Baking Bad: What to do with your GBBO disasters (2024)

By the time the final 12 make it into the white tent of baking glory they will have had some weeks to practice their signature bakes. I had three days and ended up with many a cracked/floppy/broken cake, one even hurled itself onto the floor in despair.

This happened more than once:

The thing is they all tasted good and I wasn’t about to chuck them away just for being somewhat…quirky in their Swiss roll-ness. So if you do have a baking bad moment with your Swiss roll here are some ideas so your hard work doesn’t go to waste.

Cracks upon rolling:

Simply slice your cake into small squares and pipe buttercream or whatever filling you had planned on top of one square then sit another piece of cake on top and pipe some more buttercream – lots of buttercream. Happy days.

Mixture rises too much:

This is how it should have looked….

This is what I ended up with…

This was a banana and strawberry swirled cake mixture, it was not happy about being a Swiss roll and rebelled selfishly in my hands. The best thing to do in this instance is whack it in a food processor and turn it into cake crumbs. You can then add these to muffins in place of some of the flour, or add them to a new cake (not a Swiss roll mind, it didn’t appreciate it the first time) or combine with some buttercream icing, roll into balls, freeze then dip in melted chocolate.

Banana and strawberry muffins:(makes 12)

Wet mix:

• 100g butter, melted
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla paste
• 2 large ripe bananas, mashed
• 200g fresh strawberries, quartered
• 100ml milk

Dry mix:

• 200g cake crumbs
• 100g plain flour
• 150g light brown muscovado sugar (plus extra for sprinkling)
• 50g desiccated coconut
• 50g dark chocolate chips
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

1. Heat your oven to 180C (fan oven) and line a muffin tray with 12 muffin cases.
2. Combine all your wet ingredients and mix well. In a separate bowl combine your dry mix then carefully fold the dry into the wet, don’t over mix. Spoon into the muffin cases then sprinkle each one with some muscovado sugar and bake for about 30mins, check with a skewer to see if the cake mix is cooked, remember they will be quite moist due to the strawberries and banana.

Tastes great, looks a little messy:

This is a cake to giveto your neighbours, it’s rustic yeah? Just say you were messing around in the kitchen and baked them something to say thanks for being wonderful (if you live in London they will probably be wondering who the hell you are by this point). Giving cake is nice, even messy ones.

Cake hurls itself onto floor in despair

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