Well, the Great British Bake Off is now in its third week and I seem to have a little catching up to do on the baking challenge front!

Week one was cakes - Madeira, Mary's Walnut cake and the infamous show-stopper Black Forest gateau! Well, you've seen my version of the Madeira cake. Putting the coconut and chilli in the cake was an inspired idea! Just one more chilli and we would have had the right amount of heat in it!

Mary's walnut cake was next. The result? Oh my! Two layers of delightfully light, fluffy, crunchy walnut cake. Filled with vanilla butter icing and smothered in the most divine, teeth-tingling, sugary meringue icing all topped with caramelised walnuts. Mary's recipe called for 10 caramelised walnuts on top of the cake, but that left me with a substantial amount of caramel and walnuts left over. What to do with them? 

After roughly chopping the remaining walnuts up and swirling them in the glorious golden caramel, I spread the mixture out onto greaseproof paper and let it set before bashing the living daylights out of it to create little shards of walnutty caramellyness. I sprinkled this mixture into the centre of the cake for added decoration. One bite from the cake and it almost felt like you were eating popping candy!

I think in order to catch up with the contestants (and to save our waistlines expanding too quickly here in Bake-A-Long Central), I shall leave the gateau for another time when pudding is in order! So for this week (along with the bread that the contestants are baking), I shall make the second weeks challenge - biscuits. Biscotti and Arlette biscuits should keep me out of mischief for starters. The Arlette sound fantastically fun to make!