Chocolate week

This is the fourth week of Season 14 of The Great British Baking Show ™ and focuses on the baking of bread.

This page is all about the food that the show brings to our screens. The goal is to have a lasting memory of some of the flavors and taste combinations, to bring some creativity and ideas to your own cooking. I hope you find it fun and useful.

Signature Dish

Chocolate Torte

A 'torte' is a type of cake, generally (but not necessarily) flourless and usually made of the finest ingredients. For the fourth episode of Great British Bake Off ™, the contestants are asked to make a glorious chocolate torte without wheat flour.

Who made what?

Mexican Torte

Made by: Dan. Sponge of ground hazelnuts, guanabana liqueur and dark chocolate. Topped with chocolate ganache and chili chocolate truffles.

Ginger and Amaretto Torte

Made by: Tasha. Sponge of dark chocolate and ground almonds flavored with ginger and Amaretto and topped with piped praline and white chocolate ganache and ginger mascarpone kisses and caramelized almonds. Paul Hollywood said "combining ginger and chocolate is really clever but you need to get the balance just right".

Cherry and Chocolate Torte

Made by: Cristy. This is a double layered flourless chocolate and cherry sponge with cherry brandy, Chantilly cream and finished with a white chocolate collar.

Made by: Dan. Sponge of ground hazelnuts, guanabana liqueur and dark chocolate. Topped with chocolate ganache and chili chocolate truffles.

Raspberry and Chocolate Torte

Made by: Josh. Josh ground his own pecans for 'pecan flour' - he mentioned that the grinds pecans in a 1:1 blend with icing sugar (also known as powdered sugar). His pecan and chocolate sponge was layered with chocolate cremeux, raspberry chantilly cream and home grown raspberries.

Mocha Chocolate Torte

Made by: Rowan. This is a completely flourless chocolate sponge, layered with coffee swiss meringue buttercream and milk chocolate mousse.

"I Cherry-ish You" Chocolate Torte

Made by: Dana. This is a three-layered ground almond and chocolate torte filled with cherry compote, white chocolate mascarpone buttercream and candied almonds.

Hazelnut and Chocolate Torte

Made by: Matty. Chocolate torte topped with a hazelnut praline mousse and chocolate cremeux, all coated in a chocolate mirror glaze and tempered chocolate shards.

Dreamy Chocolate Torte

Made by: Nicky. Nicky bravely decided to put a chocolate mousse beneath her chocolate and vanilla rum torte, all covered with a piped chocolate ganache and tempered chocolate.

Different types of sponge cake

Victoria Sponge

Genoise Sponge

Italian Genoise Sponge - this is the same as classic Genoise sponge except that all the ingredients are used at the same temperature so the butter, in the Italian Genoise, is not melted.

Chiffon Sponge

Angel food

Devil's food

Swiss Roll Sponge

Jaconde Sponge

Madeira Sponge

Different types of cake filling

Buttercream

Mascarpone Cream

Creme Patisseiere

Fruit Curd

Cremeux

Compote

Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Italian Meringue Buttercream

Different types of cake topping

Royal Icing

Glace Icing

Chocolate Ganache

Poured Fondant

Rolled Fondant

Marzipan

Mirror Glaze

Technical Challenge - White Chocolate Cheesecake

The technical challenge for Season 14 Episode 4 (Chocolate week) was to make 6 perfectly baked cheesecakes. These needed to include caramelized white chocolate and be topped with a layer of blackcurrant jelly and tempered white chocolate decorations.

Prue Leith's foolproof recipe for these cheesecakes is here.

This was an interesting dish, mainly because it was being created in a competitive kitchen where each contestant only has one oven. You will notice in Prue Leith's recipe (link is above) that she writes in her intro "Baking white chocolate in a low oven caramelises the sugars to create ‘blonde’ chocolate, which has a distinctive, nutty sweetness. This, in turn, brings a whole new level of flavour to these cheesecakes." However, the contestants were instructed to use the microwave to caramelize the chocolate and this proved a slight downfall for many of them. I have experimented with using both a microwave and a low oven the caramelize the white chocolate and it is much easier to miss the exact moment in a microwave.

Criticisms of the contestants cheesecakes were as follows:

Cheesecake taken out too early, leaves a dip in the top
Overbaking the cheesecake makes the filling gritty
White chocolate, if over-caramelized, make the color too dark and the cheesecake a little chewy
The oat base MUST be even - irregular bases impact the perfection of the dish
The jelly and chocolate must go onto a cool cheesecake

Matty was judged as star baker in Chocolate Week,