So this week’s technical challenge is going to be a Treacle Tart. I know I’m a day early, but I’ve got to go to work tomorrow, then my friend is coming a-visiting to pick up the sugar flowers, so I thought I would bake today. Plus it gave me an excuse to prance about the kitchen and work out some of those aches from having been hunched over sorting out LEGO pieces all afternoon.

Last time I had a piece of Treacle Tart has got to be years ago, I can remember it being topped, weirdly, with some crushed cornflakes or something? Plus it was kinda yuck. Generally, not good memories of said tart. But the Treacle Tarts of my youth! Homemade Treacle Tart! Even, occasionally, school dinner Treacle Tart, that’s what we like.

This recipe was provided for the show as the Technical Challenge for week 3 by the Queen of cookery herself, Mary Berry CBE, so you know it should be good.

I have the book, The Great British Bake Off: How to turn everyday bakes into Showstoppers, but the recipe is also available here from BBC Food.

The pastry I made in the food processor…as usual, I can make it by hand, but after a day of faffing about with LEGO, I was being lazy (one of these challenges I might actually do it properly), so cheated.

After chilling in the fridge for… well definitely 20 minutes but it may have been longer, I rolled it out and lined the tin.

Note: this is the incorrect tin. Alas, my tin is 23cm rather than the 18cm stated. So for the recipe I did 1.5x everything, so I was sure to have enough… (In the end I had oodles of pastry, so I made Bakewell tarts with it later in the week!)

I employed Mr M as chief breadcrumb maker, as I had been his LEGO slave all afternoon:

Note: I used some of my plaited loaf for the breadcrumbs as we didn’t have any other white bread, and as I made a Sourdough loaf yesterday morning… we had quite a bit of bread to use up!

So I got the treacle all runny, added the breadcrumbs, zest of lemon, then used my badass lemon juicer to juice my lemons:

It’s from Pampered Chef. It really juices those lemons! note: I have had some comments on ny juicer, you can buy it here, it’s quite expensive, but really robust, good quality, and….. well… Awesome. I think Lakeland do something similar these days too.

Whether because of how awesome my lemon juicer is (leading to always getting loads of juice out, much more than a regular juicer – good if you love lemon as much as me), or the type of bread I was using, the mixture was super runny still, so I had to add more breadcrumbs than the amount stated. Then filled my tin…

Now it was ready for some lattice work!

I used my Pizza wheel to cut strips from the reserved pastry (note: it has already been egg washed at this point), then laid strips horizontally across the top, then started to add the verticals. For each vertical strip, I just laid it across, then lifted the horizontal up and over. Then once this was done, trimmed the edges, and it was done!

Then it was time to bake.

Let me tell you, when I opened the door to take it out… there was this waft of lemony loveliness…. I figured we were in for something special.

Left it about five whole minutes, which is all we could stand, then unfurled it from the tin:

Then about a whole 30 seconds passed before we had to cut into it.

Now tell me that isn’t a good looking Treacle Tart! It tastes delicious too, the lemon lifting the flavour nicely, texture good, no soggy bottom, nice bit of colour…. I would be hoping for near the top of the table with this one!

Now here’s where I attempt a bit of a linky link:

Lottie’s World of Cakes and Bakes is having a bit of a Bake Off Challenge!

So this is week 3. After the episode has aired, perhaps I shall make something else too, I think it’s Tarte Tatin tonight to go along with the Treacle Tart, but what else?