That Time I Decided to Host My Own Great British Baking Show
A few weeks ago I found myself watching the Great British Baking Show on a train ride back from Connecticut. It’s one of the shows that you can download ahead of time and then watch later. As I watched the contestants, Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood, and the fabulous hostesses talk about breads, biscuits, puddings, and more I thought to myself, I wish I could bake like this.
And just like every other project where I’ve needed a kick in the pants I realized the solution was simple: host a party for it and make it happen.
If you’ve never watched the show, here’s the premise. They set up a huge tent in the backyard of this epic British mansion filled with ovens and all sorts of kitchen gadgets for 12 (or 13) contestants each season. 1 (or 2) contestants are voted off each episode until we are left with a winner. Each episode the contestants compete in three challenges:
Signature Bake: Contestants bake a recipe they’ve tested before in a specific category and the judges travel from table to table reviewing their final creations.
Technical Challenge: Contestants are given a super vague recipe based on one of Mary or Paul’s creations. They need to use their baking knowledge to complete the challenge and create something similar to what Mary and Paul are expecting. These creations are judged against each other and ranked from 1 to however many contestants are left that week.
The Showstopper: Contestants bake something over the top, usually involves multiple tiers, definitely visually impressive, and decor galore. Each baker brings their showstopper up to the judges for review.
Now, we weren’t going to be able to do all that. And I definitely don’t have 12 ovens to offer to people, but I figured there must be some way to make it work.
I started mapping out my plan . Five weeks seemed reasonable. You could do a different theme every week, the contestants could bring their creations, and the judges could judge based on categories. The four judging categories I decided on were:
Level of difficulty
Presentation
Originality, and
Taste
I went to my friend Stephen, to see if he would be interested in joining. If I could at least get one other person interested no matter what it would be fun. He said yes, and we put 5 days on the calendar that we knew worked for both of us. This meant that even if nobody else showed up, he and I would still be able to try something new and sit down to enjoy our creations. We chose Sundays from 4:30pm to 6:30pm. This gave you the whole weekend to come up with your creation – and if you were traveling there was a chance you might make it back in time.
I told friends they could come as bakers or judges. They could come to all the weeks or just one of the weeks. It was their call. Each week we would announce a star baker and record it all on the large black board in my living room.
For the weekly categories I decided on:
Cake
Pie
Biscuit
Bread
Baker’s Choice
As I was telling a co-worker about this competition, he was very nervous that the judges weren’t going to take their jobs seriously enough. (Apparently he had once been a part of a competition where they let a cobbler pass as a pie.) I told him with a bunch of engineering friends I definitely didn’t think they were going to slack. It’s definitely turned out to be true.
Now I’m going to take you through the whole competition: all five weeks, followed by tips and tricks for hosting your own Great British Baking Show Party. But before we begin, let’s talk about one of the trickiest things, the judging.
How to Judge a Baking Competition
I told everybody I know that they could come as a baker or come as a judge. Oddly enough, we ended up with roughly an even amount of bakers and judges almost every week.
I actually didn’t have the details of judging decided before going into the first week. I wasn’t sure what was going to work best, what people were going to be into, or how excited people were going to be. We ended up deciding that the baker’s would not be involved in the judging (unless there weren’t enough judges).
Before we began the bakers would give an overview of their dish including where they found the recipe, what the steps were, what didn’t go as planned, what the hardest part was, and more. I learned pretty early on that as a baker you shouldn’t reveal too many things that went wrong. The less you could reveal about that, the less of a chance there was they would notice something wasn’t quite right. (And hey, nobody else was airing their dirty laundry, so why should I?)
We put a piece of everybody’s creations on a single plate for each person each week. So, for example, my plate had 4 pieces of cake on it week 1. Then we would all eat the baked goods, talk about them, and then the baker’s were sent to the kitchen to huddle until the judges had decided their fates.
The judges then completed a scorecard with the 4 categories on it. Each judge voted on level of difficulty, presentation, originality, and taste (unless someone was allergic to something) using a 1-5 rating system, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. These scores were then added together and the person with the most points was Star Baker.
Oddly enough, with this scoring system it means that the person who wins might not have had the best tasting baked good. I think that turned out to be okay though. It helps people put a little more effort into the overall thought process for the competition because you know you’re being judged from all angles.
Actually, this is probably the time in this post that I should thank LeAnne from Tinsel & Tine blog. She became the unofficial emcee for this event. She showed up every week, explained the judging system to all the new folks, and facilitated the judging conversations most weeks. You can read more about this event from her perspective here.
(Also. If you’ve ever actually watched the Great British Baking Show you know how important a good show host is, so I was overall super grateful to have LeAnne there. Thanks, LeAnne!)
Week 1: Cake
The Rules
Each baker must bake a cake that had sugar work.
My Experience
I had no idea what cake I was going to bake, I just knew I wanted to try something with that “naked cake” look that I kept seeing all over Pinterest. So when I went home to Connecticut for the weekend I asked my dad. He had won a competition recently using a Hummingbird Cake and suggested I do the same. I figured it was worth a try. There are so many recipes on the internet, but the Hummingbird Cake I decided to go with was by Sally from Sally’s Baking Addiction. She did a great job laying out some of the discrepancies I had seen in other recipes and had her own fabulous cream cheese frosting recipe too.
I realized pretty quickly that I was going to be spending a decent amount of money on this competition. Throughout these five weeks I earned myself a $5 reward at Fante’s Kitchen Shop, a fabulous, fabulous kitchenware store in Philadelphia. Always happy to support local though, so that’s cool. (In case you were wondering, it takes spending $100 to get a $5 reward, which I think makes them unofficial sponsors of this blog post.)
This was the week I bought 3 9-inch pans and clear vanilla. (After the fact I realized I already owned 1 9-inch pan, but I just couldn’t find it before starting.)
Making the cake went pretty well. Frosting it was pretty easy. I used this how to make a naked cake tutorial by Kristi Murphy to make sure I got it right.
Playing with the sugar to make the sugar work was actually really fun. And hard to mess up. Well, with one exception. Don’t use wax paper to put your decorations on because it will stick, use parchment paper. If you’re ever bored one day, I recommend giving it a try.
This YouTube video called Caramel Decoration – How to Make Sugar Cage, Carmelized Nuts and Pulled Sugar was absolutely fantastic for a basic sugar work tutorial. So was this video called How to Make Spun Sugar Decorations Video by The Amateur Chef.
The Bakers
There were four bakers this week: me, Stephen, Lana, and Jessica.
Stephen baked a cornbread cake with honey butter frosting.
Baker’s Notes: The icing is deceptively firm when cool. I’d recommend adding more sugar than is stated to keep it stiffer at room/slightly warm temperatures. No one likes a melting cake.
Jessica baked a peanut butter cake with chocolate ganache and whipped cream frosting.
Baker’s Notes: For the cake I used straight up peanut butter instead of the peanut butter icing. Plus I added a little Baileys to everything… and a tiny bit of my caramel macchiato to the whipped cream frosting.
Lana baked a vegan, almond butter cake with cream cheese icing.
The Judging & Winner
Since this was week one it was all kind of a guessing game. The bakers left the room and the judges deliberated. When the bakers arrived back Tara announced Jessica as Star Baker for the week.
That said, everyone had a different favorite cake. All the cakes were pretty delicious and nobody scored below a 3 in any category. My cake was the favorite of two people, but oddly enough, I found out that I didn’t like my own cake at all – there was far too much stuff in it, which was the same comment one of the judges made for why she didn’t like it.
Week 2: Pie
The Rules
Originally I was going to make the rules for this week that you needed to bake two pies: a sweet and a savory, but I ended up deciding that was too ambitious. The rule became that you needed to make a pie that had a homemade crust.
My Experience
Pie week. I was super excited and super nervous about pie week. For somebody who loves to back my grand total of number of pies I had made was a big ol’ goose egg – zero. What I should have done was watch a lot of YouTube videos and read a lot of cookbooks on pie, but I didn’t.
If you’ve ever met me you know the way I learn things is trial and error. For this, I assure you, there was both trial and error. I decided on making two pies because it seems like we were going to be a little heavy on judges this week and I was worried about having enough food to feed them all: a tomato pie and a mushroom gorgonzola pie.
The tomato pie was inspired by my friend’s mom who makes delicious pies. Of course, I didn’t decide this with enough time to actually find the recipe, so I went with the next best option, Joy the Baker’s summer tomato pie. It was simple and delicious and savory.
The mushroom gorgonzola pie was inspired by my friend Johanna. She made a very similar one on her Pi Day celebration in 2015 (3.14.15). Of course, when I texted her for the recipe, the message I got back was: “Made up… pound of baby Bell mushrooms and a chopped red onion cooked down in butter and Worcestershire sauce (Salt pepper onion powder) mix with blue cheese or gorgonzola crumbles.” So there’s that. I ended up using that description in combination with this recipe by Always with Butter and developed my own recipe. It turned out to be less scary than I thought it would be.
If you haven’t noticed, I like savory pie a lot better than sweet pie. Maybe a chocolate pie would be okay, but when it comes to those fruit pies, I’d rather do without them. Don’t worry, there were plenty of those there too though.
What I learned about pie making really fast is that while the crust dough is pretty easy to make (just follow the steps), you need to be patient when you’re actually making the pie crust. Unlike cake when you put it in the oven which rises and looks all poofy and nice, a pie crust looks exactly the same when it comes out of the oven as it did when it went in – finger prints, dents, and all. Something to work on for next time. I also probably should have done far more research on how to add the top layer of crust onto a pie in a pretty way.
What did I buy for this week? A tart pan for the tomato pie. That said, I still don’t own an actual pie dish, maybe that’s what I should use my $5 reward on. (The second pie I made was in a very shallow glass dish, it probably would have been better in a deeper dish.)
This week also made me wish I had a silicon mat to put on my kitchen table so that when I was rolling things out it didn’t get stuck in the cracks between the table insert and the sides of the table. Maybe that’s what I’ll spend my $5 reward on.
The Bakers
There were three baker this week: me, Stephen, and Melissa.
Melissa baked a blueberry pie with an incredible lattice structure.
Stephen baked a lemon hazelnut tart from Nothing in the House, a pie blog.
Baker’s Notes: This pie takes a while to make with the pie crust that needs to chill for hours and the roasting/cutting of individual hazelnuts. Last time I made it I did the crust and roasting/chopping the night before. Then made the filling and assembled/baked it the next day for the event. I’d say use the brown rice syrup over corn syrup but that’s because I’ve never used corn syrup and I liked the flavor so much I wouldn’t want to risk it.
Ingredients Notes:
1 disk dough for Basic Crust
All-purpose flour, for dusting
6 tablespoons butter, melted
2 large eggs
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup (or brown rice syrup)
1/4 cup of the lemon syrup
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon flour
2 1/4 cups chopped toasted hazelnuts
Stephen also sent over some photos from his baking process (and made a really cool time lapse photo).
The Judging & Winner
There were three judges this week. It was interesting because one person couldn’t eat the hazelnut pie because she was allergic to nuts. We decided that we would average the other two judge’s scores in the taste category only, because she would still be able to judge based on the other three categories without tasting the pie: level of difficulty, presentation, and originality.
The Star Baker of the week was Stephen. With the level of effort that went into chopping each hazelnut in half and the candied lemons on top, he created an absolutely dazzling dessert. Melissa’s fabulous lattice structure was close behind. And I learned that while my pies were delicious, I just didn’t put enough effort into the presentation. That said, they did make a great lunch that week. And the savory pies were a great balance to the sweet ones.
Week 3: Biscuits
The Rules
The rule for biscuit week was that you needed to show up with at least 12 biscuits. That’s it. I didn’t say if they needed to be more like a British cookie or an American scone-like interpretation; I didn’t say if they needed to be sweet or savory; I didn’t say if they should be drop biscuits or cut out with a cutter; but the entries that we got turned out to be pretty fabulous.
My Experience
I went with a buttery layered buttermilk biscuit recipe from Joy the Baker. (Clearly I have a lot of trust in Joy. It’s never misplaced.) I knew I wasn’t going to have much time this weekend as we were just coming back from a beer festival at the Ommegang Brewery in upstate New York. I figured 3 hours would be enough to figure it out though. And, in fairness, for only having 3 hours, I didn’t do too badly.
I made the dough, I rolled out the dough, I folded all the layers into it, I cut out my first round of biscuits, and then I lumped the excess dough back into a ball, rolled it out, cut my second round of biscuits, and then repeated that for the third round. Now, if you’ve ever made biscuits before, you may have caught onto the fact that for the second and third round of biscuits I did not fold the layers back into it. Rookie mistake. My first 8 biscuits came out awesome. They rose perfectly. They were fluffy. They were fabulous. The remaining biscuits weren’t so great.
This was the week I put my foot in my mouth during the baker’s explanations of what they made. I had arranged them on the plate in such a way that the judges might not have noticed (remember, they’re not the bakers, and didn’t have quite as much knowledge about biscuits). This resulted in my biscuits getting a not quite as high presentation score because all 12 weren’t the same.
That said. Lesson learned. Always fold the layers into the biscuits. And try never ever, ever to reroll them. And what I learned later from Julie was that you should avoid actually using a rolling pin if at all humanly possible.
The Bakers
There were four bakers this week: me, Julie, Jessica, and Matt.
Julie also baked buttermilk biscuits.
That said, she did try to perfect a recipe for tea biscuits she had eaten at her mother in law’s house. (Note: her mother-in-law actually bought the biscuits from a bakery, so she actually couldn’t get the recipe, so she was trying to McGyver it from scratch.) She was so unhappy with how her first 3 batches of biscuits turned out that right before the competition she went to her tried-and-true buttermilk biscuits and brought those with her. This ended up helping out her level of effort score in the long run.
Fun fact: Jessica and Matt are engaged to be married. On top of that there was definitely some smack on the Facebook that week where Matt claimed they were coming to win. (Spoiler alert: Matt did win.) But, it was fun to have a couple competing in the competition.
Jessica made cinnamon buttermilk biscuits and brought strawberries and homemade whipped cream. She got extra points for presentation and originality because of this. They kind of tasted like a snickerdoodle. Also, what’s cool is that the recipe she used didn’t call for cinnamon, she just added it in. I feel like it’s rare to find somebody who loves to bake that is able to add the spontaneity that comes with cooking to recipes. I guess that probably comes with practice.
Matt made cheese and scallion biscuits with a kielbasa gravy. They definitely just sound like they should have won, right? The kielbasa gravy was excellent and got extra points for presentation, originality, and level of effort, but even the biscuit itself (which is all the taste category was judged on) was very good.
The Judging & Winner
As I’ve said, Matt won out, well deserved. Now that household has two Star Bakers in it. They must eat like kings and queens every night.
I came in absolute last. My last minute effort and rush around was not looked upon favorably in the eyes of the judges. It gave me just the kick in the pants I needed for the next week.
Week 4: Bread
The Rules
Originally, I said everybody needed two loaves of bread, but after further consideration I decided that they only needed one loaf of bread to enter the competition. This was more than enough bread for everybody to eat and try. The only rule was that the loaf that you brought must be prepared with yeast. There weren’t even any rules about bread makers. (That I might actually change for next time.)
My Experience
After my complete downfall in week 3 I couldn’t let it happen again for week 4. And on my own turf! The only problem with this was that I was planning on flying home from Chicago the morning of the competition (there was a Backstreet Boys concert ticket with my name on it that I just couldn’t leave on the table) and I was only going to have a few hours to prepare for the competition again.
I decided I was going to need to practice this time. I found a recipe ahead of time that would fit within the time constraints called No Knead Beer Bread from Chef John. During my super crazy week I somehow find time to make it between 9:00pm and midnight on Wednesday night (while working). It came out pretty good and was delicious toasted with jam.
That said. I realized that I was going to Chicago, and who lives in Chicago? An old friend from church choir who loves to make bread. I realized that getting a one-on-one lesson from a pro might be the way to go. So Friday morning around 9:00am I showed up at their house and they said, what do you want to do today? And I said, bake bread? Much to my excitement, they appeased me. (Although I was informed that Matt doesn’t actually need all that much motivation in life to make bread.) We made French Bread using a recipe from Steamy Kitchen and a milk bread out of the Joy of Cooking (couldn’t find the recipe online, sorry y’all).
He showed me how to knead the dough, explained to me what the details of the instructions really meant, and let me know what to look for in each step of the process. I learned that kneading dough was definitely an activity that was going to take more practice for me, and the fact that my hands are so much bigger than Matt’s (I really do have quite large hands) made it difficult for me to replicate what he was doing. I kept feeling like I was pulling the bread apart instead of squishing it together.
I went to the Backstreet Boys concert. Flew home from Chicago. And entirely changed my game plan to make the milk bread that I had made in Chicago with Matt instead of the no knead beer bread.
It didn’t go quite the same as it did in Chicago (it never does, right?). My apartment was much more humid so I couldn’t decide if I had added enough flour or not to do the dough. It appeared to still be really sticky, so I kept adding flour. In the end, I decided that I had added too much, which made the overall dough dense. I even went to the point of trying to video tape myself kneading the dough to ask Matt what he thought, but he wasn’t able to watch it when I sent it.
(That said, I definitely didn’t tell the judges this this week, lesson learned.)
Anyway. It turned out pretty good! What is milk bread you might be asking yourself? It’s kind of like white bread, but a little sweeter. Seems like a great loaf to have on your counter all week for sandwiches, toast, and just general eating.
Pro Tip from Matt & Shannon (the folks in Chicago): You can leave the bread out on the counter for a few days until it gets hard, and then you can turn it into breadcrumbs or croutons. Cycles of food make me so happy.
The Bakers
There were four bakers this week: me, Ben, Elizabeth, and Carolyn.
Ben recreated his favorite loaf of bread, the rosemary olive oil bread from Wegmans. He consulted multiple recipes, got his mom’s bread maker, and made it happen. It turned out a little too dense, but all the right flavors were there.
Elizabeth made her tried and true white bread. It was absolutely delicious and looked exactly like something you would see at the store. The key ingredient? Gluten. Did you know you can buy gluten to add to things? I certainly didn’t. Fascinating. She also used a bread maker. This would definitely be a good bread to make and keep for use all week as well – a simple to do on your list on Sunday could provide food for the whole week.
Carolyn from Energetic Foodie made a cheddar cheese batter bread using a recipe from Taste of Home. Although she’s a food blogger, she actually prefers cooking over baking and doesn’t eat much gluten her day-to-day life, so she was actually on the same level playing field as the rest of us.
We also put out some cheeses and LeAnne brought a delicious cheese horseradish spread.
The Judging & Winner
We actually didn’t have enough judges this week.
Carolyn won Star Baker this week. Her bread was absolutely delicious, especially with the garlic butter. She gave the extra bread away since she couldn’t eat the gluten, and we actually used it at our grilled cheese dinner party to mop up the rest of our tomato soup.
I didn’t come in last, so that was cool. I also felt like I had moderately redeemed myself from the prior week.
Week 5: Baker’s Choice
The Rules
There were no rules this week except that whatever you brought needed to be enough to feed 12 people. I didn’t have a good understanding of how the judges were going to decide who the Star Baker was, but I decided they were smart people and they would figure it out.
My Experience
I knew exactly what I was going to bake for this one. I had been looking for an excuse to make the Millionaire’s Shortbread recipe from Baked, my favorite Bakery in New York City. It’s been described as the rich man’s twix bar with layers of shortbread, caramel, and chocolate.
I baked these the day before the competition this time, which was a good call since a few things took longer than I expected. For example, did you know that you can make caramel by putting sweetened condensed milk on a double boiler and letting it sit there? The recipe said for 1-1.5 hours, but I had to let mine sit for 4 hours until it became caramelized. (There’s a small chance that my ad-hoc double boiler situation was the cause of that. Also the fact that 85% of my kitchen was being used to make peach jam at this point, more on that to come in a later blog post.)
I followed the instructions to a tee. A few things I might change for next time: potentially find a way to make the shortbread a little less sweet and possibly add sea salt to the top of the bars. Either way, I was happy with my first attempt. I’m not sure the shortbread was cooked all the way through, which may have been the reason the bottom layer seemed too rich (because of the texture). Something to work on for next time.
The Bakers
There were 4 bakers in the final week: me, Stephen, Julie, and Ben. If you’re keeping tabs at this point, Stephen is the only one who would be able to win the overall title at this point, if anybody else won it would be a 5-way tie.
Stephen baked banana, vanilla, honey cream tarts based on a recipe for Banana, Coconut, and Honey-Cream Tarts from Spoon Fork Bacon.
Baker’s Notes: I’m not a big coconut fan so I swapped out the coconut flakes for sliced almonds. The bit of crunch was a nice contrast to the creamy filling. As for the Bruleed bananas, I didn’t have a torch so I tried a few things to get the job done. The first two techniques failed, 1. Press brown sugar into bananas and then flip onto a hot non stick pan. This started to work but there wasn’t enough sugar so it struggled to coat the surface. 2. Melting the brown sugar and pouring it on the bananas… NOPE, do not bother, this absolutely did not work. So when all else failed, 3. I poured a banana shaped pile of brown sugar in the pan and heated it till it was melted and bubbling to which I then pressed the banana on top. There was enough sugar and it stuck to the banana, Voila! Be careful when flipping, use a wide spatula.
Ingredient Notes: I only made a half recipe so I made 4 mini rectangular tarts. 1 pound pie dough, rolled 1/8” inch thick.
4 baby bananas, halved lengthwise (I used full sized bananas)
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons turbinado sugar (I did not have turbinado sugar so I used brown sugar)
toasted coconut flakes (I used sliced Almonds)
honey for drizzling (I forgot the honey topping)
And a better photo courtesy of Stephen:
Julie finally brought her currant and anise-flavored tea biscuits to the table. (Yes, that same recipe she was trying to perfect for biscuit week.) While she didn’t get it quite to where she wants it, she was happy enough to bring them to the competition, and they were pretty delicious. Especially with butter. And peach jam.
Ben baked a peach pie with the peaches he and Stephen had picked the day before using a recipe from the New York times for the perfect peach pie.
Baker’s Notes: Before cooking the peaches I simmered half in a saucepan with a little sugar, then took the juice off and simmered the juice down to a thick syrup consistency, added it back to the slightly cooked down piece slices, and poured that into the pie (with the other half of non-cooked-down peaches) before baking the pie.
The Judging & Winner
This week definitely took the longest for the judges to deliberate – probably because all of the entries were so different from each other. (In retrospect, possibly not the greatest idea for the judges, but it was a lot of fun for the baker’s.) We also had a bunch of judges who judged for the first time on this series, which may have taken longer.
At the end of the day, Stephen’s banana, honey, vanilla cream tarts won. Nobody had really ever had anything like them before – and the extra effort on those bananas (described above) was really something else.
The Overall Winner
If you’ve been keeping track, you know that this means that Stephen won the Great British Baking Show Party Series. And he absolutely deserved it. His level of preparation, attention to detail, and presentation was like no other.
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Phew. That’s quite the post. I was going to put all of my lessons learned and the how to host your own party guide in here as well, but I think 5100 words might be enough for this go around. Stay tuned!
