Every year I do a bit of shelf clearing, gathering things I’ve bought and probably read, that I am not likely to read again. I sell them, and use the funds for holiday travel to visit family, while trying to not buy too many replacements too quickly. I only got two books from the shop I sold an entire bin to, so that’s a win. Especially if one of them is a baking book by a Great British Bake Off participant who has become a host in two of the spin-offs. Liam Charles was fan favorite on his season, and he now co-hosts both the Kids and the Professionals spin offs. Cheeky Treats: Brilliant Cakes and Bakes can most definitely be read mentally with his voice, both in style and content.
Slightly unusually for a GBBO cookbook, this one makes even most of the layered decorated cakes look do-able if one were so inclined; these are mostly in either the Sweet or Celebration sections, although there are a few in Nostalgia as well. The Savory (the shortest section) and the Simple sections pretty obviously wouldn’t go too far into the massively complex decorations that often show up in the GBBO shows and books. For example, the Rhubarb and Custard cake (under Nostalgia) which has three cake layers, a ginger crème pat, a rhubarb filling, and two different colors of buttercream. The recipe, like many others, works in chronological order: cake first “sponge time” (as it need to bake and cool, and you can do other bits while those things are going on), crème pat and rhubarb filling next (those need to cool before use), buttercream, assemble, crumb and top coat, and more step by step pictures of building at least one layer, and how to get the sort of ombre effect with the buttercream frosting. The top decorations are piped kisses of frosting, and scattered crushed candies. Similarly, the Toffee Apple Crumble Layer Cake has several layers and components, as does the Salted Nutter, Cheq Them Up (a chocolate and vanilla chequered cake, with M&Ms, and a ganache drip), and OOOOO Fancy (a coffee cake with hazelnut filling, a ganache, and mirror glaze, and those fancy candy dipped nuts with long hard sugar tails).
Besides the division of the recipe into doable chunks and the pictures, the tone also seems pretty approachable. Take the Chocolate x Orange Polenta Cake; the little header bit says, “Two layers of orangey polenta cake with a coffee buttercream and a whipped dark chocolate filling. Oh, did I mention that it’s gluten free, too?” Informative, and definitely to be heard in his voice. “Pie ‘N’ Play V.1” similarly opens with a conversational but still informative and not too long intro: “Two guilty pleasures in one. I will always have time for video games…even when I have loads of uni work to do. (Yes, sometimes my priorities can be questionable.) These pies are what this book is all about: combining bakes with everyday life.” I admit, I probably wouldn’t attempt the pastry game controller shapes of the pies, but I most certainly intend to try the sweet potato and chorizo savory pie filling with Caribbean spicing. First, the filling, then the pastry, then adding a few things to the filling that need to be done apart from the potatoes, and finally “roll x line x fill”. There is a final section, but that’s the game controller pastry décor.
Overall, I was kind of hoping for a little less cake, but overall, there is a decent amount of stuff I feel I might attempt.