Last night the Buffets By Design team enjoyed another fantastic episode of The Great British Bake Off  It was ‘Advanced Dough Week’ this week. Sounded a bit like an exam to us but it turned out to be all about enriched dough, such as sweet breads and doughnuts. We were gutted to see Martha go but her technical bake, the Povitica, was so raw it was inedible. In fact everyone, except Chetna who just happened to make a variant of the Povitica in the signature challenge, presented inedible, raw dough. Patience is the key when baking enriched dough. It needs to dry out in a long bake at a low temperature.

Of course, cooking doughnuts is much quicker with a quick deep fry and over cooking was more of a problem here. We loved Luis’ cocktail inspired doughnuts, especially his Baileys ones served in cocktail glasses with a shot of the drink itself. What a fantastic idea for a party buffet.

We have lots of fantastic sponges and cream cakes on our buffet catering menu If you fancy something a bit special for a party in Croydon or Surrey and feel inspired but Luis’ cocktail bakes then do get in touch and have a chat with us. We’ll see what we can do.

After the drama of last week’s ‘Bin Gate,’ The Great British Bake Off  this week treated us to a master class in pastry with custard tarts, a poached pear wrapped in a spiral of puff pastry and some stunning show stopper tiered pies.

Pies as a centre piece are not something we see often these days but, in the seventeenth century, long before cake became the highlight of the buffet, the wedding catering  star was the bride pie. This was an elaborately decorated pie filled with sweet meats, believed to have aphrodisiac properties, mutton or mincemeat. Hidden in the pie was a glass ring and whoever found it in their portion would be the next to be married.