Ugh. This week has been basically, hell. Work has been stressful and busy, and unfortunately probably isn’t going to get any better anytime soon. So let’s embrace the baking!

This week of the Bake Off, week 4, the technical challenge was Creme Caramel, the signature and showstoppers were tortes and layered meringues… They didn’t much inspire me to want to make them, so I decided to revisit week 3, and bite the bullet and embrace a bit of Rough… Puff Pastry making. Note: I have since had an offer to taste test the Creme Caramel if I should decided to make it… so perhaps.

I have made a Tarte Tatin before, and while it was delicious using lovely lemony pastry, well…. regular pastry I can do. Puff pastry I have never attempted, so I thought I would start off small with some Rough Puff.

This was Sarah Jane’s recipe, and is in the Great British Bake Off book, but is also available here.

To show my commitment to the pastry… I even sifted the flour. Yeah I know.

Then got my lumps of butter, cut them into the flour….. yada yada…. until I ended up with this shaggy dough:

Then shaped it into a rectangle so I could roll it:

Then you roll out into a long rectangle, and fold it, a third up from the bottom, then a third down from the top:

Yeah, I know, it looks a bit messy. But bear with me. It gets better, rotate by a quarter, roll again, fold again…. rotate….:

So once I had folded and turned etc 6 times, I put it in the fridge to chill overnight.

The next evening, I put on the oven, then set to making the caramel. Hmmm first issue:

Yep. My pan is black. I was worried this would make it difficult when making the caramel and seeing the change in colour, but actually it worked ok. Meanwhile I chopped some bananas:

It’s funny, but this totally  reminded me of when I was growing up, often the pudding would be sliced bananas in custard, so all these sliced bananas…. I want bananas in custard! Perhaps later in the weekend!

So here is where I forgot to keep taking pictures, but once my caramel was done, I arranged the bananas on the caramel in the bottom of a pie dish, then rolled out the pastry and put it on top. Baked for 35 minutes…….

Tada!

Looking nice and puffy! So… then I flipped it…:

Not bad!

I used the leftover rough puff to make some Palmiers (I have made these before, but only ever with shop bought puff pastry), really easy: just roll out into a horizontal rectangle, scatter with caster sugar, fold in the sides to meet in the middle, more sugar, fold in to the middle, then chill in the fridge for half an hour to firm up. Slice 1cm thick rounds, put them on a baking sheet lined with baking paper, bake at 200C for 12 minutes, turn, then another 7 minutes….

Can I just say check out my puff? I am really proud of the layers for my first attempt! Also, they were super tasty, buttery and delicious! The Banana Tarte Tatin was super tasty too!