Gingerbread House Bake-off
Tis the season to be all merry, Christmas brings out the festive spirit in everyone. So, when Curry’s PC World dropped an invite to test out NEFF Slide & Hide® oven for a Gingerbread house bake off challenge I thought why not. I never done a bake-off and baking is quite a difficult skill to master, and it is my first time building a gingerbread house.
As part of the selected 26 bloggers, we were invited down to L’atelier des Chefs in St Pauls for a great bake-off. An introduction from the people of Curry’s PC World and NEFF Ovens talked us through the oven’s functionality. You may have seen the famous NEFF Slide and Hide oven on The Great British Bake Off show.
The NEFF B3ACE4HN0B Slide and Hide Electric Oven is constructed with stainless steel, it has a capacity of 71 litres to hold of food, perfect for those big bakes and roasts. NEFF ovens are made in Germany, the patented CircoTherm® fan technology gives even heat distribution. With these ovens, you can cook your starters, mains, desserts in one go without flavours interfering with one or the other. The oven has a quick heat up, no need for pre-heating, as the powerful stainless-steel fan, blows hot air straight to the food.
NEFF Oven Functions
The side and hide are definitely one of the unique selling points of the NEFF oven. The door hides inside the oven, giving you easy access to the oven. Even easier for cleaning, and if you get the pyrolytic ones it even self-cleans with just a wipe down.
Once the introduction of the NEFF ovens was over, we were split into teams of three and prepared for our gingerbread house bake-off.
Canapes
The gingerbread dough was already pre-made for us, we had to start cutting out the shapes of the house to bake. Given a template from L’atelier des chefs we cut the shapes and used the left-over dough for our cookies. Most of the team were cutting the shapes for the house, so I was left to make canapes with the rest of the girls. We chopped up the tomatoes, parsley and sliced up bread for the bruschetta and left the salmon and chives for the second canape.
Teamwork was key for the judges, even when the cookies were overcooked, we turned the disaster to a positive and made them into shells for our salmon rose and crème fraiche canapes.
If you thought to build a gingerbread house was easy, it’s not. The icing was the glue to joining the parts together, and you have to wait until it’s tacky otherwise the biscuit’s weight would be too heavy. I had the idea of using the leftover cookie dough to create soil for the gingerbread house and adding the spray glitter for finishing touches. Rebecca from runawaykiwi made miniature cactus for the patio of our house.
Results
Time was up and we had to carry our creation over to the judging table. It was nerve-racking and the anticipation of the announcement for the winning team was finally made. Our team won, for being the most creative on the fly and the best teamwork. I learned that it was easy to work in a team with a bunch of strangers and I’m great at Art Directing.
Winners
Thank you, Curry’s PC world and NEFF ovens, for the invite. If you want to read about the event on Curry’s PC world official blog head over here.