Before we start all our Christmas baking I thought I would quickly upload some photos of the cake that Emily made for Rich for his Birthday this year. We all love watching the Great British Bake Off and also enjoy watching An Extra Slice. Rich’s absolute favourite bit is when they show photos of things that other people have had a go at baking, in particular the famous hedgehog cakes. So for his Birthday this year I thought we could make him a hedgehog cake and I would let Emily decorate it all by herself! I was secretly hoping it would be very funny leaving a 4 year old to do it! Click here to see how Emily got on.
I was really pleased when I saw what the technical challenge was last week – it’s been ages since I’ve made something like that and I couldn’t wait to try it! The only downside was that it’s pretty big (it’s huge!) and I was on my own for the weekend. Luckily I had a cross-country race and my team mates were more than happy to help me eat it up!
So this is a slight change to the normal ‘Technical Challenge’ which we do each week, and that’s because the last technical challenge was a bit odd. I don’t mind trying something new but I didn’t want to have to buy random spices and moulds which I probably wouldn’t use again, just for the sake of a challenge. The other option was improvise, but given it was spice week, not having the right spices seemed to defeat the purpose. I also didn’t really agree with the challenge – I couldn’t work out what techniques it was testing. So… 
Before I watched last weeks episode of The Great British Bake Off I was worried that the technical challenge was going to be a bit strange – I’d seen the trailer with a bright green purée! However, after hearing what was in the cake I was excited to make it since I love pistachios.
