Great Bloggers Bake Off Entry.

So – It’s Sunday… THE Sunday… the Sunday of the Great Blogger’s Bake Off !! 🙂

Crushed Caramel and Bereavedandbeingasingleparent organised the G B B-O along with special guest judge,  A Jeanne in the Kitchen and invited all to join in for some fun, regardless of the level prior baking skills (From non-existent to Master Chef).

We had some freedom of choice for our sandwich sponge; I went for my own creation of  a Mandarin Mocha Chocolate Sponge Cake.  Having NEVER baked ‘from scratch’ before i was curious how well i could do. Judge for yourselves:

I started from this:

There should have been 6 ozs of self-raising flour in there somewhere??

Which, with a little effort and a Kenwood hand mixer , along with 20 minutes in a 400F oven, produced these:

Fortunately the sponges came out of it a lot better off than the greaseproof paper!!               (Which crumbled to the touch!)

A little icing sugar, double cream, a tablespoon of coffee powder and a dash of Kahlua and lots more whisking along with a mandarin segments for decoration produced this:

Which soon became this:

And if i do say so myself… it tastes pretty darn good – for a first time effort. 🙂

Recipe:  3 Eggs,

180g unsalted butter,

180g caster sugar,

180g S/R flour,

2 Tbsp Cocoa powder (I used Cadbury Drinking Chocolate !)

Pinch of Baking Powder.

Mandarin segments for decoration.

For cream icing:  150g icing sugar,

300ml Double cream.

1 Tbsp Nescafe Gold coffee powder.

Dash of Kahlua (optional)

I double sifted the flour, cocoa and baking powder, which i then added slowly while mixing on low speed with my previously whisked butter and caster sugar in a big bowl. I put the mixture into 2 8 inch greased and lined with greaseproof paper baking tins and cooked them @ 400F for 20 mins. (Probably need less with a fan-forced oven!).

The icing i just bunged all into a cold bowl and mixed on high speed  until nice and thick. Put half on lower sponge, then put the other sponge on top and the other half of the icing on top of that, throw a few mandarin segments on top and “Voila!”

love.