GBBO Final - Victoria Sandwich Showstopper

How is it that the final of GBBO came so quickly?! Thankfully The Apprentice will take it's place on Wednesday nights and rather than dreaming of being an amazing baker, I'll instead dream of swanning around London in a sharp business suit!

I couldn't let the final go though without a real showstopper of a final bake so I could only really go for the "British Classic" round and what could be more classic than a Victoria Sandwich? Very kindly Tesco offered to send me a voucher to cover the cost of some of my ingredients, so there was no excuse - I had to go large!

The victoria sponge is simple in it's method and decoration, which meant it would be a challenge to turn it into a cake worthy of a Showstopper title! I wanted to push myself to try a new technique so I made macarons too and decorated them to look like mini victoria sponges. I also made some strawberry crisps and chocolate leaves as well as my own strawberry jam. I decided to go all out and make it a three tier cake, because if you can't do it for the final of GBBO, when can you?!!

For the basic cake recipe I used equal weights of butter, sugar, beaten eggs and self raising flour, with a dash of vanilla extract for added flavour. Cream the butter & sugar together until light & fluffy then add the eggs little by little, whisking until incorporated each time. Finally add the vanilla extract & flour and fold in until fully combined. Bake in a 160C oven for 20-25 minutes. I think all in I used about 800g of the four ingredients to make my three tiers, but it all blurred into confusion by the 3rd bake!

My strawberry jam used 300g of chopped strawberries to 150g of caster sugar. Brought to the boil and then boiled vigorously for 10 minutes, although despite leaving it to cool it didn't really set! My cream filling was 300ml of whipped double cream with a tsp of vanilla essence & 25g icing sugar folded through.

To make my macarons I used this simple recipe from Delicious Magazine. I filled them with a layer of raspberry jam and white chocolate ganache.

Strawberry crisps were made by slicing strawberries, laying on a non stick baking sheet and sprinkling with icing sugar. They were then baked in a low oven (100C) for 1 hour until dried through.

Finally bramble leaves were coated with melted white chocolate, coloured with green gel and left to harden, before the leaves were peeled away.

I'm so pleased with how this turned out. I love the simplicity of it, while being proud that so many different elements all came together.

It's been an absolute joy to take part in The Great Bloggers Bake Off again this year and I'll most definitely be back again next year! Massive thanks to Jenny for keeping us all on track and all the co-hosts that helped take the strain!

Special thanks also to Tesco for very kindly sending me a voucher to cover the costs of my ingredients. You can find lots of recipes on Tesco.com/realfood

Linking up with