Bake off with The Bake Off - Pies and Tarts!

So I've caught up with myself at last - just in time for another episode tomorrow! 
Last week was Pies and Tarts week for The Bake Off, Gavin decided that this week's challenge was going to be the technical challenge that the contestants took part in - the Mini Pear Pies.

Week 5 - Pies and Tarts!

Mini Pear Pies

Ingredients
For the Puff Pastry:
200g Plain Flour
100g block of Butter
100g block of Lard
1 egg (beaten)
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
For the Pears:
6 Large Pears
300g Caster Sugar
500ml White Wine
2 Cinnamon Sticks
Zest of 1 orange

There is actually quite a lot of work involved in these mini pear pies, but once you break each section down, it's quite simple.

Grate the butter and lard and add to the flour, using a knife to bring the mixture together.

Add 130ml cold water to bring the mixture together and create a dough

On a floured work surface, roll into a rectangle, fold the top 3rd down and the bottom third up, turn over and spin 90 degrees, and repeat. Place in fridge, covered, for 20 minutes, repeat process twice.

In the meantime, crack on with the syrup. In a saucepan, add together the caster sugar, wine, cinnamon, 400ml water, and orange zest. Bring to the boil and leave for 3 minutes.

Add the pears to the syrup mix and bring back to the boil, then simmer for 15 minutes. 

Remove the pears from the saucepan (leaving the syrup in there), and place on a cooling rack. with a sharp knife, remove the cores.

Bring the syrup back to the boil and let it boil for another 15 minutes, then remove from heat and allow to cool.

Once pears and syrup are cool, roll out the pastry and cut into thin strips

Brush the pears with syrup and wind the pastry strips around the pears, starting from the bottom up. This part is infuriating, the amount of times that the pastry would unravel itself from the bottom as I was winding up near the top - argh - I got there in the end though

With the left over pastry, cut some leaf shapes and stick them to the tops of the pears

With the beaten egg, brush the pears lightly and sprinkle the granulated sugar. Pop them in the oven at 180°C for 25 minutes and you have delicious mini pear pies

Then, whilst enjoying your mini pear pies, finish off bottle of wine that you only used 500ml of - win!

Pleased to say that I got 5 out of 5 for this one - Oh yeah!

Bake off with The Bake Off - Dessert Week!

Okay, so it's been over a week since I've posted, I've been away, so I have a little catching up to do! My challenge from the week before last was from Dessert Week. Gavin selected the self saucing desserts for me to try out. Here's how it went:

Week 4 - Desserts!

Self Saucing Double Chocolate Dessert

Ingredients:
For the sponge
190g Self Raising Flour
30g Cocoa
100g Caster Sugar
90g Butter (melted)
175ml Milk
2 eggs (lightly beaten)
200g Milk chocolate chunks
For the sauce
350 ml Milk
185g White Chocolate
240ml Water

Preheat the oven to 180°c and grease the individual dishes. Then sift the flour and cocoa together and add the sugar. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. Combine melted butter, milk and eggs and pour slowly into the well, stirring whilst pouring.

The ingredients need to be stirred with a wooden spoon until smooth, but do not over beat, I would recommend mixing this by hand.
Pour mixture into the prepared dishes.

Chop up the milk chocolate into chunks and add to the mixture.

Now for the sauce, in a pan add the milk, white chocolate and water. warm over a low heat, until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth

Whilst the sauce is cooling slightly, I melted some extra chocolate over some cling film and popped it in the fridge, just to make it look pretty.
Once the sauce is cooled slightly, pour gently on top of the mixtures. You might make less of a mess than I ended up making.

Pop into the oven for roughly 25 minutes and it's ready.

I was a little nervous about mine and I'm fairly sure I left it in the oven for longer than 25 minutes, thinking it was not ready yet and the sauce kind of baked with the sponge, so the self saucing was not actually very saucy. Overall it was chocolatey, gooey and really delicious, but it was not self saucing.

Just 2 out of 5 for this one. Stupid sauce.