One of my favorite cooking shows is The Great British Bake Off. There are a number of items on the show that I wanted to create myself. This dish was Paul Hollywood’s technical challenge and it’s a German 20-layer cake cooked under the broiler, one layer at a time. Since this weekend is Valentine’s Day I thought it would be fun to make a dessert instead of a meal. Mom is responsible for the main course, and we’re having turkey breast. She is the queen of turkey. Not the country the bird. She asked me if I wanted a whole turkey instead of a 7 pound turkey breast and I thought the breast was more than enough. So a light Sunday dinner.

I found a recipe that someone modified from Paul Hollywood’s original recipe. She converted a few ingredients (vanilla bean paste to vanilla extract), which made things a little easier to find. It was an equipment heavy recipe, needing my KitchenAid stand mixer, handmixer and three mixing bowls. Let’s just say my kitchen is a disaster. The first thing I did wasmeasure all the ingredients. This recipe required 10 eggs separated, which was more than I anticipated. The most difficult part was not mixing the cake, glaze or icing, it was clearly the baking. Maybe difficult is not the right word, it took focus and quick decision making in very short periods of time.

Once the cake mixture is prepared, you turn on the broiler and spoon a small portion of the batter into a 8 inch spring form pan. Deciding how much of the batter to put in, was tough. For example this is supposed to be a 20 layer cake but mine is only a 10 or 11 layer cake. I made a rookie mistake by adding too much batter initially because it didn’t look like enough. The best tool to use in spreading the batter was a wooden crêpe spreader. It worked perfectly to ensure that the batter was to the edges. Honestly it feels like you’re making a crêpe instead of a cake, except you’re cooking them on top of each other. Then you put the pan under the broiler and only cook it for two minutes. Sometimes it takes longer, and sometimes it takes less time, to alternate dark and light layers. Once you’ve used all the batter you let the final result cool before glazing.

I was impressed with the final look, it looks beautiful. Mom was quite surprised by how small it was, thinking it was going to be huge because there’s so many eggs in it. It cut nicely and you can see the various layers. But honestly it was a little dry you could not taste the lemon or the apricot the chocolate glaze was very delicious and gave it the moisture needed.

Would I make it again? Yes, but I’d find a way to add moisture between some layers.

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