Great British Bake Off Bake it Better (No.
8) Pastry &
Patisserie
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First published in Great Britain in 2016
by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Love Productions Limited 2016
Photography & Design Copyright © Hodder & Stoughton 2016
The right of Joanna Farrow to be identified as the Author of the Work has
been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
BBC and the BBC logo are trademarks of the British Broadcasting
Corporation and are used under licence.
BBC logo © BBC 1996.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the
prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any
form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without
a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN 9781473615472
Editorial Director: Nicky Ross
Editor: Sarah Hammond
Project Editor: Laura Herring
Series Editor: Linda Collister
Art Director: Alice Moore
Layouts: Alice Moore
Photographer: David Munns, Rita Platts
Food Stylist: Joanna Farrow
Props Stylist: Victoria Allen
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
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Contents
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
WELCOME
BAKE IT BETTER
Baker’s Guide
Ingredients
Equipment
Skills
Help!
BAKE IT BETTER
Recipes
Easy does it
Chocolate Caramel Puffs
Apple and Blackberry Turnovers
Goats’ Cheese and Olive Straws
Strawberry Rose Meringues
Spinach and Ricotta Strudel
Poppy Seed and Orange Whirls
Smoked Salmon, Dill and Caper Vol au Vents
Blueberry and Lemon Financiers
Mini Pissaladières
Palmiers with Gingerbread Spices
Lemon Thyme Madeleines
Salted Pecan Tartlets
Portuguese Custard Tarts
Mini Victoria Sandwich Cakes with Tropical Fruits
Frangipane Barquettes
Black Forest Meringues
Cranberry and Almond Eccles Cakes
English Maids of Honour Tart
Dairy-free Butternut Squash Jalousie
Vanilla Chouquettes
Passion Fruit Éclairs
Apple and Lemon Treacle Tart
Cream Horns with Banana and Lime Chantilly
Needs a little skill
French Apple Tart
French Macarons with Raspberries
Angel Cake with Soft Fruits and Coconut Cream
Chocolate Maple Tarts with Hazelnut Brittle
Cinnamon Arlettes with Blackberry Jelly
Mini Paris-Brest
Cypriot Flaouna
Almond Pithiviers with Apricots
Cheese and Prosciutto Croissants
Danish Pastries
Gateau St Honoré
Savarin with Clementines and Figs
Up for a challenge
Chocolate Mont Blanc Cups
Cardamom and Orange Baklava
Raspberry Millefeuilles
Nectarine and Amaretti Gateau
Chocolate Pistachio Gateau
WHAT PASTRY OR PATISSERIE SHALL I BAKE TODAY?
CONVERSION TABLE
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Welcome bakers!
If your goal is to bake the sort of beautiful creations that wouldn’t look out
of place in a French patisserie window, then you’ll find Bake It Better:
Pastry & Patisserie an invaluable guide to getting you there.
Even if you’ve never made pastry before, you can start with the ‘Easy
does it’ section and master simple but delicious recipes like Blueberry and
Lemon Financiers and Vanilla Chouquettes. Some of the recipes in this
section use bought pastry so you can learn key skills such as rolling out and
shaping before taking on the more complex ‘start from scratch’ recipes that
follow in the section that ‘Needs a little skill’. These are slightly more
complex dishes such as a beautiful French Apple Tart and irresistibly glazed
Danish Pastries. The more you bake, the sooner you’ll be ‘Up for a
challenge’, the final section of recipes that will put your newly acquired
baking skills to the test.
The colour strip on the right-hand side of the page tells you at a glance
the level of difficulty of the recipe (from one spoon for easy to three spoons
for more of a challenge), and gives you a helpful checklist of the skills and
special equipment you will use. Before you begin, have a look at the
Baker’s Guide at the beginning of the book. This will tell you what
equipment you need to get started, introduce you to the most important
ingredients and explain some terms and techniques for the pastries and
skills in more detail.
Pastry and patisserie recipes can be made for any occasion, whether you
simply want to serve your family a lovely treat with afternoon tea, or create
a showstopping end to a special occasion. Perfect this extensive range of
beautiful bakes that will take you well on the way to being a ‘star baker’!
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
SECTION 1: BAKER’S GUIDE
Read this section before you start baking.
The Baker’s Guide contains key information on ingredients (here),
equipment (here) and skills (here) relevant to the recipes in the book.
Refer back to the Baker’s Guide when you’re baking if you want a
refresher on a particular skill. In the recipes the first mention of each skill is
highlighted in bold.
SECTION 2: RECIPES
Colour strips on the right-hand side and 1, 2 or 3 spoons show the level of
difficulty of the recipe. Within the colour strips you’ll find helpful
information to help you decide what to bake: Hands-on time; Hands-off
time; Baking time; Makes/Serves; Special equipment; Method used;
Storage.
Refer back to the Baker’s Guide when a skill is highlighted in bold in the
recipe if you need a reminder.
Try Something Different options are given where the recipe lends itself to
experimenting with other ingredients or decorations.
Easy does it
Needs a little skill
Up for a challenge
BAKE IT BETTER
Baker’s Guide
Ingredients
Equipment
Skills
Help!
Ingredients
Pastry and patisserie recipes vary hugely in the amount of ingredients
required. A simple bake might only require a handful of ingredients but a
showstopping gateau will inevitably require more – and sometimes less
widely available items. Having the right ingredients to hand before you start
baking will start you on the route to success, so do a checklist before you
start. The following list will guide you through the key ingredients used in
this book.
BAKING POWDER, BICARBONATE OF SODA AND CREAM OF
TARTAR
Some cakes require the help of a chemical raising agent to increase their
lightness. The two most common raising agents are bicarbonate of soda and
cream of tartar. Baking powder is a mixture of both and is the most
commonly used in creamed cakes to make them rise. Whisked sponges are
lightened by beating air into the mixture before baking so they don’t require
any additional raising agent. Cream of tartar is also used in some meringue
recipes as it stabilises the egg whites and, as an acid, counteracts the
adverse effects of any traces of grease.
BUTTER
Butter gives pastry and patisserie a good texture and rich, moist flavour.
Most bakers use unsalted butter, which contains less whey than salted
butter, producing a more evenly coloured bake. Slightly salted butter can be
used instead, in which case you won’t need to add any extra salt to the
recipe. Avoid using regular salted butter as this can contain about 2 per cent
salt. You can get away with this amount in pastry but the saltiness can be
overpowering in cakes and delicate fillings. For most pastries, butter is used
chilled, straight from the fridge, but for creamed cakes it’s easier to work
with it when it is at room temperature, so try to remember to remove it from
the fridge in advance. If you forget, it can be softened (very carefully) in the
microwave on medium power for a few seconds. Store butter tightly
wrapped in its original wrapper in the fridge, away from strong flavours. It
also freezes well for up to a month.
Dairy-free spread, a vegetable oil-based alternative to butter, can be used
as a substitute for butter in many recipes, particularly sponges and some
pastries. Make sure the label states that it’s good for baking before you buy.
CHOCOLATE
Good-quality chocolate is widely available in supermarkets and you can
buy chips in larger bags from online suppliers, but you can also use bars of
chocolate chopped into similar-sized pieces.
Dark chocolate is most widely used in this book. Using one with around 70
per cent cocoa solids will give your bakes the best flavour – anything over
75 per cent can be too dry and bitter for general baking. Cocoa powder is a
dark, unsweetened powder made from pure cocoa with nearly all the cocoa
butter removed – it is very bitter and powerfully flavoured, and can be used
to add an excellent, rich chocolate taste to sweet pastry (see Chocolate
Maple Tarts with Hazelnut Brittle, here). Don’t use drinking chocolate
instead of cocoa powder; it has had sugar and dried milk powder added to
it, so it won’t produce the same results.
Store bars of chocolate well wrapped in a cool, dry, dark cupboard, and
away from strong-flavoured ingredients as they can affect the chocolate’s
own flavour. Always make sure that you’ve chopped your chocolate before
you melt it, to ensure that it melts quickly and evenly, whether you’re
making a ganache (see Black Forest Meringues, here) or melting in a bain-
marie (see Chocolate Mont Blanc Cups, here).
CREAM
Make sure to use the type of cream recommended in the recipe – the fat
contents vary a lot and will affect whether a sauce thickens properly, a
custard sets or the cream will whip. For best results, chill cream thoroughly
before whipping (see here).
Single cream contains 18 per cent butterfat and is good for pouring over
pastries to serve and adding to fillings, but it cannot be whipped.
Whipping cream contains at least 35 per cent butterfat and whips well
without being overly rich.
Double cream contains at least 48 per cent butterfat. It also whips well,
producing a richer flavour than whipping cream. Take care when whipping
double cream as it will over-thicken easily and the texture will spoil.
Crème fraîche is French soured cream. It has a creamy but tangy flavour
and cannot be whipped. It’s better used for serving as an accompaniment to
fruit, nut or chocolate tarts and pastries.
Soured cream has only around 18 per cent butterfat and is made by
introducing a bacterial culture to give it a naturally ‘soured’ tang. It is used
in this book in a number of pastries, to give a crisp, flaky texture to a simple
rubbed-in pastry (see Mini Pissaladières, here, and Apple and Lemon
Treacle Tart, here).
EGGS
Eggs are used to create volume and flavour in sponge and whisked cakes
and to enrich pastry. In patisserie the yolks and whites are often used
separately. Yolks are used to enrich custards and pâte sucrée, while the
whites form the basis of meringues.
All the recipes in this book use medium-sized eggs, each weighing about
62–65g. It’s important to use the correct weight of egg so you have the right
amount in relation to the other weighed ingredients in your recipe. Too little
egg and a sponge might not rise properly; too much and a pastry might be
too soft and collapse as it cooks.
Store eggs in the main body of the fridge in the box you bought them in.
This will give you an ‘at-a-glance’ guide to their best-before date. The box
also protects the shells and prevents them from absorbing strong flavours
from other items in the fridge. They’re purposely packed pointed ends down
to protect and centre the yolk so it doesn’t dry out.
