The Great British Bake Off

My new favourite program on the telly is the second series of The Great British Bake Off. I suppose it is a talent contest of sorts, far better than any of the usual music varieties. Judged by the infamous Mary Berry (who has written over 60 cookery books!) and Paul Hollywood and hosted by Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, the series is now onto episode three and the challenge of bread-baking. 

We've so far watched the 12 contestants bake their way through a cake round, that saw many a flavoured cupcake, coffee and walnut Batternberg, and a celebration cake round with a rather disastrous outcome for one of the baker's creations. The second round was all about tarts, with quiches galore and a technical bake of Mary Berry's very own tarte au cirtron. The most recent round was a rather grueling bread challenge with a particularly tricky focaccia. 

Being a great fan of Mary Berry's I was rather pleased when my mum bought me the Great British Bake Off book as a present last week. It's bursting with baking delights, my first accomplishment of which was a recipe for Earl Grey cupcakes. Being a true early grey drinker these immediately caught my eye- here's the recipe:
For the cakes:
200ml semi-skimmed milk
2 Early Grey teabags (I used 4 to make the earl grey taste a little more prominent)
115g unsalted butter
225g caster sugar
2 large eggs
250g plain flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder


For the icing:
75g unsalted butter, softened
grated zest and juice of 2 unwaxed lemons
350g icing sugar
- Preheat the oven to 180C
- Heat the milk in a pan until hot
- Add the tea bags and leave to infuse for a couple of minutes then remove
- Measure 150ml of milk and leave to cool 
- In a bowl combine the butter with the sugar and then add the eggs one at a time
- Add a third of the flour followed by a third of the infused milk and repeat until all used
- Spoon the mixture into cupcake cases and bake in the oven for about 20 minutes
- Cool on a wire rack
- To make the icing whizz the ingredients in the food processor until smooth, I tend to whizz the icing sugar on its own first to remove the lumps without having to sieve
- Pipe or spread the icing onto the cooled cupcakes and decorate with lemon zest

Tune into The Great British Bake Off on BBC 2 on Tuesday.