Week One: BISCUIT WEEK
Traditionally the first week is Cake Week, but this year it went biscuity. The signature bake challenge was to bake a batch of a 'regional biscuits', so Louise baked Bristol Biscuits.

These raisin and cinnamon biscuits need cassia oil, which was ordered from Health4All if you need your own supply. Make sure you get the edible version and not the massage oil!!  

Cassia oil has a lot of health benefits, apparently, including being an aid to circulation, an anti-depressant, and something which supposedly helps with diarrhoea and sickness. Essentially, it's a Chinese cinnamon oil, distilled from the steaming of the leaves and bark. 

The biscuits were easy to make (recipe available here), but it was quite a wet mix, not great for shaped cookies. The biscuit fingers came out best. They are soft, not a crunchy biscuit, quite like a light shortbread. Bristol Biscuits are also called 'Easter Biscuits' so Louise made them extra Easter-like by drizzling some green icing on top.
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As for the taste, they're just like a cinnamon biscuit, but without the colouration the powdered spice can bring. Louise says "I'm glad I've finally be able to bake them - living in Bristol, if felt like I really had to sometime!"

Week Two: CAKE WEEK
Our favourite week! This week saw traybakes feature as a signature challenge. Louise has baked a cherry tray bake, and made it a little fancier. They're named 'Patricia's', after her Grandma, who loved cherry cake.

​Don't they look delicate?
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Week Three: BREAD WEEK
Always a good week in the tent, this series saw a signature bake of Chelsea Buns. Criticism from the judges on the show were things like 'over baked', 'under proved' and 'not enough filling'... Louise says she sympathises with all of these!

Her first ever attempt at Chelsea Buns wasn't bad at all, but she rolled the dough too thick so they took longer to bake, the dough didn't rise when proving, and Louise ran out of currants - but saved it with some cherries, yay!

​What do you think?

Week Five: SPICE WEEK
Spice week's signature bake was a ginger cake. 
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"This one was a lot of fun," says Louise, "and I love a spiced cake! My hand slipped on the cinnamon, but the cake wasn't any worse for it."  She admits the photo's not great - tiredness and being sick of cleaning up sloppy buttercream to blame! - but you get the idea. The cake was moist and sticky, definitely one we're adding to our repertoire at 280 Bakes. 

Bake the cake Louise did by following this recipe - with or without the extra cinnamon! Louise doubled the recipe to make a three sponge tower, and made the caramel buttercream a toffee flavour instead -  warning, it was a bit sloppy. Top tip is to make the buttercream as thick as possible but still spreadable to get defined butercream filling and tidier outside decoration (butercream and crumbed ginger biscuits). 
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Week Six: PASTRY WEEK
Now, this was always going to be interesting. Louise has never (!!) made pastry before, and certainly not filo pastry. The veggie samosa recipe from BBC Good Food looked good, so she went with that one... Delicious, but definitely not fine filo pastry!

Batch two, Louise used shop-bought filo for apple pie samosas. Trading the raisins for super seed mix (chia, etc.), they were a great pudding last night. You can see the difference in pastry!

"I'll be much more likely to make my own shortcrust pastry in the future now, having seen how easy that type can be," says Louise, "but I'm definitely still going to buy ready-made filo!"

Week Nine: PATTISERIE WEEK
"I don't have a Madeline tin so this one is on hold for the time being!" ~ Louise
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Week Ten: THE FINAL!!!
Mmmm… Doughnuts! Stay tuned to see how Louise got on with making doughnuts from scratch!
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Did you try any of the signature bakes from this year's Bake Off? We'd love to hear about how you got on!

The Team @ 280 Bakes
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From cupcakes to large party cakes, and vegan and gluten free available, we have Halloween cakes for everyone and every budget. Drop us a line to order, and save 10% if you order before 7pm tomorrow (19th Oct) with code EARLYHALLOWEEN. 

This week we welcomed Triana to the team, our latest home baker recruit. She's a Bristol resident, originally from the USA. She's dab hand at gluten free baking, so if you order a gluten free cake from us, you may well have one from our new team member!

Triana says she loves the creativity of decorating cakes, so we look forward to her designs. He favourite cake is chocolate though - no contest!

Triana joining us has made us the biggest team we've ever been - how exciting! You're so welcome, Triana - let's get you baking!

Louise
Owner, 280 Bakes
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The cake below was baked by me for the Environment Agency's Flood and Coast conference. It's a mini version of their river monitoring gadget, the ArcBoat. We love it because it's a replica, complete with handles and the EA logo. Congrats on selling your 100th boat!
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The doughnut cake above was made by one of our previous bakers, Destiny, for her doughnut loving son's birthday. It's immaculate and so pretty - bet it tasted better than a doughnut does, too! 

The shark cake was an inspired bake by our Heidi. She painted marshmallows to create the 3D sharks for a customer in Bristol in the summer.  His son is obsessed with sharks, so the cake, needless to say, went down a treat. 
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Finally, we love these waterlily cupcakes made for a Hen Do. They appear to be floating on the blue jelly, like they're on a pond. The chocolate work was fiddly for the petals, but it was worth it. There were 15 more cupcakes in this order, quite a chocolate crafting challenge, but they looked so effective. See the pollen, even? Love it. 

Well done bakers, we look forward to seeing more creative cake designs. 
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