Project Bake Off 2016 - My First Baking Competition

Everyone joins competition for various reasons. As for me, it is for exposure that I would gain through this participation. Will I be nervous and freak out during the competition or will I able to perform to my full potential without having to fear the judges? These were the questions that I wanted to find out.

Project Bake-Off 2016 is a baking competition co-organised by nEbO with a group of Year 3 business students from Ngee Ann Polytechnic. It comprises 2 rounds -- the preliminary round where we have to bake a cheese tart using a given recipe and a final round where we had to bake a 3 layer cake for nEbO's 9th birthday

As we (Pei Gee and I) could not alter the given recipe, the only way to stand out from the participants was through the plating. We experimented with various designs and tried different taste combinations to see whether our sauce goes well with our tarts. These were the few designs that we came up with.

The above tart was a very minimalistic design. Just a simple brush of blueberry sauce and fresh blueberries at the side. However, the amount of blueberry sauce was too little to be noticed and didn’t not aid with the flavour profile at all. Hence, we did not use this design.

The bright yellow sauce was made from pumpkin puree. We steamed the butternut pumpkin, blended it up and added some cream to obtain this gorgeous colour.

In the end, we decided to go with this design because the meringue and blueberry sauce goes very well with the cheese tart. The press meringue plating is also a very modern and simple design which made the whole dish look classy.

PRElIMINARY ROUND 16th JULY 2016

Pei gee was responsible for the tart shell while I did the cheese filling

Pei Gee trying to blow torch our meringue.

I really enjoyed the blueberry sauce. Simply cook fresh blueberries, water and sugar together. Add yogurt after the mixture cools down and you’re done! Spread it on a slice of bread and you won’t get enough of it.

The judges are (left to right): Sri Suratman, the owner of La Marelle Cafe , Lutfi, the founder of @BakersOfSingapore and Marcus Aw, the owner of Crusty Oven (They sell delicious tarts!)

I must say the tarts we baked that day wasn't up to our expectations as it was too runny, but we're very happy to be shortlisted for the final round competition! YAYYYY

FINAL ROUND 30th JULY 2016

Anyway, our team is called ACESULFAME. Acesulfame-K is actually an artificial sugar that we just learnt recently in school. We decided to choose this name because it is something related to science & food (exactly what our diploma course is about) and there's the word ACE. I mean, who doesn't want to ace?

For the final round, all contestants have to incorporate a secret ingredient -- Caramelised cookie. Should we make a cookie base? Or use it in our decorations only? Or incorporate it into our frosting?

We wanted to create something that is unique and not commonly seen. In the end, we decided to bake a caramelised cookie infused sponge cake where I blende the cookies into fine crumbs and added it into our cake batter.

Due to our pack schedule, Pei Gee and I had no time to try out all the recipe ideas we have in mind. So we will be modifying the recipe as we go!

Don't you think I need to close my mouth and look better when I'm concentrating? HAHAHA

For the frosting, we have coconut custard buttercream. We started out with a french buttercream, with coconut custard added into it to give it a better flavour profile.

To compliment it, there were lime curd in alternate layers of our cake. This give the cake a tangy contrast.

For the other layers, bites of caramelised cookie was added for a crunchy mouthfeel.

We decided to go with a semi-naked cake look so the coconut cream will not overpower the whole cake.

As this cake is for nEbO's 9th birthday, we added sparks of orange & yellow cream to match their orange logo.

To give it a Singaporean twist, we have gula melaka caramel to drip on the cake. However, we do not have time to cool the caramel completely, so when it was dripped on the cake, it melted our frosting... :(

This is me trying to save our melting cake.

For decorations, we made white chocolate bark! They are just for height and visual purpose though~

We also added colourings and more caramelised cookies on the chocolate!

To assemble, we cut the chocolate into sharp triangles of various size and stick it on top with more caramelised cookies!

TADAHHHHA~ This is our final cake. It would be better if we had more time to cool our caramel down and maybe make a simple sugar syrup to moisten our cake.

Each of the groups were given 5 minutes to explain our creations and to convince the judge that our cakes deserved to be sold in cafes.

The cross section of our cake! LOOK AT THE LIME CURD!

These are all the cakes made in our round! THEY ALL TASTED SO SO GOOD!

With that, we clinched 2nd runner up and the most eye-catching cake award! It was definitely a fun experience with Pei Gee and Project Bake-Off 2016 team. For more photographs, visit Project Bake-Off 2016 & nEbO's facebook page!

Love,

Angelyn <3

All images by Project Bake-Off 2016 & Supriadi Lee, nEbO's Lifestyle (Photography) Champion