Baking the cake
It’s pressure cooker time! Great SA Bake Off season 2 winner Cait McWilliams has tips for keeping cool under pressure.
A dozen brave bakers have gathered at the big white tent for a brandnew season of The Great SA Bake Off (2015- current). They’re wondering what the recipe for success will be this season behind the ovens. Meanwhile, viewers at home will be wondering what really happens inside the tent… Well, Bake Off buddies, here’s one that we made earlier: tvplus asked season 2 winner Cait McWilliams for some handy hints. On your marks, get set, baaaake!
What’s almost guaranteed to flop and how do you cope? In season 2 it was caramel. Everyone’s caramel kept crystalising. Mine went wrong a lot. It will probably be something else this year. Chocolate, of course, is tricky. But anything that’s weather-dependent will be problematic because that tent is hot. And good luck if it’s meringues on a rainy day! So be adaptable. If your meringue isn’t working, make a meringue crisp. Adapt it in a way that will ensure the element is still on the plate. When you were practising for Bake Off, you had a whole kitchen to yourself. On the show you just have that one bench… The space constraints weren’t that much different for me because I tried to keep to a small area. Well, I say that, but my mother was probably coming after me tidying and I wasn’t noticing. Stay clean though. Everyone has to stay clean or you’ll be in such a mess. I remember one time – I sat down and there were éclairs everywhere. And I was like, “What is this?” Do you have the production staff picking up around you while you’re working? Okay, ja, you have little fairies running around – I miss that! You don’t have to run off and wash dishes or anything like that. But keep your bench clean – that’s a big help. Because if I needed space for a bowl and I hadn’t cleaned up, it was going to be a problem. What’s it like when the judges come round and you’re super, super-busy? It was really difficult. When I’m at full tilt making whatever, then they’d come round and it was great to have a chat and see what they were expecting from me, but afterwards to get back to the same work speed was hard. In the first three episodes, everyone will struggle with that. But you will get used to it – I did and I didn’t think I would. How do you avoid disaster in those bigtension final five minutes? The last five to 10 minutes are brutal if you haven’t finished. Rush from the beginning. It’s a lot easier to slow down later when you need a steady hand. Cakes need time to cool and things need time to set. Things aren’t instant, so make sure that you’ve planned the order in which you’re going to do things so that you’re only busy finishing and plating in the last five minutes. Presentation is important and that’s something I struggled with. What do you suspect that they might put in the new season to test the bakers? There are so many baking things that you can do, that no one season can cover it. Purely speculation: probably something like croissants or staple bakery because that’s something we didn’t do. It’s a lot of fun and it has been done in a short time before. And what would you personally like to see in season 3? I’d love to see more modern bakes – for example, all of the mirrorglazed cakes or the fancy croissants. If I could design the show myself, I’d make it half traditional baking, half putting traditional baking into modern things. Like maybe making it a Black Forest entremets (multi-layered mousse-based cake). People get excited about new techniques.