Great Bloggers Bake Off 2016 Final

What a final is was this year! I genuinely could not have guessed the winner because it really could have gone either way. Wasn't Candice a very deserving winner in the end though with just how much she crammed in - not just in the final but throughout the series.

Although I did my best to join in the #gbbobloggers2016 linky over at Mummy Mishaps in the earlier weeks, by the time we got to dessert week, I was well and truly out of my depth and just couldn't get back into attempting to bake anything from that week on.

But I knew that I had to give it a go for the final and try something. In an attempt to keep things simple (it didn't work!) I decided to go miniature and attempt a bit of all 3 challenges but in miniature form.

It turns out not only is baking in miniature MORE time consuming because of the intricacies of it but it is also more confusing because I didn't have any proper recipes to go by and didn't know what the cooking time should be. So I was actually rather delighted that my guesswork did end up with bakes that were edible!

In total I made a:

• miniature several tiered meringue (I lost count how many tiny tiers there were and I did have a tiny meringue crown on top originally although that fell off when I tried to move it - I think there were 6 tiers in total!!!)
• A tiny Victoria Sponge
• A mini-chocolate cake
• Mini cheese & tomato scones

Here are the meringues in close up...

and in their final glory before the crown fell off...

Oops!

The meringues were made with egg white, caster sugar and cream of tartar and served with whipped double cream, pomegranate seeds and blueberries dusted with edible gold dust.

Next was the Victoria Sponge. I used equal quanities of self-raising flour, egg, caster sugar and a little less coconut oil. I totally forgot to use vanilla extract but it actually made it taste good as you could taste a hint of coconut. Served with double cream and St Dalfours jam sandwiched between. I personally like to make my own Chia seed jam like I did before but the rest of the family prefer St Dalfours which is great because it is sweetened with grape juice rather than sugar. The sponge was baked in a muffin tin for a short while (around 10-15 minutes) and finished off with a dusting of caster sugar.

For my mini chocolate cake I used the same Victoria Sponge recipe, this time adding in some cocoa powder and a little extra coconut oil.

I happened to spot this 85% cocoa cooking chocolate in Tesco the other day and it made the perfect gananche when mixed into hot cream. The chocolate cake was finished off with a grating of more of the chocolate on top and a sprinkle of gold dust.

And last but certainly not least, I wanted to do something savoury and although these don't look so attractive, they really did taste amazing. The kids keep asking me to make more...

Savoury Cheese and Tomato Scones

I did keep track of the recipe for this one:

Ingredients:
110g self-raising flour
25g butter
60ml milk
approx 15g grated cheese
approx 10g Nim's Tomato crisps (taken from a pack of Tomato & Cucumber crisps)

Method:
1. Pre-heat the oven to 220C and line a baking sheet with baking paper.
2. Rub the butter and flour together until it resembles breadcrumbs.
3. Add in the milk and mix.
4. Add in the grated cheese and crush up the Nim's tomato crisps and add them to the mix. Bring all together to a dough with a light knead (try not to handle the dough too much).
5. Roll out quite thickly and then cut out small circles. Bake for 10-15 minutes. Keep a close eye on them if you make mini ones as they really don't need long to cook.

Here's our Jellycat bunny rabbit we bought in Wales enjoying the scones and other treats.

Our beautiful Van Gogh Almond Blossom bear we bought in Amsterdam last week ate the chocolate cake...

And Miss T had the leftovers.

Linking up with Mummy Mishaps...