Sadly Koekedoor is coming to an end next week, and at the end of episode 12 on Thursday only two contestants were left. The ingredient which was the hero of the episode was butter, and the theme was ‘An Ode to Butter’.

Once again I am externally grateful to Koekedoor Content Manager and publicity consultant Errieda du Toit for her detailed notes about the episode this week, given that I had to attend an event on Thursday evening, and therefore could not watch it.

The episode celebrated the return to the popularity of butter in baking, being a more natural ingredient than margarine. Butter gives baking flavour, adds colour, gives dough flakiness, shortens, tenderizes, tastes good, and has a good mouthfeel, having a melting point below our body temperature. One can cut butter, cream it, or whip it.  ‘It’s the essence of buttercream frosting and gave the world short bread, buttery puff pastry and sandy salty sable Bretons’, writes Errieda.

To match the butter theme, the judges wore yellow, Elizabeth Cloete wearing soft buttery yellow, Mari-Louis
Guy wore a bright cheerful yellow, and Tiaan Langenegger wore saffron yellow.  The contestants were intrigued by the signs of aloes and bright colours, which were clues for the Fyngebak, as was the Frida Khalo look of Mari-Louis and other Mexican motifs.

Errieda shared that unlike previous episodes, all three sections of episode 12 were shot in one day, the shooting of all other episodes having been spread over two days. This created pressure on the contestants, in challenging their thinking and planning.

1. Tuisgebak/Home Baking

The first challenge was to bake scones. While seemingly easy, over-mixing can be a baker’s downfall.  The contestants were tasked to bake six each of three varieties of scones within 75 minutes. Part of the challenge was to make butter to serve with the scones.

Corli made:

• Savoury spoon scones (the batter is spooned into the pans),  flavoured with cheese and chives
• Traditional tea scones
• A Scone wheel with ricotta and rosemary

Wessels made:

• Blue cheese and fig scones
• Tea scones (using buttermilk), and he made an inventive butter, churning strawberries and cream together until it turned into strawberry butter.
• Orange and blueberry scone wheel

Sanet made:

• Classic scones with a touch of vanilla and lemon. Her method was interesting, in that she placed the raw scones on a hot baking sheet
• Cranberry, pecan nut, and orange scone wheel
• Biltong scones

2.  Fyngebak/Advanced Technique Challenge

The contestants were tasked to bake a Genoese sponge cake, to be decorated with butter icing.  The contestants had to have imagination, an icing bag, a steady hand, and love bright colours.  The cake was designed by Mari-Louis Guy, and was inspired by the iconic Mexican artist Fridah Kahlo, renowned for her use of bright colours, despite a life of pain and loss.

The three-layered cake is made with melted butter, and had to be perfectly baked for the style of icing. The bakers also had to make a piquante pepper, jalapeno, strawberry, and lime filling for in-between the layers.  The yellow icing (yellow depicting both butter and Frida’s love of sunny colours) had to be finished with sharp edges, and then decorated with other colours to create a watercolour effect.

Once again the contestants were only given a recipe for the cake, but they did not see what the final cake would look like. However, the contestants were given artistic licence in their buttercream-piped flowers and cacti for decorating the top of the cake. Errieda explained that the contestants could use very bright colours or a monochromatic palette in various hues. The flowers did not have to be biologically correct, so the contestants could use their imagination.  Wessels, being a passionate gardener, with pruning skills rather than piping skills, surprised the other contestants with his cake, saying that he outdone them.

3.  Pronkgebak/Flaunt It Challenge

The final Pronkgebak challenge was the baking of French tea bakes, being elegant in their simplicity. Butter forms the foundation of this style of baking.

Tiaan set the challenge, providing the contestants with a three-tiered cake stand, for which they had to bake small cakes/cookies, being financiers, Madeleines, and Sable Bretons (a sweet salty shortbread cookie unique to Brittany).  They had to make and use brown butter in one of the bakes and add some ‘pronk’ without overpowering the original, classic French bakes.

Wessels chose the brown butter for his financiers, the correct choice, further emphasising the nuttiness of the brown butter with hazelnut praline. He also used some Frangelico, a  hazelnut liqueur, also offering a shot to the girls. He made Jaffa cake Madeleines, a blend of British and French.  Jaffa cakes are also a much loved snack cake in some communities of the Cape, and the flavours are chocolate with orange, the orange normally in the form of jelly or jam. He used naartjies as a nod to the Cape and Van der Hum liqueur and dark chocolate.  The salty character of his sable Bretons was enhanced with Maldon salt flakes and crunchy bits of smoky bacon.

Sanet:  Her financiers were flavoured with vanilla, honey, and toasted almonds. She decorated them with icing flavoured with Frangelico and vanilla.  Making more financiers than the six needed, she spent too much time on decoration.  Her sable Bretons were made to perfection, although her raspberry jelly and cream topping did not impress.  Her Madeleines, while classically made, were seriously under-baked,  the last thing she could afford in the semi-final, and a challenge where perfection was the true ‘pronk’.  Sanet went home, but with a special keepsake – an artwork by Alex Hamilton depicting an image of Frida Kahlo, the artist icon, on an enamel plate decorated with flowers.

Wessels won all three challenges of the episode, impressing the judges with the icing of his Frida Kahlo cake in particular.  It won him a place in the final together with Corli.

Koekedoor, kykNET, channel 144 on DStv. Thursdays 20h30 – 21h30. www.kyknet.dstv.com Twitter: @Koekedoor @kykNETtv

Chris von Ulmenstein, WhaleTales Blog: www.whalecottage.com/blog  Tel 082 55 11 323 Twitter:@WhaleCottage  Facebook:  click here Instagram: @Chris_Ulmenstein