, Martha still managed a smile. “I try and be a tough cookie. Sometimes it’s a bit hard and the cookie has to crumble, but I’ve done my best.” Martha was able to bounce back in the second round and get first place in the Technical Round, producing a Tiramisu Cake that and sharp edges, even layers, nicely soaked sponge – “and the flavors were perfect,” Judge Berry proclaimed. Martha just beamed.

Iain had a bit of a stumble in the Tiramisu Technical Bake. He had a snafu with his sponge not rising and we got a got a glimpse of the bubbling rage seething just below his russet beard. He had to start again from scratch and hustle through the rest of the 2 1/2 hour challenge. He was able to place a finished cake on the Gingham Alter, and he even gets a nice compliment on the rise of his sponge, but the rush job resulted in a sloppy finish and not enough coffee in the sponge. He ends up placing sixth out of nine, just beating out Nancy who’s cake was literally pissing coffee and Norman who had hardly any coffee at all.

There is always pressure in the tent, and I think in some ways Iain felt it more than most. His performance up to that had been middling to poor, especially when it came to technicals, and he did have something special up his sleeve with this baked Alaska showstopper. He had come up with an extraordinarily inventive and potentially delicious recipe – black sesame seed ice cream on a cocoa sponge with a layer of caramel. Iain even got a “Niiiiiice” from Paul Hollywood when he laid out his ice cream scheme, “it could be fascinating.”

But the hottest day of the British summer, his ice cream dream slipped, or rather melted, out of his grasp. Diana, looking for some valuable freezer real estate, mistakenly left his lovingly churned sesame ice cream out of the icebox. The scene is heart-wrenching – you just hear the panicked voice of Iain ask “Wh-where’s my ice cream?” and Diana answers, “It’s here, sorry Iain…” Iain lets out a guttural “Aaaaaarrrrggggg!” The 40 seconds the frozen core of his showstopper was out of the freezer were enough to reduce it to a grey soup. “Why? Why would you take ice cream out of the freezer?” In a fit of frustration, and despite angelic host Sue’s protestations, Iain chucks his entire creation, sponge and all, in the bin and storms his skinny jeans off into the English countryside like a hipster yeti.

At presentation time, Iain presents Judges Hollywood and Berry the silver garbage can that held his aborted delectable. He does the noble thing. He doesn’t point fingers or protest. He simply presented the facts in his gorgeous Belfastian brogue, “Had some issues with the ice cream and I let the frustration of that get the better of me.” Paul inquired after the sponge and the meringue, but alas it was all binned. Mary sympathized, “We all make mistakes and we would’ve liked to see that sponge.” With nothing to adjudicate, the judges had no choice but to send Iain home, saving boring Norman’s hide for one more week.

The lesson? In the grand tent of life, always bring something to the table – even if it is a meringue-d sponge and a bowl of toasted sesame soup. Small injustices happen, like a dotty grandmother leaving your ice cream out of the freezer, but it’s how you handle it that really counts.

There is a whole other morality tale about how all of the United Kingdom turned like monsters against poor Diane calling the situation #bingate and declaring #justiceforiain, and damaging her so irrevocably via social media that she disappeared from the show claiming it was for “health reasons” but that is a story for another blog. Keep your swan neck held high, Diana! I have tiramisu to make.

The Brief – Mary Berry’s Tiramisu Cake

This is Mary Berry’s Tiramisu Cake from the Judges Tent (S5:E4) and therefore the platonic ideal.

Series 5 (American Season 1): Episode 4. Sue announces that the bakers have 2 1/2 hours to make Mary Berry’s Tiramisu Cake – a twist on a classic Italian dessert whose name means, “pick me up!” (Thanks, Wikipedia!) And what depth of ennui could not be cured by ladyfingers soaked in coffee and booze hiding strata of sweetened mascarpone cheese and shaved chocolate? Frankly, any one of those components applied directly to my sads would give me enough reason to carry on.

Mary’s version uses a fatless sponge rather than ladyfingers that have been layered in a square mold, the chilled and released with tempered chocolate on top to decorate. The word of the day is “precision.” Everything must look neat and square. “What I am looking for,” Mary explains to Paul in the judge’s tent, “is for every layer to soaked evenly in the coffee and brandy, and even layers of the creamy mixture.”

Rather than the sparse recipe given to the contestants by Judge Berry, I pulled the full recipe from The Great British Baking Show: Masterclass, Season 1: Episode 4 and cross-referenced it with the recipe posted on pbs.org.

The Shopping List 

• 13 cm by 25 cm Swiss Roll Tin. Let’s do it, everyone! Let’s take the plunge and come up with universal units of measure. Sure, science says that the metric system is preferable, but we all agree that measuring people against stones is batty, so let’s just agree on something. It can be the Esperanto of measuring. 13 centimeters is 5.11811 inches and 25 centimeters is 9.84252 inches, so that means I should just quit, right? No, I did not quit. I got up and carried on. Yes, I am brave. I got this 13” by 9” swiss roll tin. That is significantly bigger, which may affect the thickness of my sponge, and a thin sponge is what caused Iain to lose his temper and commit food waste, but I’ll just have to risk it.
• Square, Loose Bottom Cake Tin. Mary Berry does not give dimensions for her square tin on the masterclass episode, that saucy minx, but logically it’s got to be smaller than half the length of your swiss roll tin because you have to cut two squares out of it so I got this 6” by 6” cheesecake pan. If there is a sudden scarcity of anodized aluminum, we know why.
• Self-Raising Flour. Easy one, Lisa! Self-raising flour is just self-rising flour. Any dumb-dumb knows that! Um, hold your judgey horses, people! Because I have something to say to them and that is “Nay!” Nay, they are not the same!
• According to Nigella, American self-rising flour contains a bit of salt where British self-raising flour does not because of course, we put salt in our flour. It’s the high blood pressure that gives us our patriotic sense of urgency! Turns out self-raising flour is just flour with baking powder in it, and Nigella suggests just adding 2 tsp of baking powder to every 150 g of all-purpose flour. This recipe calls for 100 g of self-raising flour, so I made 150 g of self-rising flour and through the rest away. I know, I’m a monster but I don’t own a 1/3-teaspoon.
• If only I did the amount of deep research I did on self-raising flour on brandy because what I got from my local ABC store was this.

• 

• She’s a fine girl. What a good wife she would be.

•  I didn’t realize that cognac and Armagnac were also “brandy.” I just grabbed a bottle that said “brandy” on it, and it happens to be apple brandy. The results will be… inventive. There has to be a reason why there aren’t a lot of apple lattes going around.

On Your Marks, Get Set… Bake!

You must whip it. The recipe starts by making what Ms. Berry calls a “simple fatless sponge.” (‘Ooh, fatless! That means it’s healthy!’ she said while eating full-fat mascarpone cheese with a spoon.) It’s made from whisking your sugar and eggs together, then folding in your flour so that the height of the cake comes primarily from the foaminess of your eggs. I’d never made a cake from this method, and I was a bit intimidated. The sponge was the stumbling block for many in the tent, including our russet Hulk, Iain, and our baking builder, Richard.

“Fast speed and keep an eye on it.” I follow Ms. Berry’s masterclass directions and slam my mixer up to full speed and watched it intently, and I mean intently. I didn’t check twitter or nothing! Those churning eggs were the center of my universe. Not whisked enough, and my sponge will be a flaccid, yellow flap. Too stiff, and it will be tough to incorporate the flour. Ms. Berry recommends whisking until you can make a zigzag drizzle from your whisk back into your mixture and it just slowly sinks back in.

Folding time! I sift my flour into the bowl gently and try to replicate Ms. Berry’s expert method of going right ‘round the bowl and then cutting through the center until I can see no more flour and not a second longer. The last thing I want to do is knock the air out. You can see in the episode, that when Iain pours his first, infuriating sponge that his mixture is looking a little thin like perhaps it’s over-folded. Norman, on the other hand, pours his mixture and it clearly has huge pockets of flour in it. “A few spots of flour here and there, but you always get that…” Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Norman.

You gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them.

I pour my mixture into my swiss roll tin (“Not from a great height!” Thanks, Ms. Berry!), which I have meticulously prepped with butter and parchment paper. I then tipped the tin to get the mixture in the corners. I lovingly slipped it into my 345° F oven and set a timer for 25 minutes.

What’s that smell? This fatless sponge, whilst it was baking, did not fill my home with the smell I’m used to getting while baking a cake – the floury sweet scent. It smelled eggsy to me, which I found a little off-putting, but considering this cake is about half egg, I had to assume that scent was appropriate.

When all was said and done, my sponge was done after 26 or so minutes. I could tell it was finished when it was slightly springy to the touch. I was pretty stoked to see that my cake was well risen, and not like the sad yoga mat that Richard literally folded up and tossed in the trash. I like my cakes like I like my Cameron Crowe movies – DEEP (Like Vanilla Sky.)! My thicc sponge went straight from the oven to the fridge to cool and got on with my chocolate.

I just want to gently lay my cheek on that sponge.

Now do the other things!! With the scariest part of my bake chillin’ like a villain in the fridge, I got on with all of the other elements. I tempered and piped my chocolate decor, I mixed the boozy coffee cocktail (and, like Norman, took a wee nip. It was kinda’ gross!), and used my hand mixer to get my sweetened mascarpone cream to a spreadable consistency. Phew! Getting a tiramisu together is like a Jane Fonda workout! So many steps!

Time to cut the cake. In the masterclass, Paul asks the question, “Could you have baked the layers separately, Mary?” “You could do them separately, but this was really setting them a bit of a task!” Jeez, Mary! Some judges just want to watch their baking-contestants burn! The bakers sweated bullets as they hacked at their cakes. Nancy and Kate ended up cobbling some of their layers together with cake remnants, for gosh sakes. Remnants!

I used Ms. Berry’s method of using a serrated a serrated knife, cutting the square, and then splitting the squares into layers rather than cutting the whole cake across and I did an okay job. One regret is that I left the baked edge on my cake, which in retrospect was a silly thing to do, but oh well.

What do a cake and I have in common? Layers. Time to make like we’re getting ready for an English summer day and layer it up! No Luis’s diagrams of cakes needed here! I tucked my first sponge layer in the bottom of my buttered and lined square tin and got to soaking. Many a fine baker faltered in the imbuing of sponge with coffee. Norman used a rather abstract expressionist Jackson Pollack method of splashing the boozy coffee, which proved to be folly, and Diana tried to force the liquid into an under-risen sponge, which was a catastrophe. The proper method is to use a pastry brush and paint on the boozy coffee evenly.

I then piped on the mascarpone trying to emulate Richard’s bubble piping on the edges and then filling in the center, sprinkled that layer with the grated chocolate, and repeat. For the final layer, Ms. Berry recommends a thin layer of mascarpone, and skip the grated chocolate. With my tin all filled with Tiramisu goodness, all that is left to do is put the cake in the fridge to set, and lick the mascarpone bowl clean.

Let loose! It took tremendous restraint to leave my cake alone in the refrigerator for about an hour. I suffered acute separation anxiety, but finally, the time came to unsheathe my masterpiece and add my finishing touches. I got a lot of satisfaction from pushing my cake out of its mold and seeing its fine finished edges and well defined (ish) layers.

I sprinkled on the cocoa with a sieve. Many of my chocolate shapes broke while I was trying to get them off of the parchment because they were way too thin, but I got enough irregularly sized shapes to adorn the top of my tiramisu.

Sometimes the cookie has to crumble. I called Brad over to see my finished product and give me my well-deserved round of applause. We were snapping pics and high-fiving when I noticed the edge of parchment peaking out the bottom of my cake. Oh no! My cake was still sitting on the loose bottom of the cake tin. That’s not right.

Brad was like, “That’s fine” but I have never met a well enough that I have successfully left alone, so I strong-armed brad into helping me get the square of aluminum out from under my cake. In the masterclass, Mary and Paul use two large, metal spatulas to do this particular task. I don’t own two large, metal spatulas. I own one large, metal spatula and one teeny-weeny metal spatula.

This is the part of the story where everyone gets to feel like Nosferatu. Yes, the bottom of my cake fell out. I was devastated. I ended up serving my busted tiramisu cake to my book club in a 9″x 8″ metal cake pan and a heavy fog of regret. They were all still super nice about it.

I took this picture right before weeping.

Did I make time? Absolutely not. Not even close. My 2 1/2 hour timer went off while I was somewhere in the layering stage. This bake took forever. Brad was able to watch all of Schindler’s List and make some significant progress in the Netflix true crime documentary series Evil Genious in the time I was able to complete this bake. Cheery watching, I know. The fact that in the tent all of the bakers finished their cakes in time, especially with restarting sponges and what not, is astounding.

The Gingham Altar

Would it make the cut? Um… before my Mary Berry Tiramisu Cake lost its butt? Maybe. My chocolate shapes are irregular, my bubble piping did not really turn out, and my layers are wibbley-wobbly, but my sponge turned out perfectly and I used a pastry brush to brush on the boozy-coffee evenly. Even having used apple brandy, the flavor of the tiramisu was very good, and the bakers in the tent would not have used apple brandy by accident, because their ingredients are provided. My cake was not weeping liquid onto the gingham like Diana, or dry as a Mormon wedding like Norman’s. I would probably have been somewhere between Kate (7th) who had a messy finish, and Norman’s temperance tiramisu (8th).

Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Tiramisu.

After the disaster, I surely would have been in the last place, but I still would have been safe for the week because of Iain’s misfortune. Mwa ha ha ha.

Recipe: Mary Berry’s Tiramisu Cake

Tiramisu Cake, June 16th 2018-June 16th 2018.

Sponge

• softened butter to grease pan
• 4 large eggs
• 100 g caster sugar
• 100 g self-raising flour (all purpose+1 1/3 tsp of baking powder)

Decoration

• 100 g of 70% cocoa dark chocolate
• Cocoa Powder for Dusting

Filling

• 750 g of full fat mascarpone cheese.
• 3 tbs of icing sugar
• 30 mL of whipping cream
• 75g of 48% cocoa dark chocolate

Boozy Coffee Mixture

• 150 mL boiling water
• 1 tbs instant coffee
• 100 mL brandy

Bake your sponge.

1. Get prepped. Preheat your oven to 160° C Fan (320° F Fan/345° F) and grease your 35×25 cm (13×9 in) swiss roll tin with the butter, then line with parchment paper.
2. Beat it. Using a whisk attachment, beat the egg and sugar together until the eggs have gone pale and fluffy, and when you let the eggs drizzle from whisk, it sinks back into you mixture.
3. Fold it. Sift your flour into your egg mixture, then gently fold until the flour is incorporated.
4. Fill it. Pour your batter into your prepared tin, then tip the tin to fill the corners.
5. Bake it. Bake for 25-28 minutes, until the sponge is risen, golden brown, and springy to the touch. Allow the sponge to cool completely in the pan.

Make chocolate décor.

6. Prep for chocolate. Tape your stencil to a cutting board or flat surface then tape your parchment paper over your stencil. Have your piping bag at the ready.
7. Chop chocolate. Chop your 70% dark chocolate bar into small pieces and set aside 1/3.
8. Turn up the heat. Put 2/3 of your chocolate in a glass bowl and set it on a pot of simmering water. Stir as the chocolate melts, monitoring with a candy thermometer, until the chocolate reaches 55° C (131° F). Take the bowl of the pot.
9. Cool it down. Add your reserved chocolate a little bit at a time while stirring to gradually bring down the temperature to 28° C (82° F).
10. Warm to working temp. Put the melted chocolate back on the heat to bring the temp just up to 32° C (89° F). Transfer your chocolate to your piping bag.
11. Stencil. Snip the tip of your piping bag and trace your stencil onto the parchment paper. Stick the whole cutting board into the fridge to cool.

Make your fillings.

11. Make your boozy coffee. Boil over 75 mL of water. In a large cup or bowl, put your coffee granules. Pour 75 mL of boiling water over the coffee and then add your brandy. Stir. Put in the fridge to cool.
12. Make your filling. Whip your mascarpone, icing sugar, and cream together until they are a whipping consistency.
13. Grate your chocolate. Grate your 48% chocolate bar and set aside.

Assemble and serve.

14. Split your sponge. Turn out your sponge and peel off the paper. Cut two squares out of your cake to the to the dimensions of the bottom of your square, loose-bottom tin – 18 cm (6 in). Then split the height of the two squares so you now have four thin layers.
15. Prep your tin. Butter and line your square tin with parchment paper.
16. Layer up! Push a layer of sponge to the bottom or your tin. Use a pastry brush to brush your sponge with the boozy coffee. Then add a layer of the mascarpone mixture, and then top off with the grated chocolate. Repeat until the last layer so you end on a thin layer of the mascarpone. Put the cake in the fridge to set.
17. Finish up. Right before serving, lift the cake out of the tin. Dust with cocoa powder then arrange your chocolate on top.

Technical Bake: Mary Berry’s Cherry Cake

It’s Time to Get Technical!

I can sure take a screen cap, can’t I? From the Masterclass Episode.

I used to consider myself a fairly proficient home baker. My favorite part of getting a party invitation has always been considering what kind of delectable baked treat I can make to impress my friends and distract them from how socially awkward I am. But I’ve always relegated myself to drop cookies or cupcakes, putting more thought into marginally inventive flavor combinations rather than fiddly decorations. I also have generally stuck to recipes that use all-purpose flour, because I feared having barely used sacks of aging flour just hanging out getting stale and taking up cupboard space. I’ve never done pastry, I’ve never done a yeasted bread, and I was content with that. And then I watched The Great British Bake Off.

Since the The Great British Bake Off bubbled up on my Netflix homescreen, under the American title of The Great British Baking Show, I’ve watched and re-watched the four available seasons much to the frustration of the Netflix algorithm, I’m sure. (“Again, Lisa? But I make such brilliant suggestions!”) Watching these “home bakers” produce an insane variety of impressive bakes under such tremendous pressure blew my mind. I was suddenly motivated to whack something in the oven, slap some gluten into dough, and hold a meringue over my head!

But one doesn’t simply knock out a brilliant showstopper like Christine’s shortbread Bavarian Clock Tower or Nadiya’s chocolate peacock after making only drop cookies and cupcakes. I need to diversify my baking skills and work myself up to Star Baker of my own kitchen. That’s how I got the idea of working my way through the GBBO Technical Bakes one by one, starting with Mary Berry’s Cherry Cake.

Why this cake to pop my technical bake cherry? (Ooh! Sue would be chuffed with that one!) Because it is the first technical bake for Nancy, Richard, Martha, Chetna and the other bakers in Episode 1 of Series 5, which for those of us across the pond is Season 1. My parameters on myself will be very different than those competitors, in that I’m giving myself literally every advantage. First and foremost, I’m going to have the complete recipe. I’m aspiring to making something worthy of the Gingham Altar of The Great British Bake Off, not Netflix’s American baking competition show Nailed It! (As much as I love comedian/host Nicole Byer, I’m morally opposed to that show on so many levels.) I’m also going to aspire to keep to the time and I’ll report honestly if I made the bake in time or not, but I’m going to keep baking the damn thing until it’s edible. I’m not in this to create food waste, though I know I’ll probably end up rage-binning a fail or two. (Like Iain’s Baked Alaska! Heartbreak!) I’m also going to re-watch the eps and take copious notes so hopefully I can avoid the pitfalls stumbled upon by the contestants who did these challenges in earnest.

The Brief: Mary Berry’s Cherry Cake

Sexy topographical cake shot from the Masterclass episode.

Our queen, Mary Berry, chose this particular cake over all other for the kick-off of season five, “It’s a great British classic, but it’s quite tricky to get right.” It all comes down to the jewels of that baked golden crown, the cherries. They have to be perfectly suspended in the cake and not all gathered at the bottom or off in one spot. Then there is is the lemon icing that needs to be the correct consistency so that it can create gentle drizzles down the side of the light golden brown cake. The bakers have 2 hours. I’ll give myself 2 hours and 11 minutes to make up for my slow, conventional oven, which I’ll get into later.

I pulled the recipe from the Great British Bake Off: Masterclass Series 1: Episode 1 in which Ms. Berry herself walked her humble viewers through this recipe.

Shopping List

Most of the tools and ingredients I either had or could get from my regular grocery store. There were a few items, however, that I had to order online or, in the case of ground almonds, improvise at the last moment.

• The Food Scale. British recipes call for their dry ingredients to be weighed rather than using graduated cups and spoons. I poked through amazon reviews before landing on this one – the Etekcity Digital Touch Kitchen Scale.
• The Ring Mold. Mary called for a 23 cm ring mold. I did not want to settle for a bundt pan because I liked the aesthetic of the smooth ring of cake. I ended up getting a 9.75” savarin mold.
• The Glacé Cherries. I wasn’t sure if a grocery store would carry these on the regular, so I just bought these from amazon.
• Caster sugar. American grocery stores carry hardly anything beside granulated and powdered white sugar. Caster sugar is a finer sugar without going full powder. I bought this on amazon, though my British friend told me later that she often buys super fine Domino’s sugar for her British baking, which is kept by the coffee and tea.
• Ground Almonds. For some reason, I thought I would be able to find ground almonds in a sack in the baking aisle of the grocery store. Silly me! I went to three different grocery stores, and while I found almond flour and almonds in all forms, but no ground almonds. I ended up buying blanched silvered almonds and then grinding them in my magic bullet. I ran them through a medium sieve to get the big almond chunks out.

My beautifully ground almonds! Like a sandy beach of yummy ingredientness.

On Your Mark, Get Set… Bake!

WTFan??!! Watching the show, they would declare oven temp using the term “fan.” And I’m all like, what the F is fan? Some quick googling around revealed that “Fan” refers to turning the fan on in your fancy-pants convection oven. Well, my pants are quite ordinary and the air in my oven is still as a tomb, so what’s an amateur baker to do? The answer is math. Let me get my pencil from behind my ear… oh wait, I’m not Richard!

It turns out that a Fan-assisted, or convection, oven lowers your oven temperature by 25° and decreases your cooking time by a third. There are LOTS of sites that help you convert recipes for a conventional oven into a recipe for a convection oven but us standard oven plebes are on our own. Mary Berry called for “160 Fan” for her Cherry Cake. I converted it from Celsius to Fahrenheit by asking Siri which comes to 320°. I then added the 25° to make up for my lack of Fan. So my bake temp was going to be 345° F. Mary said the bake time was to be around 35 minutes, so I increased the bake time by 33% and got 46 minutes. Boom. Simple! It didn’t take an aerospace engineer after all.

Prepare the Cherries. Our fine bakers in the tent were a bit baffled by how, exactly, to prepare the cherries, which was the crux of the entire bake. “Does she mean wash or does she mean cut? Well, I’m going for cut,” Jordan decided. Well, cut he did, chopping those poor cherries into oblivion so that they seemed to dissolve into his cake. Poor Claire and Richard left their cherries far too large so they all sunk to the bottom of the tin.

In the Masterclass episode Mary, revealed the secret of her suspended cherries, which is fourfold – cut, wash, dry, and coat. Paul Hollywood was aghast when Mary instructed him to quarter the 200 grams of sticky cherries, but I rather enjoyed the task. I would just line my little cherries up three like soldiers, then cut them in half, then line up the six halves and cut them again. Only after cutting them did I wash the syrup off, because Mary was very clear that if I washed before I cut the syrup released from the center of the fruit during cutting would be my undoing. After I rinsed them and dried them with a kitchen towel, I borrowed a tablespoon from my 225 g of self-rising flour to coat the cherries.

These cherries are as prepared as they’ll ever be!

All-In-One Method. It doesn’t get much easier than dumping all of the ingredients into a bowl and mixing them together. Mary used a stand mixer in her masterclass, but I don’t have a stand mixer. The fancy Kitchenaid stand mixers are prohibitively expensive and take up valuable kitchen space, but deep down in my little bake-loving heart, I desperately want one. I’m sure I’ll find an excuse in later bakes to take the plunge, but for this bake Norman and Nancy both mixed by hand. Norman’s cake was a little dry, but Nancy’s cake was the winner (Surprise, surprise!) so I figured that how the ingredients came together wasn’t all that important. I just used my hand mixer until the ingredients just came together and then folded in the cherries.

In the lap of the Gods! Once I had all of the batter in the mold and leveled, I whacked my cake in the oven to bake. I tried to clean up my baking mess while I waited, but I couldn’t help but look through the window of my oven every few minutes to see how my little, sweet cherry baby was doing. About ten minutes into the bake, I saw that my cake had risen about an inch above the tin. Catastrophe! My savarin mold wasn’t quite as deep as the molds the bakers in the tent were using, and the self-rising flour was doing its thing. I couldn’t very well fix that cake while it was in the oven, so all I could do was watch it bake and worry.

I ended up taking out the cake at about 43 minutes, after checking for doneness with a wooden skewer. The bottom may have taken on a bit more color than it would have otherwise, but when I leaned into the take a sniff, Sue’s “very sexy sauna” style, I smelled some sweet, lemony goodness.

I’m baffled by my jaunty angle on this pic as well.

Flipping out. After letting the cake hang out on the counter for 10 minutes, and checking that the warm cake had pulled away from the side of the tin, I flipped my cake out. I could see a few of the cherries had sunk, and were revealing themselves like little embedded rubies, but I could also see some cherries peaking through the side of my cake, so I hoped that my cherries were well-distributed. I threw the cake in the fridge and got on with my toppings.

Jewels of cherry goodness or pox of sunken doom?

Ice, Ice, Baby! While my cake was in the fridge, I toasted my nuts, keeping my eye on them (Unlike Kate, who had to bin a pan of blackened nuts). I then got on making my icing. I’ve had some experience making a thick icing using citrus and icing sugar, and I’ve made the gamut from thin and runny to thick and gloopy. I’ve found the trick is to adding the liquid slowly and whisking so that the icing makes a thick ball of icing sugar that clings to the whisk. Continue whisking and adding liquid a half tablespoon at a time until there is enough liquid that the icing just lets go of the whisk. I don’t dare add another drop of juice after that. I find that that makes an icing that is pipe-able and not so thin that it gets lost in your cake.

When I had about ten minutes left, I took my cake out of the fridge. It was still barely warm, but I figured with the thickness of my icing, it was cool enough to decorate. Besides, I was racing the clock. I paused for but a moment, asking myself to pipe or not to pipe? Nancy piped her icing in a perfect zig-zag over her cake, which impressed the judges. Mary complimented that her impeccable ice-job “proves that she can do things with precision.” My piping skills would probably prove that I don’t practice my piping enough but I thought that if I cut my piping bag an inch or so in like Chetna did, I could control my icing more than if I spooned it on the cake like Mary did in the masterclass. Ultimately, I went with the spoon. 175 g of icing sugar didn’t look like a lot of icing to me, and I didn’t want to loose any of that white, tarty goodness in the piping bag.

Am I pleased with my icing job? Eh, no, but it was time to place the cherries. Some of the bakers halved their cherries while others left them whole a top their cake. Jordan, who failed to read the instructions and did not reserve the 5 cherries for the top of the cake, was out of luck.In the masterclass, Mary had Paul cut the five remaining cherries into eighths, much to his chagrin, and then place those on the cake. I decided to stay true to her method and stick the shiny, red crescents onto my cake. I then, Martha style, picked the most perfectly toasted and shaped almonds to adorn my cake.

Did I make time?? Um, technically no, but if I had Mel and Sue breathing down my neck giving my 5 minute warnings, I totally would have. My 2 hour 11 minute timer went off while I was placing my almonds.

The Gingham Altar

I, of course, don’t have Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood scrutinizing my bakes, but I presented Mary Berry Cherry Cake to my parents’ for dessert after Easter Dinner. Dinner was delicious, but all I could think was “are my cherries suspended, or aren’t they?”

My cake in a place of honor next to the other carbs! Bonus points if you can spot where Brad nicked an almond, the bastard.

Does it make the cut? The moment of truth! Time to slice the cake! How do you like them cherries? Little red gems perfectly suspended in yellow cake. Relief! Admittedly, not all of the slices were as perfect as that one. Perhaps in the scooping and leveling phase, I could have been more cognizant that I had even cherries in each scoop, but every slice had cherries, so I’m going to call that a success.

The actual cake was lemony and yummy. The icing is super tart, which is to my liking. The bake maaaaaay have been a bit dry, though I couldn’t get my parents and husband to admit it, but I think my simple little cherry cake would not have put me on the chopping block that week. I think I’d be somewhere in the middle with Kate around number 6. She also had a fine distribution of cherries but was also had a cake that was a bit dry. She did a neater icing job than me, but her almonds were a bit caught, so I could be somewhere between Kate and Diana.

I would have been nowhere near Nancy with her “perfect nuts” (“Wow! To be commended on your nuts by Mary Berry!” Gotta love Sue!) , I’m pretty pleased with my theoretical standing in my first technical bake. I was relieved at the finish. Like Luis, I wanted to exclaim “Come on, Diana! High five me!”

The Recipe: Mary Berry’s Cherry Cake

Tools

Food Scale

23 cm Ring Mold (9.75” Savarin Mold)

Cake Ingredients

200 g of Glace Cherries (Plus 5 for decorating)

225 g of Self-Rising Flour

175 g of Softened Butter

175 g of Caster Sugar

50 g of Ground Almonds

Zest of a Lemon

3 whole large eggs

Icing Ingredients

175 g of icing sugar

Juice of 1 Lemon, strained

Flaked/Sliced Almonds

1. Prep your oven and pan. Pre-heat your oven to 160 C fan (320 F fan, 345 degrees F in a conventional oven) and grease your tin with butter.
2. Prepare the Cherries. Quarter, rinse, and dry the cherries with a kitchen towel. Borrow a tablespoon of flour to coat the cherries.
3. All-In-One Method. Add softened butter, caster sugar, ground almonds, lemon zest, 3 large whole eggs. Combine ingredients until well combined into a stiff mixture.
4. Cherry time! Fold in cherries.
5. Put in tin. Scoop in mixture and level.
6. Bake! For about 35 (46 in conventional oven) minutes until it is well risen and a pale golden brown.
7. Cool, flip out, and cool. Let the cake cool in the tin for 10 minutes until the cake is shrinking from the sides, turn out the cake, and then let it cool completely.
8. Make icing. Slowly whisk juice into the icing sugar a little at a time until it is still thick but will drip down the side of the cake.
9. Toast almonds. On the stove in a dry pan on medium heat, stirring constantly until they are slightly brown and fragrant.
10. Decorate! Once the cake is entirely cooled, cut the remaining cherries into 8ths. Ice the cake thickly, encouraging it to drizzle down the side. Sprinkle on toasted almonds and cherry eighths.