Welcome to Soggy Bottoms, where, lacking a tent in the British countryside, Autostraddle writers attempt to bake things inspired by The Great British Bake Off in their own homes, to varying degrees of success.
This is literally the hardest thing I’ve ever attempted to do.
I’m a very proud person, and when I do a good job at something just once, I think that I’m an expert at it. So since I’ve successfully baked some cookies and a cake and Hasselback Apples that have been hits at parties, I thought I was a great baker. I’m not. I thought “oh, this cake is cute. I’m a princess. I deserve this cake.” Also, honestly, I wanted to bake something really impressive. I love impressing people and I love feeling good about myself, so I thought “this will be a great way to do that.”
I didn’t think “oh, I have to make sponge cake, custard, jam, whipped cream and marzipan including a freaking rose all from scratch.”
Also, I had forgotten that in the actual episode where they make the prinsesstarta, they talk about how it’s super difficult, first of all because it’s 26 ingredients and 24 fucking steps. Paul Hollywood straight up says to Mary “I think you’re cruel, Mary, I really do. This is a particularly difficult challenge,” when they’re talking about the cake. Oh well.
The amazing bakers on GBBO struggled a lot with this challenge, so surely I’d do it with no trouble, right?
I used Mary Berry’s actual recipe, the one they used in the GBBO episode for the technical challenge, but with a few tweaks. I accidentally didn’t buy enough almonds, so my marzipan was a wet, sticky mess (Sue Perkins would probably make a cheeky pun about this). I had to add a ton of powdered sugar and even some flour to it in order to make it work. I also used modeling chocolate to make the rose instead of ready to roll icing and I caved and bought pre-made jam because my mom said this was already going to take all day (it actually took me two days). It took me forever and I didn’t understand what I was doing a lot of the time, but I had a ton of fun.
Look at me working hard making marzipan, custard and three layers of sponge.
Anyway, onto the cake! First I made the custard, because my mom wisely told me this should be a two day process. My first steps, before the actual start of the recipe, were to separate the egg yolks and to make the castor sugar. I’m already falling apart. I couldn’t get the food processor to work. This is where I realized that not only is this going to be harder than I thought, it’s going to be a lot harder than the harder that I thought it was going to be. It turns out I had the top on backwards. But I did find out that I’m actually pretty good at separating eggs! As I scooped vanilla seeds out of a bean that cost two and a half dollars I realized how ridiculous this all is. I felt like freaking Gwyneth Paltrow, which is not ever a feeling I want to have. I’ve spent an hour on this cake already and all I have is custard and ground almonds. But honestly, my custard is delicious and I feel like a freaking Star Baker already. Legit, Sue Perkins would come over, taste my custard and make a joke about it. We would laugh and it would be great. I’m already feeling like a Queen.
Look at this cute little rose I made out of chocolate!
The next day I woke up and showered and ate some food and got back to baking. First I made the sponge, which was probably the easiest part (or maybe making the whipped cream was the easiest part because it was just whipping cream?). It also smelled ridiculously good and looked so gorgeous and fluffy that I can’t believe I don’t make these all the time! I think making the sponge and having it turn out so well really boosted my confidence and gave me what I needed to to make the rest of the cake. In the episode Mary says this is a difficult sponge to make, but I did a really, really great job. My mom even said “The sponge has a good consistency” when I gave her a slice of the finished cake.
Look at how freaking good that sponge looks!!!
While I was baking the cake, I started on the marzipan, which, like I said, I really struggled with. I took the ground almonds and added the sugar and eggs and stuff, but it took me a while of adding extra things to make it actually work. Also, I’m pretty sure on the show they had almonds that didn’t have the skin on them? Because mine did and the marzipan was brown before I added the green food coloring and still had brown speckles in it afterward. But it still looked and tasted pretty dang good.
The cake in three layers, after I put whipped cream on it, and after I covered it all with marzipan.
Assembling the cake was definitely the hardest part. I tried rolling out the marzipan but was again wildly unsuccessful (I think marzipan is my baking Achilles’ Heel), so I had my mom step in and do it. It turns out, she’s a total pro — and I’ll admit that she did the hardest step for me. She found out that the trick is to cover the mat with sugar, not powdered sugar, and that way it won’t stick. Still though, I honestly feel so freaking cool about the fact that I cut a sponge cake into three pieces, successfully stacked the layers and placed some marzipan over the top, with a pretty freaking nice modeling chocolate rose, all that I made myself. I’m fancy-ass.
I mostly just Gryffindored my way through a lot of this process, using my supreme confidence in my skills as my guide. They say cooking is an art and baking is a science, but I hate science, so I treat baking like it’s an art too, and I seem to do pretty dang well.
This cake was fucking delicious. I think I would’ve come in second place in this challenge, and that’s just because my marzipan was made with almonds that had their skin on, so it ended up being speckled with brown. I mean, I know they only had two and half hours, so really it’s no comparison, but I’m going to compare myself to them because that’s the point of this whole thing. After I looked at my cake and tasted it, I thought about entering a TV baking competition and then that night in bed I seriously considered a career in baking. I know that there are like, a hundred steps and a hundred ingredients, but jeez, I did a great job.
Look at those layers! Mary’s cake from the show is on the left, mine is on the right.
Actually, now that I’m done with it, it wasn’t that difficult at all. Like, sure, it took forever and had a million steps and took two days, but I feel like I kind of effortlessly aced it. But after baking this, I realized that I’d be a terrible GBBO competitor because every time I successfully did something I shouted out “I’m a fucking all-star!” or “I’m a boss ass bitch!” Ignore what I said at the beginning of this essay, I’m a fucking impressively great baker. I rule. I am a Star Baker and I’m pretty sure Mary Berry would be proud of me.
Well, this is inspiring!! <3
And who cares if your marzipan isn't bright green. Unpeeled almonds taste better anyway.
what the actual fuck. your cake looks EXACTLY like mary berry’s.
thank youuuuuuuu
mey this is amazing!
i loled so many times, also will now be thinking about cake all day
cake cake cake cake cake cake cake
Mey you’re such a BOSS ASS BITCH.
This article just gave me the motivation to power through this horrible thing I have to do for work right now.
yesssss chloe you are a BOSS ASS BITCH TOO! I believe you can do it!!
Mey. Mey. You can’t take one of the challenges from our worrisome but ultimately heart-warming baking show and get your American can-do spirit all over it. That’s not right.
(No but seriously, well done, the cake looks great)
please be sue actual fucking perkins oh my god
CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE VERIFY SUE PERKINS
SUE IS IT YOU!? PLEASE TELL US
OH MY GOD???
1. mey this cake and article are both amazing and i laughed out loud so frequently reading this 2. that picture of you holding the finished princesstarta and smiling at the camera is so cute!!!! 3. do you want to make a sue perkins zine together
As a former pastry chef I want to congratulate you on the amazing job you did. The sponge cake looks amazing and many people trip up just on that part. The vanilla beans may seem pretentious, and I love your comment on Gwyneth Paltrow, but it makes a huge difference in quality. Next time for the marzipan just buy some almond paste at Amazon. Between the sponge cake, marzipan, and custard you are a fucking rock star.
Or buy a cake shaped piece of marzipan even https://www.handla24.se/ProductImages/a_05/original/7318690065562.jpg
i really cannot believe my eyes
Here as a non-baker to say I cannot believe that any human person could magic such a perfectly dome-shaped cake into being, this is nuts and I have no idea how you ever brought yourself to cut into it! But also it looks delicious.
You are a fucking all-star. That sounds exhausting and complicated.
I would never ever make a prinsesstårta myself – I just buy ’em at the store.
Some questions I have:
Is prinsesstårta a common cake in the UK?
Why a chocolate rose??
Why make everything from scratch??? <- Mostly this. Why oh why? Unnecessary torture.
thank you!
here are some answers:
It’s more of a swedish thing, i don’t know how common it is in the UK
well, it’s supposed to be a fondant rose, but i didn’t have any fondant, so i used modeling chocolate
Because it was fun! (also i didn’t make the jam from scratch, unfortunately)
Here’s another answer! In my experience it’s very uncommon to find it in the UK. (But common in Sweden and Finland)
Ok!
That’s odd, because in Sweden the rose is marsipan (which I imagine is much easier to mold).
Oh you ambitious people and your strange ways of having fun…
Not really, GBBO just likes to select the most complicated to make cakes and other bakes from all over the world!
Is it just me, or does that cake look like a boob?
Nothing wrong with that whatsoever, btw.
I was thinking the same thing.
dear diary today I shed one actual tear because mey’s layers were so gorgeous
cecelia i love youuuuu
Princesstårta is the bad ass of all Swedish cakes. I live in Sweden and have eaten my fair share of this creamy evilness. I’d say yours looks pretty damn good (I’m still talking about cake here, BTW).
I feel very emotional about how beautiful this is. Also, you.
Also I laughed a lot and I peed a little because you’re hilarious. #bossassbitch
KaeLyn i love you so much and your comment makes me even more proud
Every time I bake I imagine that I’m in an episode of Bake Off. I picture the camera zooming in on my sweaty face as I mutter things like “that’ll have to do” or “well I can’t redo it now” and whenever something goes awry I can hear the 5-minutes-left music in my head. It’s actually pretty great.
Mey that cake is awesome but what has me all in a tizzy is your admirable, delightful, and badass CONFIDENCE.
No offense to Michelle Rodriguez, but they definitely should have cast you opposite Demi in that video.
Mey! This is so impressive!
I just watched this series not too long ago with my wife. You’re a rock star, Mey.
Also, did you grind your own almonds? I imagine they would have used either almond flour or blanched almond grounds to get such a light colored marzipan.
yeah, i did! and yeah, i think they did too
Also also, I really want to try making this now.
Can we have an AS baking club? Like a reading club but instead of talking about books we discuss the recipes and post pictures of our creations??
Honestly, Mey, overconfidence is one of the most off-putting traits a person can have. So much self-praise, so much self-admiration… That is not at all what GBBO is about.
And it took you two whole days to make it? With the help of your mom and store bought jam? Mary B. would never go for that. She even frowns at store bought decorations!
I am dead impressed, Mey! I wanted to try making over after seeing it on the show, but I think I’ll just invite you over instead.
THANK YOU!!!! i’ll happily bake one for you!!!
As an genuine British person and baker person, I would like to applaud your confidence! That is half the battle. The prinsesstarta looks beautiful – that dome of cream! the fluffy cake!
P.S. Save your deseeded vanilla beans and put them in sugar/rum to make vanilla sugar/extract. That way you get 2 things out of one expensive purchase.
Mey this cake looks so good!! (just like you)
(hey everyone i have a big gay crush on Mey in case you didn’t know and her baking skills are only intensifying my crush)
I have a big gay crush on you too!!!
I was glad I was in the office by myself because I laughed out loud at the line about Gwyneth Paltrow. I also commend your Prinsesstårta-making prowess. I watched the series on Netflix recently (and developed a crush on Sue Perkins..lol), and I think your cake looks better than what most of the contestants came out with.
i read this three times today because that’s how much
I LIKE IT
I am v excited for this promising new series, if only I was a master of posting pictures in comments so I could leave lots of gifs of Mary Berry
OK i dunno why it took me so long to read this article. I think it’s because I went to Ikea once with a pal and ordered “TWO PRINCESS PIES FOR TWO PRINCESSES” and they gave us mini-versions of this cake and it was so so so good but I never found them again so I promised myself that I’d never even dream about this mysterious cake or give it any brain space because it filled me with such longing. And then it popped up on my favorite baking show! Just waltzed in! But then I saw how hard and impossible it was to make so made myself Never Think About It. AND THEN you write a whole article about how to do it!!! MEY! You’re such an inspiration! I don’t even like baking but feel now that it’s within my power to create and eat this wonderful thing and I bet, 100% not sarcastically, that the cake would be so so so worth all the hard work! <3
I considered not being vegan while reading this post