Want a Technical Challenge? Tackle A Fudge Frosting.
What family recipes have in common with the Great British Baking Show.
The Great British Baking Show is one of my family’s favorite shows. If you have somehow missed the eleven seasons that have already aired—eight of which are on Netflix right now—you must remedy that immediately. It is one of the most wholesome and charming shows on television.
The Great British Baking Show is a weekslong contest that pits amateur home cooks against each other in three bake-off challenges per week. Current judging team Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith taste the bakers’ offerings, and at the end of each show, they choose a Star Baker whose baked goods rose above the rest and a baker to send home. Last baker standing at the end of the season is the winner. The bakers are always charming and fun to get to know, and the hosts (or presenters in British-speak) keep things light and humorous in the baking tent.
Each show offers the bakers three opportunities to show off their skills. The first is always the Signature Challenge where the bakers present one of their tried-and-true recipes. The second is the Technical Challenge where Paul and Prue give them a specific item to bake with a recipe that is vague and often missing key information or steps. The bakers don’t know what they will be asked to bake for the Technical Challenge, and so they just have to muddle through baking something most of them have ever seen before. Finally, they are given a theme for the Showstopper Challenge, and that’s their chance to really show the judges, and us watching at home, what they can do.
While we all have a Signature Dish we can pull out when needed, most of us will never be asked to produce a Showstopper—THAT would be a disaster for me. But anyone who has ever tried to cook from an old family recipe can certainly relate to the GBBS bakers struggling through the Technical Challenge. Instructions are vague, sometimes in shorthand, and often leave out an important step or two. I find successfully making a family recipe to be a “process” that usually takes several tries to get it right.
With that in mind, I tackled Grandmother Mason’s Chocolate Cake. Grandmother Mason is my husband’s grandmother, and along with being one of my favorite people ever, she was quite the good cook. I still hear stories about both her chocolate cake and her caramel cake. Both had three buttery layers of cake with exquisite homemade frosting. I felt a little intimidated by the caramel cake—the first step is to burn sugar in a cast iron skillet—so I went with the chocolate cake for the first attempt.
I find homemade cakes—as in not made from a boxed cake mix—to be daunting for some reason. Homemade cakes sometimes fall, and the chemical magic in a boxed cake mix prevents this from happening pretty much every time. Fallen cakes still taste good, but they aren’t pretty. Since I usually only make layer cakes for special occasions, the pretty part is kind of important. And so, I’ve always used a cake mix to make my layer cakes, but I do dress them up a la The Cake Mix Doctor so they are a little special. Not anymore. Grandmother Mason’s layer cake recipe is delicious with a really nice texture—not too firm and not too squishy. No more boxed cake mix for me.
The frosting, on the other hand was a complete disaster. Fudge frosting is notoriously difficult to work with. It has to be cooked just right, and stirred just right, and put on the cake at just the right time. When you get it right, it is perfection with the texture and taste of smooth, soft fudge. Mess up any of those steps, and you end up with a chalky, grainy mess.
I ended up with a chalky, grainy mess.
So, I lit up the Bat Signal for Aunt Becky, keeper of Grandmother Mason’s cooking traditions, to ask for help. (I actually just tagged her in a post on Facebook.)
The Fudge Icing ingredients are straightforward—sugar, cocoa, salt, milk, butter, and vanilla. You mix the first four ingredients, cook them to the proper point, and stir in the last two ingredients off the heat. Easy peasy, right? Wrong. This is a Technical Challenge, remember. Turns out the type of milk matters. (It should be whole milk, but I used one percent. In hindsight, I should have known this.) The recipe says to cook to “soft boil stage.” I didn’t know what “soft boil stage” meant, so I made a guess that it was soft BALL stage and cooked it to 235 degrees on the candy thermometer before taking it off the heat and stirring in the butter and vanilla. (Aunt Becky says I was right about that one.) The mixture has to cool to just the right point, and then you stir it until it thickens enough to spread. I clearly messed that part up because the frosting went from too runny to stay on the cake to too thick to work with in about a minute and a half. She also tells me I can heat the frosting back to boiling and do the stirring part again if it sets too quickly next time.
There will be a next time because I refuse to be thwarted by something as simple as a fudge frosting. I’ve got my pride as a Southern cook to contend with after all. I will be sure to use whole milk for both the frosting and the cake layers—they were a little dry with the one percent milk I used, but tasty nonetheless—and I’m going to try to find caster, or superfine, sugar, which is a finer crystal than granulated sugar but not quite confectioner’s sugar. I will also make a double recipe because, as you can see in the picture below, one is not nearly enough.
It may be a bad sign that Aunt Becky says she’s found a different recipe for Fudge Frosting that she uses instead, but I will not be lured away from the OG yumminess of Grandmother Mason’s recipe. Once I am victorious, I will report back.
Because we at Sweet Tea are committed to sharing our tragedies as well as our triumphs, here is the picture of my janky cake. In my defense, it is as delicious as it is ugly, and Stephen says it tastes exactly like he remembers his grandmother’s cake tasting. The icing is supposed to firm up, but, um, not quite like this.
Interesting Stuff From The Interwebs
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This is a series of videos of National Guard soldiers taking a break the day after the Inauguration by enjoying the acoustics in the Library of Congress. These soldiers singing inside the Library of Congress will give you chills.
It has been cold as blue blazes in The ATL this week. From the look of Twitter it has been cold everywhere else too, but at least the folks north of us got a nice snow to enjoy. It is definitely cuddle up with a hot chocolate and a good book weather. What’s everyone reading right now? I just finished Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger and am starting There Your Heart Lies by Mary Gordon. I got it in a “mystery box” of books from Capitol Hill Books during quarantine last year, so I have no idea what I’m getting into. Should be fun!
Until next time,
Karla