The One With The Great British Bake Off

My mate Clementine once suggested that I should apply for The Great British Bake Off. 

This was way back when it was still on BBC2 and 3 old ladies and a goat watched it. 

Not like it is now. Prime-time BBC1 with millions of people watching and those same millions all taking to social media to comment as they watch.

We've just this minute found out who has won this series and congratulations to Nancy. You're a better woman than I am.

Now don't get me wrong I can bake. It's not for nothing that the Lemon Cake family have nicknamed me 'Cakie', because I invariably have a freshly baked cake about my person. 
I'm not a bad baker. I'm not fancy though. I make a respectable plain cake. Ginger, lemon drizzle, carrot, chocolate, Victoria sponge - you know the score. I don't ice. I don't adorn. 
I don't decorate.

I don't make my own fondant! (feels the icy death stare from Mary Berry). 

So there's that against me, because as moist (snigger) as my cakes are I can't make the Taj Mahal out of them. Neither can I construct the Hanging Gardens of Babylon from shortbread. 

I make a lovely sausage roll but, as I haven't made pastry since I was at school, I buy it I'm afraid and the only bread I make involves a trick with a bottle of beer (oh grow up - not like that for goodness sake, people have got to eat it).

So all in all I'm on a non, sour dough, starter to be star baker.

But the main reason I can't apply for The Great British Bake Off is this.

It's nothing to do with Mary Berry looking disapprovingly at me when I say I've never made my own filo pastry (seriously who the hell does? even professional chefs don't do that).

It's nothing to do with hubby fancying Sue Perkins (do you want to tell him he's barking up the wrong tree with that one, or shall I?)

It's not even to do with wilting into a middle aged hormonal mess if I come within 5 feet of Mr Paul Hollywood.

It's this.

I'd swear.

I mean I'd really, really swear.

Proper swearing. Not just 'bloody hell' or 'oh bugger this'. It's so tense in that tent that, to quote Mrs Doyle in 'Father Ted',  I'd say feck and worse than feck!  

How in the name of iced fingers do they not eff and jeff like a docker? I would be effing and blinding with the best of them when it all went tits up or I burnt myself on a Swiss roll tin or someone left my ice cream out of the freezer! 

If my dough hadn't risen, or my cake had collapsed, there is no way on this earth I wouldn't utter my Mum's favourite saying "Well that's pissed on the matches!" 

Or when the steely eyed Hollywood was on the prowl, trying to un-nerve me, I couldn't help but muse "He's everywhere him, like shit in a field." 

They literally wouldn't be able to broadcast a single word I said. 

It's not that I'm a foul mouthed person in general it's just that when they're no kids about.. well I do like a a good swear up. Me and Lemon Cake Lady love a bloody good swear when we're away from the boys. We 'apply ourselves' to quote hubby. A good old fashioned, Anglo Saxon swear is relaxing. Just like baking. 

Only it's not relaxing baking in a tent with millions of people watching you and not being able to shout 'bollocks' when you've got your flavours all wrong and your meringue tastes of soap!

Lavender... my arse..... 

The One With the Cake and the Celebrity Crush

It's been a little while since I did a foodie blog and as today I've been somewhat of a domestic goddess I thought I'd put that right.


Today I made a cake. Not just any old cake but a cake from the new book by "The Great British Bake Off" winner Jo Wheatley "A Passion for Baking". I'd treated myself to the book last week but hadn't got round to looking at it properly yet. As I had three over ripe bananas in my fruit bowl goading me into doing something with them, other than throwing them away, I went in search of a recipe for Banana loaf. 


And here it is

Me being me I mucked about with the recipe a bit as my cupboards dictated. I used golden caster sugar instead of demerara and dark soft brown sugar instead of light. I didn't have any pecans so I just left them out and I put the cinnamon in the mixture rather than sprinkle it on top.


But the results were great. The boy devoured a whole piece at tea time and has been hyper on the slow release energy of bananas and a tonne of sugar ever since. He's been bouncing off the walls like Tigger and is currently in bed and, from what I can gather, is narrating to bear, bunny and monkey entire episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine. 


Ahh at least he's happy! 


I tweeted about my success and the lovely Jo re-tweeted it and then sent me a message back. 


I got a bit star struck as I do in these matters. Well she's off the telly from a programme I really like and her book is great.


I know I'm lame! What can you do? 


Jo Wheatley tweeting me back also meant I was only one degree of separation away from one of the hosts of  "The Great British Bake Off", Mr Paul Hollywood.


Lemon Cake Lady and I have complete and utter teenage style crushes on "the Silver Fox"!


All you have to do is mention whipping up icing with your hand to LCL and she melts into a puddle on the floor.


Clementine has suggested I apply for The Great British Bake Off as a contestant. I'd be hopeless. Yes I can bake. A bit. But not to the standard they require and also I'd be a gibbering wreck. All it would take would be for Paul Hollywood to announce that the technical bake was iced fingers and I'd be a goner!


Although it might be worth it  to go on and say my signature bake was chocolate rice crispy cakes and just see how Paul and Mary Berry coped without laughing or chucking me out the tent? 


Instead I am taking Lemon Cake Lady to the Good Food show in November for her birthday present. I have booked the tickets with Gold seats for the food theatre on Friday to see Mary Berry and the afore mentioned Silver Fox Mr Paul Hollywood doing The Great British Bake Off LIVE! 


Yes LIVE!


We'll be within touching distance!


Well row D, which is certainly within icing flicking distance should his hands get too over enthusiastic whilst whipping up a batch. 


To say we're excited is an understatement. We are grown women. With husbands. And children! Yet we are giggling wrecks. Like teenagers with a crush on the teacher. 


Lets just hope we don't muck about so much we get detention.....