Great British Bake Off Bake Along – Jaffa Cakes

One of my favourite shows is back on TV !

The Great British Bake Off returned last week where the 12 amateur bakers were challenged to create a drizzle cake where we saw a variety of flavours from the traditional orange or lemon to more unusual flavours using apple, vanilla & blackberry, gin & tonic, rhubarb & lime and spices!

For the technical challenge; the bakers had to create 12 jaffa cakes. There was a lot of confusion about which way up the cakes should go before they added the layer of orange jelly & chocolate topping! (I must admit, I shouted at the telly a couple of times to suggest the right way up!)

For the show stopper round; they had to produce a Genoise sponge with a mirror glaze so shiny that the judges would be able to admire themselves in it! This round proved very challenging with the bakers having trouble with getting their sponges right then there was a buttercream epidemic where it was either splitting or going completely wrong! There were cakes going in the bin, being thrown at the walls of the tent and some tears!

As always, I came away from the show feeling inspired and really wanted to do a weekly GBBO bake along – so I decided to have a go at making Mary Berry’s jaffa cakes from her recipe here. I wanted to try these as I’ve never incorporated a jelly layer into anything before and I love to try out new ways of adding flavour to my bakes.

First off, I made the orange jelly and added some zested orange peel which looks lovely set into the jelly. I refrigerated this for a little longer than Mary’s recipe suggests just to make sure it was properly set enough for me to cut out the circles.

While that was chilling in the fridge, I made the sponge cakes. These require a very small amount of ingredients which I thought was strange at first; but this is a Mary Berry recipe we’re talking about here – how could it possibly be wrong!?

So I whisked the eggs and sugar together for a good 5 minutes until it was light and fluffy

Then sifted the flour into a bowl…

…and gently folded the flour into the egg and sugar mixture

You want to be really careful with the folding so you don’t knock the air out of the mixture and it did take me a while to get the flour completely incorporated!

Next, I greased my shallow muffin tray with non-stick cooking spray and added dessert spoonfuls of the mix to each indent

I baked them at 160ºC for 7 minutes until lighly golden

Using a metal spatula, I carefully removed the cakes and transferred to a wire rack to cool completely

Whilst they were cooling, I removed the jelly from the fridge. I decided not to turn this out as instructed for fear of the jelly completely falling apart so I just used a circular cookie cutter and a metal spatula to remove them from the lined tray I chilled them on. This step was a little tricky as the jelly is so thin and I think I may have added a little too much water when melting the jelly cubes earlier on as some of them fell apart!

Luckily, there was a lot of jelly and I managed to get the best circles on top of the cakes! I popped these back into the fridge to make sure the jelly stayed set before adding the melted chocolate!

After melting the chocolate, I allowed it to cool so I could easily spoon and spread it on top of the jelly & cakes without causing the jelly to melt and wanted to get that signature raised bit in the middle of each cake!

I used a fork to create the little ridges in the chocolate and left the cakes to cool until the chocolate was set.

In all, these took me a good 2 hours to make from start to finish and were fun yet challenging to make but I’ve learnt some new techniques! Plus they taste delicious! (though not dunked in a cup of tea like Paul Hollywood did! I agree with Mary Berry on not dunking a jaffa!)

I think they turned out pretty well!

Bring on the next episode of Great British Bake Off and keep an eye out for my next GBBO bake along creation!

If you want to have a go at making these, go check out Mary Berry’s recipe.

Happy baking! x x