Welcome back to The Not-So-Great Defector Bake Off, where Kelsey and Chris attempt to complete the technical challenges from the newest season of The Great British Bake Off in their own home kitchens, with the same time parameters as the professional-grade bakers competing on the show.
There is a certain amount of skill that will make you miserable. When you know nothing, life is simple. You know nothing! Everything you learn is new. You cannot really make mistakes because everything you do is a mistake, even the things you do right. This is frustrating, especially because a skill like baking requires perseverance, and a willingness to admit that you don't know everything. But the phase of skill-building that is worse is the one the Defector baking doofuses find ourselves in here, in the third season of the Not-So-Great Defector Bake Off: We now know more than we are actually capable of doing correctly.
In some ways, this is a balm. We are improving! Our bakes are stronger each week, and none so bad as the atrocities against God we created last year. But with this arises a new frustration: We know when something is wrong, but we don't necessarily know how to fix it. And because we are each competing in this challenge from the (figurative) silence of our own individual kitchens, with minimal instructions, and a ticking clock, we don't have any opportunity to learn, so we make the same mistakes over and over again expecting that maybe this time they will work, but knowing in our hearts that they won't. Insanity, by definition.
The test this week is, yet again, somehow, a caramel challenge. So our faults were out on display from the beginning. Had we actually learned anything from caramel week? Or had we just burnt up whole bags of sugar in the attempt to turn them into delicious amber caramel? Did we actually understand the properties of the caramel? Or did we only have the ability to clock when something was going terribly, terribly wrong?
Instead of a pear tarte tatin, though, the caramel for this challenge went inside of a pie. The technical challenge for the eighth week of the 15th season of The Great British Bake Off is Paul Hollywood's Banoffee Pie. The pie is, I guess, a 1970s dessert, which makes it appropriate for 1970s week. I was really hoping we would get to make a very strong martini, but I guess not all dreams can come true!
In the instructions for the technical, Paul assured us that "you'll certainly know this bake." Well, guess what? We didn't! But we tried our best.
Chris Thompson: So, Kelsey: Banoffee Pie. Are you familiar with this confection? What are your thoughts on the banana-caramel combination?
Kelsey McKinney: Absolutely not! I am not familiar with this confection! I like bananas, so I am not inherently opposed to banana-caramel situation, but … who is she? Did you know her?
CT: I think I may have heard Paul Hollywood mention "Banoffee" before, and I feel like maybe people have used this flavor combination on the show for other challenges. But this was my first time seriously considering the Banoffee Situation.
KM: I believe you, but I have no memory of that at all. To me, Banoffee is a word that Paul Hollywood made up right before this challenge, and kind of poorly, since to me it seems like it should contain coffee, not toffee.
CT: Hmm, not sure about banana coffee.
KM: A fair and valid point. I just like coffee! And I would love to make a coffee cake.
CT: The British would simply never make coffee cake, as they are tea loyalists.
Kelsey I feel that we should discuss your feelings about having missed out on Spotted Dick.
KM: Oh, yes! I would love to discuss this. I was so sad to have missed out on the Spotted Dick, a phrase I truly did not expect to ever say in my life. I really enjoyed reading your blog about it, but I wonder how you were feeling post-Spotted Dick, pre-Banoffee! I was lucky, I had a week off from baking.
CT: There is a definite sadness in the aftermath of having made the Spotted Dick. A wistfulness. You always remember your first Spotted Dick. But I was excited to make this Banoffee Pie, if only because it involves a lake of salted caramel, which if made correctly is a wonderful thing to have in your kitchen. Personally I wouldn't mind filling a bathtub, or even a swimming pool, with salted caramel.
KM: The Spotted Dick did not seem like the kind of thing that I would like to eat, though I could be wrong on that. So I was very happy to be making a pie. I love pie! It's one of my favorite desserts because I am extremely American.
CT: Yeah! And this pie, while possibly having been invented by a British person, is in the American style, in the sense that, again, it involves a lake of salted caramel.
KM: Is that an American style? I don’t know that personally I have ever had a lake of salted caramel.
CT: Well, I'm claiming it for America. U-S-A! U-S-A!
KM: Wow! U-S-A! Finally, something to feel patriotic about: a beautiful pie crust with a lake of salted caramel inside of it.
Ingredients and Shopping
CT: I have said this before, but this time I mean it: Truly there was nothing weird in the ingredients for this bake. Easy mode! How’d you do on your shopping?
KM: These were, genuinely, the most simple ingredients I have ever seen. I did have to go to the little grocery store anyway because I used all my bananas on smoothies and was out of all-purpose flour from the dozens of other bakes we had made. But once I went to the store, I had EVERYTHING! Plus, I got some chocolate-covered pretzels as a snack.
Did you have everything?
CT: I had to go out and get bananas, heavy cream, all-purpose flour, and dark chocolate. Or, rather, I thought that I needed dark chocolate, and then when I went to put the dark chocolate away in my pantry I discovered several pounds of dark chocolate left over from previous bakes.
KM: Ah-ha! Another one of these ingredients! That's an exciting thing to have a lot of, in my opinion.
CT: Not to dox our colleagues but we learned in Slack recently that one of our Defector fellows consumes dark chocolate every single day. What a life!
KM: I did not learn this! It must have appeared when I was out! Wow. What a life! I wish that was me!
CT: Our readers will have to guess the identity of this person, but I will vouch for the chocolate-eater's impeccable food sense.
KM: One good thing about this recipe is that it only called for the smallest amount of dark chocolate, which means we could eat the rest of it! Treat time!
CT: The bake does call for a tart pan, and baking beans, and a cake-decorating turntable. I do have a tart pan, but give me an absolute break about the damn turntable. If I'm bringing home a turntable it better play some dang records (I do not own any records).
KM: We cannot be expected to be perfect in every area. I used to have a tart pan, but it disappeared somehow. I feel like several times now, I've assumed I have one only to go looking for it and it not be there. I will get another one this weekend. I also, obviously, do not have a rotating turntable. This is not a bakery! This is my house!
CT: The bake also called for baking beans, which I think I would enjoy having but which I do not have. I resolved to fish some dried beans out of my pantry when the time came.
KM: I do, in fact, have these. I have both metal beads that are pastry weights and ceramic weights which are balls! I'm rich in pie weights!
CT: Whoa!
KM: I know! I used to make quite a lot of pies as a high-schooler, and so because of this people bought me a lot of pie stuff, which I have kept for a long time.
CT: Are the pie weights as satisfying to use as I imagine?
KM: The pie weights are really exciting and I love them. To be perfectly honest, though, dried beans work just as well if not better because they are cheap and they are small so they get in all the spots!
CT: Finally, the bake advised the use of a sugar thermometer, but once again this only highlights that Kelsey and I absolutely do not know what temperatures to look for, and so thermometers would have no use during our bakes.
KM: We hate temperature! We don't know which temperatures are right! The thermometers are irrelevant to us and are not welcome in our homes. We believe in fresh, natural, caramel baking which requires the chef to become emotionally intertwined with the caramel and listen to its needs and wants. Unfortunately, we are not that good at this method.
CT: It's about principles! But, yes, it's also about wasting a lot of sugar and time.
Stage One: Mixing Shortbread Dough, Chilling
KM: Chris, this bake had a very long time attached to it: two and a half hours! What did you think about this?
CT: So long! These long time limits always hit me in three distinct waves of emotion: First, I feel annoyed that I have to spend so long on the bake. And then a few minutes later I feel relieved that maybe with lots of waiting time I will at least be able to keep my kitchen clean, or return it to a semblance of cleanliness. And then, right before the bake starts, I feel intense dread, that there must be nuances to the method that I cannot anticipate, which account for why there's so much time to just make some dang pie crusts, whip up some caramel, and top it with bananas and whipped cream.
KM: I too love to follow that beautiful journey of emotions. But usually, to calm myself, I try and map out how long I think everything will take before I start doing stuff. This helps me to know whether I think I'm behind or not. But this bake really rattled me: I could anticipate that the pie dough needed to chill, and then freeze before going in the oven, and that it would need to be par-baked, but that only got me to 90 minutes of estimated time. What was the rest of the time for? So my vibes were bad from the start.
CT: Possibly part of the reason we were particularly rattled by this time limit is the method we were given was essentially useless. Paul gave the bakers one sentence of instructions: "Make the Banoffee Pie, decorate with the cream piped as petals in concentric circles to look like a large flower head."
I have since watched this portion of the episode and the contestants just about fell over when they saw Paul's brutal method.
KM: This damn Paul. I did bang my head briefly against the counter upon reading this, so that makes me feel better. It's good to me that we are in sync with the bakers in the real, non-chaos tent. And these were brutal instructions. I immediately felt very happy that it was shortbread pie crust because that is one of the few things I know how to make kind of instinctually.
CT: I didn't have that exact advantage but I did feel lucky that I've made a few baked things recently that involve a very dry, crumbly dough. All the same, I was unbelievably frantic at the start of the bake.
KM: Imagine if these had been the instructions for the caterpillars? We would have died!
CT: Honestly, we could hardly have done worse! Maybe we would've intuited our way to perfect caterpillars!
KM: Seems unlikely! Did you make your dough first?
CT: I did. I put the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl, and then did the dreaded rub-in method to add the butter. I've come around a little bit on this. I still don't understand it but at least now I know what I'm looking for, more or less. And it feels like Real Baking, which I like.
KM: I like doing that method! I like to use my hands and become a little messy, so I enjoy this method. And I like that you can be observant of the dough. It’s like kneading to me, which we both enjoy.
CT: I did something that I thought was smart, when I added the water. First, I had my child fill a bowl with ice and water, so that it would be very cold. Second, after drizzling the water in there and kind of stirring the mixture around a little, I just dumped it out as a pile of crumbles directly onto a sheet of plastic wrap, and then used the wrap to bundle it into a ball. I figured the idea is to keep the butter cold, and if I used my hands and fingers to incorporate it very much it would just get too warm.
KM: One thing I don't like about this recipe is that I really believe that pie dough should have a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in it. This is how I was taught and it is my belief system. However, I was very brave and followed the instructions and betrayed my own instincts by not adding the apple cider vinegar. Otherwise I did the same thing as you.
CT: Oh wow, I've never heard of this! Can you explain the science or possibly the metaphysics of the vinegar?
KM: I can try! Theoretically, vinegar is thought to tenderize the gluten (or make it develop more slowly, I can't remember) in the dough, which softens the crust making it flakier. I'm not sure if there is any science behind this, but it is what I have always done and will continue to do until I die.
CT: Maybe it's a vibes thing! Anyway that's exactly what I love about baking. Alchemy and vibes!
What was your move after making the dough? Into the refrigerator?
KM: I went into the refrigerator! I wrapped the dough ball in plastic wrap and put it on a plate in the fridge. I wanted it to become cold before I rolled it back out, so I set a timer for 15 minutes, and then I just ... kind of stood there. One very uncomfortable thing about this bake is there was a lot of standing time. Not enough time to go away and do anything, because the bake needed to be monitored constantly. But also too much time to just stare at a wall.
CT: I think we parted ways here. I failed to really look ahead and anticipate how much cooling time would eventually be needed in the bake, and so I was in no real hurry to advance the pie crust. But I was in a huge hurry to start on the caramel, because I figured this was the thing in the bake that I was most likely to screw up.
KM: I'm not sure you were wrong. I think if your kitchen had been a little warmer, it might have been fine, but please continue.
CT: My feeling was that the refrigeration was necessary to keep the butter cold, or rather to return it to coldness after having been handled. And I imagined the next step would be to just roll it out, put it into the tin, and bake it. So I thought I had lots and lots of time before I needed to get to that part.
KM: Oh interesting! So you were not planning to chill it again after it was put into the tin?
CT: I was not, but I think if I'd thought about it for more than a few seconds—if I'd been less frantic overall and certainly if I'd been less panicked about the caramel—it might've occurred to me that the same rationale for putting it into the fridge the first time would apply again after rolling it and fitting it into the pan. It just never really occurred to me. This is where your Pie Knowledge really made a difference, I think.
KM: Yeah, I always assumed the two chills because pie dough hates to be warm going into the oven. In my ideal world (which I will live in next week before Thanksgiving), I like to freeze the pie dough in the pie tin overnight, so that it really holds its shape and is very happy. But in this real world, I waited until the pie dough was cold, which turned out to be 20 minutes, then I rolled it out, arranged it nicely in my pie dish since I didn’t have a tart pan, and threw it into the freezer for 20 more minutes. During this time, I did nothing else.
CT: How'd the rolling and transferring go for you? This is always a sticking point, for me (pun not intended).
KM: Fine! I think I work my dough a bit more than you before chilling it, and I am very generous with the flour. I try to spin the dough on the counter as I roll it, and then I transfer it by wrapping it over the rolling pin and lifting it over the pie pan. That said, it does still stick a little. Such is life!
CT: Gah, it's that wrapping it over the rolling pin maneuver that I need to remember next time. I never think of things like that.
KM: Yeah I think the key is not to try and lift it flat and also not to let it touch. So the rolling pin becomes just like … a part of your arm, and you lay the pie dough over this to move it. I feel like real grandmas just use their arm, but we are still youthful.
CT: A very generous "we."
KM: We are so young and vibrant! Everyone is saying it!
CT: So before you started on your caramel, you had your dough rolled out, situated in the pie pan, and back in the freezer?
KM: Yeah it was only when my crust went into the freezer inside its pie pan that I started on the caramel. Though I was so bored during the first twenty-minute waiting period, I had already measured everything for the caramel out into little dishes mise en place–style.
Stage Two: Making Caramel
CT: You love a good mise en place.
KM: I don't actually! Usually I am too lazy to do it. But when I am devoted to the bake and there is nothing else for me to do because the dishwasher has already been unloaded, I need to move my body and hands or I'll become anxious and worried! You began your caramel before you rolled your dough, correct?
CT: Yes. Long before. As soon as my dough ball was gathered up in the plastic film and in the fridge, I decided to start on the caramel. I'm not sure this was the right move, but I think my expectations were solid, in the sense that I did, in fact, fuck up the caramel.
KM: Noooooooo. How early in the process did it become fucked? How much time did you waste?
CT: So I'd learned some important temperature details from previous caramel projects. Not temperatures, mind you, but I'd learned that you can't add cold things to hot things in the making of caramel.
KM: I genuinely feel like we have made so much more caramel this year than any other year. It's kind of wild how much caramel we have made!
CT: Yes! And repetition really has helped to embed certain things in my mind. In this case, I knew that we would be adding cream to cooked sugar, and so when I started cooking the sugar in one pan, I also started heating the cream in another.
But I was so flustered and frantic throughout that my attention was all over the place. The cream started simmering way before the sugar began to brown, so I turned off the heat under it. But then I worried that it was becoming too cool, so I turned the heat back on, and was swirling the cream to dissolve the filmy surface and I looked over and my sugar was too far along.
I persevered, very stupidly, by dumping the cream into the sugar pan in one big pour, and immediately a huge amount of the sugar just seized up and became hard toffee. A lot of it also immediately gripped onto the pan like cement. Also the cream was boiling with frightening intensity.
KM: No! This is so unfair! You did not deserve this! The cream betrayed you somehow that I don't understand!
CT: I think the sugar was just too hot, but I honestly don't know. I tried to stir the clumped toffee around in there to get it to dissolve but it was obviously a disaster.
So I dumped it down the drain, and then I had to spend a few minutes hacking at the surface of the pan with a bench scraper in order to clear off the rock-hard toffee stuck to it. I felt very bad, and in fact I was even rude to my wife when she came and looked over my shoulder. I just know that if it'd been Noel Fielding I would've barked like a cornered dog and smashed him over the head with the pan. I'm not cut out for the real tent.
KM: Oh no! I'm not sure why this happens, because it is still very mysterious to me why the sugar becomes hard sometimes and then some other times it does not. I have no understanding and even though it has happened to me at least four times this season, I never learn because it never makes any sense to me. I think that actually does mean you're cut out for the real tent, though, because that would be great television.
CT: How'd your own caramel adventure go? Did you have any of these troubles?
KM: Well, I had two new variables this time. First off, I did not have golden caster sugar because apparently I ran out and forgot to get more. This didn’t seem that important to me so I just put regular sugar into the pan. The second changed variable, though, was huge. I decided to use my copper pot!
CT: This time the recipe just called for white caster sugar, so you weren't too far off!
KM: Wow! I'm a genius! The past few times I hadn't wanted to use my beautiful copper pot for the caramel because it was still too new and too shiny, but now it has become a little aged so I felt better about it, and wow was this an upgrade.
CT: So you toasted your sugar in the copper pot? Did you also heat up your cream?
KM: Yes! And because I guess it heats really evenly, it was much easier to babysit and stir. I did heat up the cream in another pot on the burner behind it, but once it started to boil, I turned off the burner because I was overwhelmed with the stirring and the boiling. This, I think, turned out to be right, because once my caramel became a beautiful color and all evenly melted, I used a spoon and dropped some of the cream in there and it FIZZED and BUBBLED. This was exciting for me. I have never seen this before.
So I put the cream into the caramel in probably three parts after that, and then added the butter in three parts after that. And then I had a very beautiful (slightly too dark) sauce that seemed fine so I turned the burner off and poured it into a glass pyrex measuring cup. I had two cups of liquid.
CT: It's very clutch, to me, that you got this right on your first try. Even my second try was not so smooth!
KM: Chris, I truly cannot believe it. I had already cut up enough butter and put out enough sugar and milk for my second attempt. That's how certain I was that it wasn't going to work. But then I felt like a magical witch because when I poured my caramel sauce into the measuring cup, the timer went off, and so the pie crust was ready! Tell me about your second try!
CT: I didn't have any new ideas so I just ran it back with the same method. This time, for some reason, the sugar in the pan started clumping up into little bergs well before there was any caramelization (I assume now that there was still moisture in the pan from when I cleaned out the hardened toffee). But I kept the temperature lower this time, and eventually all the little clumps melted, and without the caramel overcooking and becoming clear.
KM: This little clumping happens to me every damn time! I don't know why!
CT: This time, instead of pouring the heated cream into the sugar, I took a chance on pouring the sugar into the cream. This also did not go great—the first little pour of caramel instantly became gummy and semi-solid—but I did not have enough sugar for a third try, so I just turned up the burner, poured the caramel into the cream, and stirred like crazy. I was prepared for this to fail, but after a lot of stirring—I was adding the butter a few cubes at a time as I did this—I found that the caramel clumps were, in fact, melting into the cream. I stuck with it for what felt like one jillion years, and eventually all of the clumps melted and I had a smooth caramel sauce. I knew that it would eventually need to be thickened, but I was so afraid of giving it any more time or heat and risking another disaster, so I just added the vanilla and the salt and poured it into a glass bowl.
KM: No! Not gummy and semi-solid! This is so unfair because I think you had it right the first time. I think you just poured too much in at once! One really jarring thing about this bake was that it was clear that the caramel sauce needed to be thick because it needed to be able to support the bananas, but you cannot reduce the caramel sauce without burning it. Luckily, I was so happy with my efforts that I didn't consider any of this. I just left my caramel sauce on the counter like an idiot.
CT: I'm looking at the recipe on the website now and it appears that there is a target temperature that you can achieve where the caramel will thicken without burning. But obviously we did not have this information at the time, and at any rate there's no way I could've pulled it off.
KM: Target temperature? That's baby shit. No thank you.
CT: I put my bowl of caramel into the refrigerator, because I thought the only chance I had of getting it thick enough to support bananas was if it was completely cooled.
KM: I really think that was correct. I forgot about my caramel entirely because I was too busy cutting a circle of parchment paper and putting all my pie beads into the pie crust. I had no time for reason!
CT: It was only now, after having taken two passes at the caramel, that I finally pulled my dough ball from the fridge and began to roll it out.
I was instantly confronted with the fact that I'd done so little to incorporate it before putting it into the fridge that it was just a loose collection of dough crumbles, and had no structure. The rolling pin touched it and it crumbled away into several entirely separate pieces, plus one billion tiny crumbs.
KM: Oh no. Chris!
CT: This is where I really began to panic about time. I'd thought we'd had SO MUCH TIME, and now I had the very distinct feeling that I was not going to be able to complete the bake. So I for sure was not going to repeat anything, let alone sit still for another round of cooling. I just clumped that shit up on my counter, smashed it down, and used my hands to start spreading it into something circle-ish.
KM: No way! You can just over-work it a little! I think that was the right move, but I think this is also why it stuck! It wasn't a rolling issue, it was a combining issue.
CT: I'm sure you're correct. I did eventually get it rolled out to a decent shape, but I had to do a lot of patching along the way because it cracked so easily under pressure.
And then I had to scrape it off the surface. And then transferring it to the tart pan was hysterical, it folded over onto itself and cracked apart and was just a total mess.
KM: Oh my god! Chris! This is a nightmare!
CT: It sounds bad! And, yes, I felt very bad. My wife and child had long abandoned the area, but if they'd stayed they would've heard me whimpering like a wounded dog. But I recovered!
KM: No! Did you end up chilling your dough once it was in the tin?
CT: I did. I was able to piece it together in the tart pan and then snip it and patch it and bring it to a decent condition, by which time I'd worked it so much more than I'd intended that I felt I absolutely had to freeze it.
This is somewhat complicated for me because the only freezer with space for a tart pan is in my basement, but I needed the exercise.
KM: Freezing it seems good to me. You gave it a little rest after being beat up.
CT: That's right! We both needed a break.
Stage Three: Baking, Chilling, Filling, Chilling
CT: What temperature did you set for your bake? I had a lot of confusion about this.
KM: I set it at 375 degrees. I'm not really sure why I did that to be honest. I think 375 is a kind of cop-out temperature because it's neither too hot or too mild. I just kind of did it at some point while making the caramel and then forgot about it. What temperature did you use?
CT: Ha! To me the cop-out temperature is 400. Whenever I'm not sure what temperature to use, for anything at all, I just go with 400. And so I went with 400. And once again I used the convection setting on my oven, which has turned out to be a wonderful and reliable setting for baking.
KM: Every bake when it is time for something to go into your oven, I feel a rising panic in my throat. I am thrilled to learn this about the convection setting!
CT: I would like to point out here that our method had a very funny instruction in there: "Circotherm 170 C."
KM: Oh yeah! What the hell was that?
CT: They are into some truly fucked-up shit in Britain, I think. "Circotherm" sounds like something from Hellraiser.
KM: It sounds like a brand to me. With Circotherm, you can get all your saltless dishes to the same temperature in just minutes!
CT: Do not approach me on the street and say to me, "Circotherm," or I will simply spray you down with mace.
KM: To be honest, I completely ignored this instruction. It was dead to me before it could even live.
CT: I want to note that I used two full bags of dried lentils for my “baking beans.” I was not very tidy with my parchment paper and with all these lentils I really had no view of the crust at all.
KM: I think this was smart. One problem I had was that the baking beads were too shallow! So some of the sides of my pie crust puffed in a little bit, which I did not like at all.
CT: Oh no! Damn baking beans, you had one job!
KM: I know! Good evidence that having fancy supplies is not always an advantage!
CT: The humble lentil, outperforming the fancy baking bean. Pretty sure that’s an Aesop jam.
We were getting down to it a little bit, timing-wise. I knew that I needed to conclude this blind bake, and then to do a second bake, and then that the crust would for sure need to chill for a while before I could pour in the caramel, and that it would probably need to chill again in order for the caramel to set. I was very worried, at this point.
KM: Despite feeling leisurely the whole bake, I became very concerned during the parbake. Then, when I pulled the crust from the oven because it was getting golden around the outside, my tongs did not want to pick up the baking beads, so I had to use the tips of my fingers (because they already are heat resistant from years of being an idiot) to grab them, which took far longer and was annoying! When I put the crust back in to cook the bottom, I was stressed.
CT: This is another area where the lentils came through. Or, rather, my sloppiness: Because I had all this extra baking paper hanging out of the pan, I was able to lift the whole shit, lentils and all, and deposit it into a separate container, in order to cool and reuse the lentils.
How'd your crust look, at this stage? Did you feel like things were on target?
KM: Damn, lentils are friends of our family! Thank you and shout out to lentils! I was a little unhappy with the crust because it had puffed out on the sides a little and shrunk a little on one side. But for a timed bake, it definitely could have been worse! How did yours look?
CT: Because of all the extra paper and lentils, I couldn't really see the crust at all, so I was going basically off of smell and clock. Eventually I just felt like I couldn't spare any time at all and would have to take the chance that the sides were reasonably well-baked. And when I removed the lentils it turned out that everything was fine. I might've preferred another three or four minutes in there, but certainly it was baked adequately, given the time constraints.
KM: Hell yeah! I didn't leave my crust in there for very long after this because it was already golden on the sides. I think it went 10 more minutes during which time I remembered the caramel existed. It was definitely thicker than before but not thick at all. I tasted it and it was delicious, so this at least was a win.
CT: I can't remember how long I gave my crust for the second bake but it can't have been more than eight or nine minutes. You were a minute or two ahead of me for every step of this bake, so it was like being a younger sibling tagging behind and copying the older person's moves. You pulled your crust and I was like "OK I guess I should pull mine too," even though it hadn't been in as long. I guess the fact that my oven was hotter probably helped a little? Who knows. My crust was baked well but it had shrunk a little, and was cracked.
KM: I put mine in the freezer because it was so hot, and you had convinced me via our crosstalk that it needed to be cold, and you were right.
CT: Oh yeah, I was sure it had to be very cold, otherwise the caramel would just melt. But those minutes in the freezer were absolutely agonizing, to me.
KM: I put my crust in the freezer for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes it was still so hot. So I put a bag of frozen corn inside of the pie crust. This worked well.
CT: I love the corn-bag innovation. Although I worry that you now have a bag of freezer-burned corn on your hands.
KM: That's fine! That's a problem for later. Did you also put your crust in the freezer?
CT: Future Kelsey may not even remember why the corn is so icy and weird. She might not even be mad at Present Kelsey at all.
I did put my crust in the freezer. I felt like I had the advantage of the tart pan, in that I could remove the sides of the pan and expose the crust to more cold. I never needed a bag of corn, is what I'm saying.
KM: Yes, that was very lucky. My stupid ceramic pie pan was holding a lot of heat, but the thought of trying to remove the crust seemed very, very dangerous to me, so I did not.
CT: Oh yes, I'm sure that would've been a disaster.
Stage Four: Assembly
CT: I'm checking the Slack logs and it appears that we had about 30 minutes left when you put your caramel into your crust. That may sound like a lot of time but it truly was not: The caramel had to cool and set, and then it had to support bananas, and then it had to be topped with Chantilly cream and grated chocolate. This was so nerve-wracking.
KM: We did not have a lot of time, that's for sure! The minute my crust seemed cool enough, I poured the caramel into it and closed the door of the freezer.
This was awful. I wanted to check on it, but you can't keep opening a freezer if you want something to get cold! At this point, I was really regretting how long I'd let my dough rest. I should have let it rest less so I would have more time to cool!
CT: I was a couple minutes behind you but I think I was gaining time because of the tart pan advantage.
KM: It was very funny that despite different methodology and timelines, we ended up doing the same stuff at the same time at the very end. It really helps me understand how people end up doing the same thing as others in the tent, because it's so scary if someone else is doing something and you aren't doing it. What if you're wrong?
CT: Oh yeah, you'd hate to look up and see nine people doing one thing while you're over here doing some completely other step.
Which reminds me, I did have to do one weird thing.
KM: Oooooh! What?
CT: Well, because my crust was patched together during the transfer into the pan, it had cracked during the final bake, along the bottom. I knew that I would be pouring liquid caramel into this crust, and I was simply not willing to have liquid caramel pouring out of the crust and onto the surfaces of my home, where it would cause a hellacious mess.
So I needed to caulk the crack somehow. To do this, I went into my cupboard and fished out a tube of purple decorating icing, which I then squeezed into the crack.
KM: HAHAHA I forgot you did this! But I do think it was really quite brilliant! The caramel was runny! You needed to seal your crust!
CT: Yeah! And I figured as long as there was nothing hot to melt the icing, it should have no trouble preventing the caramel from running through the crack. It didn't look very nice but it was that or aluminum foil, which famously is not edible.
KM: Aluminum foil does NOT taste good. You are correct.
CT: Having caulked up the fissure, I poured the caramel in there and very carefully carried the pie back down to the basement, where I had to quickly create a flat surface inside the freezer for resting my lake of caramel. I had 15 minutes left on the clock.
KM: You're a genius and an innovator. This was such quick thinking! I was just standing there panicking because my cream was made and my bananas were sliced and my chocolate was ready to be grated, and I just had to decide when was the last possible moment I could pull it from the freezer.
CT: These were very nervous minutes. I think you said you were going to give yourself just four minutes to decorate your pie and that just seemed so daring to me. Possibly too daring.
KM: I was! That was my plan. And this is where peer pressure matters. Because I was certain that I would just do it in four minutes, but then at seven minutes, you said you were taking your pie out to begin decorating and I panicked. I couldn't have a half-done pie! That's embarrassing. So I became the younger-sibling, and I just followed your lead.
CT: I was worried about two things, here: First, that the caramel wouldn't support the bananas; and second, that the piping of the flower petals would take an annoyingly long time. Obviously more time in the freezer would help with the first concern, but would put an even harsher crunch on the second. And after all we do not have decorating turntables at our disposal. For that matter, we didn’t even have the right piping nozzles.
KM: I should also admit I did not have an icing nozzle. I was just using a piping bag with a slit that I cut in it.
CT: That's the Kelsey magic, in my opinion.
Was your caramel ready to hold bananas?
KM: BARELY! The banana did not immediately sink, which seemed like a huge win to me, and I was proud of it! I put all the bananas on there and they still didn't sink, which seemed good enough, but it was definitely not firm!
How did yours feel?
CT: It was like Jell-O pudding, like exactly the texture of butterscotch pudding cups. The bananas wanted to sink down in there, and kind of did. This was certainly not the structure Paul Hollywood was after, but I did not have time to worry about this.
We basically skipped discussing the making of Chantilly cream, but only because that shit is so easy to us because we are True Bakers now.
KM: It was easy and also [whispers] I whipped mine too much so it was actually a little too fluffy! But whatever. I didn't want to make it again even though I did have time to do that.
CT: How did you feel about your slit-piping-bag method which you invented? Did you feel like it was giving you a shape you could accept?
KM: Not really, to be honest. It was only kind of working and also I did not have a lot of time, and I didn't really believe in my ability to pipe nicely anyway, so I just kind of did it, and called it good enough. How was your piping method?
CT: I used a piping nozzle but it didn't have the right shape. I do have a petal nozzle but it's insanely humongous—so huge that I use the wide end of it as a cookie cutter—so I just opted for one that would make a lovely blob of cream, even if it wasn't the right look. This went more smoothly than I anticipated. It turns out Chantilly cream is incredibly easy to pipe.
The rest was just grating chocolate, which I did by grabbing up a little chocolate chip and rubbing it on a microplane, and then doing the same with two more. I did not expect this to work—I was fully planning on pivoting to cocoa powder—but it went fine and gave me a nice finished look.
KM: I also did not expect this to work, but it did. However, I did not feel that the pie looked finished. I wish it had had like a nice mint leaf, or a nice big scrape of chocolate on there. It looked kind of continuous in a boring way.
CT: Oh yeah, that would've been lovely. I imagine the pie looks better if you're able to pull off the flower look, but we just didn't have the tools!
The Finished Product
CT: Show Banoffee Pie?
KM: Here is my Banoffee Pie! I think it looks pretty good!
CT: This is a nice looking pie! I'm impressed with what you were able to manage using just a piping bag with a slit cut into it. It’s got a flowery look to it that is pretty close to what the judges were after, I think!
KM: Show Banoffee Pie?
CT: OK, here is my Banoffee Pie:
KM: Wow! I love your Banoffee Pie. Just because the judges want something does not meant they are right. I like the little mounds of icing. They look very exciting to me.
CT: I think it's fine! The crust looks like pie crust and it's certainly a fancier pie than what I would usually make. It's fine. No one is allowed to say it is not fine.
Were you able to taste your pie?
KM: I would like to admit that my pie did not have the texture Paul was looking for: When I cut it, the blade fell right through with almost no resistance which was a little bit concerning, and then when I pulled out the slice, the caramel began to run into the vacant space, so it definitely wasn’t thick enough.
But, to be honest, it tasted great! I liked the caramel and banana and cream flavors, and it was very light to eat.
CT: Yeah! My caramel also wasn't set, but that matters less when you are eating a mouthful of caramel, with crunchy pie crust and delicious bananas.
I am happy to say that my child absolutely loved her first bites of the pie. I am somewhat less happy to report that after her fifth or sixth bite, she turned to her mom and said, "Actually I think this pie doesn't taste good." It’s a lot of caramel.
KM: HAHAHAHA! She's a food critic! Yeah, of all the weird and bad desserts we've made, this one was a solid pie. I think if we had gotten the caramel more firm, it would have been a crowd pleaser!
CT: Definitely! I think it would've had a more enjoyable texture, for sure.
Kelsey, unless I am mistaken, we are entering the ninth, and penultimate, week of this season.
KM: WOW! Semi-finalists! We are killing it!
CT: You know what that means? Patisserie time!
KM: Oh my god YESSSSS! I am certain we will crush this.
CT: Whereas I am certain that it is going to be a Complete Fiasco, but that we will enjoy it so incredibly much. Can’t wait!
