Brendan's Chelsea Bunskis - The Great British Bake Off (Series 3 Ep.7)

Brendan adds a European flavour to his Chelsea Bunskis

As much as I like baking, my repertoire is somewhat small, so I adore watching each episode of the Great British Bake Off which introduces me to new methods and techniques to make cakes and breads which I would normally buy in the shops.

In this weeks episode, the participants were asked to bake as part of their Signature Challenge 24 buns (made with yeast).  The dough they use is an Enriched Dough which begins as a basic bread mixture (using flour, salt, yeast and water), which is then enriched with eggs, fat, sugar and milk.

Brendan makes the Poppy seed filling for the Chelsea Bunskis

Tastes better that it looks... 

Brendan has this week decided to make the classic Chelsea Bun with a twist.  Rather than having the expected currant laden bun, Brendan used a Poppy Seed filling made up of ground poppy seeds, orange and lemon zest, vanilla and a brandy liqueur.

The resultant buns looked amazing:

Chelsea Buns with a Polish twist.

Chelsea Buns filled with a Poppy seed mixture

Chelsea Bunskis are a hit with the Judges. Great flavour and structure.

Other successful bakes belonged to Ryan with his Lardy Cakes and Danny with her Bakewell Chelsea Buns:

Ryan makes perfect Lardy Cakes.  The Judges were impressed

Danny captures a Bakewell Tart in a bun.

The technical challenge this week was to make a batch of ten Doughnuts; strange wet dough here we come:

Danny is hoping the wet dough will soon come
together for her doughnuts.

In this challenge, considering Brendan has never made doughnuts before he did quite well, but well done to James for coming first in this challenge.

Brendan fries his doughnuts

Paul Hollywood cuts through Brendan's doughnuts

Brendan comes 4th in the technical challenge with his doughnuts.
Not bad for a first attempt.

The final test of course was the Showstopper, in which they had to make a Celebratory Enriched Dough Loaf.  I appreciate that WhyNut is somewhat biased towards Brendan (because he uses and loves our nuts and nut pastes), I have to say that he was clearly the winner in this challenge, seeing is believing as they say:

Brendan's Black Forest Christmas Stollen;
Simply stunning, and it tasted great too.

Close-up of the Christmas Stollen by Brendan.

Inside the Christmas Stollen by Brendan.

Brendan chose to bake a Black Forest Christmas Stollen shaped in a Bundt tin.  His efforts were well received by the judges.  Though Paul Hollywood does keep going on about 70's and 80's.  Brendan chose to rise above it with his comment:

Unfortunately we had to say goodbye to 2 people this week.  So long Sarah-Jane and Ryan.

Can't wait for next week...
By the way, all recipes can be found at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/

If you would like to see more from Brendan, he has a website: Brendan Bakes .