The Best Fluffy Pancakes recipe you will fall in love with. Full of tips and tricks to help you make the best pancakes.
Ahhh! The Great Australian Bake Off final … or finale
The final three in Series 6 are Doctor-to-be Nurman (the Mad Hatter), Copywriter Ella and teacher Aaron (yes sir!). Each of them comes to the flowery tent with 2 “Star baker” badges. They are all clearly thrilled to be in this “unbelievable” final. I just hope none of them suffers from hayfever. The tent is dripping with flowers. It’s stunning.
Signature Bake – 18 fondant fancies. 3 different flavours, 6 of each (2.5 hours)
…and your tips, if you need them, are … make sure the sponge is cold and the fondant is pourable.
Nurman goes for a herbal remedy featuring basil, rosemary and sage. Well this is already looking interesting. Fans of Le Meilleur Patissier (LMP) will be very familiar with the strawberry & basil combo, but … rosemary & orange? apple & sage? Let me just check these in the flavour thesaurus… rosemary (syrup) & orange gets a mention for fertile brides but apple & sage is best for a stuffing.
Aaron is going for a tea theme. Chamomile & salted honey, Hibiscus & lemon, Earl grey & vanilla. Hmm, not sure about those. Tea is best put in a cup not a cupcake!
Meanwhile Ella is being naughty with a Dirty Chai, Long Black and Hazelnut Latte. Hazelnut praline is a winner every time but whoever thought of mixing tea and coffee in the same drink? Yuck!
In the blink of an eye The Signature is half way through. Nurman informs us that microwave is not a dirty word. It may not be but the correct pronunciation is “me-cro-wah-veh”? Aaron measures up. Ella hacks away. Nurmans sponges look good. He says the apple cake is still warm and he spreads his fondant… It doesn’t pour. What were those tips again?
So we move to the judging and the verdicts for Nurman are surprisingly good. S&B is alive. A&S is delightful combination. Ambitious herbs but subtle.
Ella’s fancies are on a slant but beautifully covered and there’s some perfectly piped lettering too. HL – fabulous! and the Long Black is singing, but marzipan is dominant in the Chai.
Aaron’s are very messy and the judges challenge him with “Erm are you happy with this?” They struggle for positives in the EG&V. You see this is what happens when you put tea in cakes!
The bakers share big hugs and I have to say the friendship looks real. This is one thing I particularly like about GABO.
Technical – Chocolate pear and hazelnut torte
Maggie has set the technical challenge and the advice is – “Good as gold, thin on top, think outside the shed” which pretty much sums me up.
Recipe (Foxtel)
Top marks for Aaron’s baking knowledge. The difference between a cake and a torte is the presence (or lack) of flour. By the time they need lemon myrtle Ella has forgotten Maggie’s advice but she’s curious enough to follow the others into the garden. They wander around nibbling potentially toxic foliage. This looks very staged and I sense producer intervention but I guess they need a break from egg whites to keep it interesting. Instead they could try mixing blueberries and Nightlock and see if anyone can tell the difference.
Maggie shows off her torte to Matt. Honestly this looks so delicious. It’s another one to add the to list. Her insight is that the pears need to be sliced very thinly to help the torte to cook through. (Shaking) Nurman has failed to do this. He has his own insights “There’s no such thing as too much gold … unless someone is going to rob you.” Aaron is last to the oven in this challenge.
When it comes to the judging – Aaron’s torte, despite the cracks, looks great and it’s cooked right. Ella looks tearful. Her torte is a bit burnt on the outside but runny in the middle. Despite the thick pears Nurman’s torte is well cooked and at last he is the fertile bride!
In the show-stopper challenge Maggie conducts an imaginary orchestra as she emplores the finalists to use their strengths and Matt tells them to go big.
Show-stopper “Your dream home” should tell your story (5 hours)
Ella’s 3-tier Gateau Chateau is something straight out of Disney. It has 3 layers with Strawberries&Cream and twice Raspberry&Lemon. This looks like a smart choice. There’s also a blue caramel fountain. And …Good lord she’s got big lemons!
In a late bid for the journalistic scoop of the century Nurman asks “Ella, what are you up to?” but she’s seen his profiterol balls and recognises the danger. She instantly fires back “Just trying to get my cake batter done. What about you?”… “Erm, I’m making my …cake”. This is going to be a close contest!
Nurman is overly emotional and if he wasnt making his cake right now he’d be fanning mascara. His dream home is so unconventional. It’s a builder’s portacabin deposited on a tiny piece of waste ground and protected by the great wall of China. The cabin, or glass house as he prefers to call it, is passionfruit & orange, the wall is red velvet (beetroot) and the topiary is Yuzu profiteroles. Good flavour choices.
Aaron’s dream home is a tree-house. This is also a psychotherapists dream. He’s chosen Orange and Cardamom for the house, enclosed in gingerbread and decorated with dulce de leche (don’t ask!). The tree is brown butter and cinamon decorated with churros.
“Familiar faces” march in to cause maximum disruption. Who are all these people?
Nurman makes craquelin by hand before moving on to make grass out of grass. Aaron does some pretty piping with ganache and dulce de leche which he then hides under a layer of sponge. Ella smooths the icing on one of her cakes and then declares to the world that she is goldening her fountain. If that wasn’t rude enough she then adorns a boob with a gold nipple. The crowd goes wild!
The music gets louder and the countdown begins. I love the details on these dream homes. The churros, which looked a bit of a disaster earlier, blends in perfectly at the root of the tree and icicles clinging to the roof give Aaron’s tree house a good effect. The blue caramel in Ella’s fountain looks like water, there’s a bird on top and the boob has transformed into a pumpkin carriage.
In the final judgement the judges praise Aaron’s flavours and the sponges are good. For me it’s a shame he hid the cake under gingerbread. Nurman’s sponge looks so neat but isn’t it a bit dry? The yuzu buttercream is clearly a big success. Maggie and Matt also love the red velvet cake. Ella’s fantasy castle looks spectacular. Matt cuts through the carriage and it looks perfect. Then he cuts through all three layers of the castle and that’s perfect too. Again the flavours receive high praise.
And so to the conclusion. The winner of The Great Australian Bake Off 2022 is …
If you haven’t seen GABO yet then check it out !
You can watch on More4 and possibly on Foxtel if you can work out their website
Round up
I really enjoyed this series. There’s plenty for serious bakers to get their teeth into and enough entertainment for the masses to ejoy too. It sometimes tries a little too hard to follow the GBBO format and can be a little hammy but there are some noteable differences which make it really fun and enjoyable. And I’m so pleased that Bradford Meade found work after Ugly Betty but rumour is there will be different judges next year.
Spoiler below…
A final is always difficult to judge. The difference between first and last is usually down to personal taste. My preference was between Ella and Nurman. Aaron didn’t quite hit the mark with his bakes. Nurman did well in the Signature and Technical bakes but his show-stopper was not special enough. Ella had a bit of a disaster in the Technical bake but what an amazing show-stopper. Ella fully justified the win. Congratulations champ!
