After the excitement of the last Bake Off Box in February, I was really looking forward to the arrival of the second one!
For those of you who haven´t heard, the Great British Bake Off has released the Bake Off Box, which is available for monthly subscription and contains the dry ingredients for a special recipe, as well as a bespoke piece of baking equipment! I received the first one in February, and this was the second Bake Off Box for March.
I thought a lot of you might be interested in finding out more about the Bake Off Box content, the recipe and the equipment that comes with it, so I thought I would film the “experience” and write up a review each month for you!
*Just a quick disclaimer before we start: This post isn´t sponsored (I wish!) and I am not getting paid for anything I have said. It´s just my own personal opinion and experience.*
Check out this month’s video here:
This Month´s Bake Off Box Content
In the March Bake Off Box, I received the ingredients to make Banana and Walnut Mini Loaves as well as a silicone mould to bake them in! These little cakes were very quick and easy to make and were the perfect spring-time recipe!
The Mini Loaf Mould
March’s piece of “bespoke baking equipment” was a silicone miniature loaf mould. The mould is the classic blue colour of the Bake Off box and can be used to make 8 mini loaf cakes in total. It’s a very “bendy” mould, but I think the quality is quite good and it is also dishwasher safe which is always a plus (unless you’re a student like me and don’t have a dishwasher…)!
The Banana and Walnut Mini Loaf Ingredients
This Bake Off Box came with 4 sachets of dry ingredients for the recipe, containing flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and cinnamon, caster sugar and light brown sugar for the cake, and icing sugar for the buttercream. The box also contained a sachet of walnuts for the batter and banana chips to decorate! Luckily, they all arrived in once piece and didn’t turn to crumbs in the post!
The Recipe
This month’s recipe was very easy to follow (suitable for beginners) and the Mini Walnut and Banana Loaf Cakes were really quick to make! The fact that they are so small means they cool really quickly, so you can ice and decorate them shortly after they come out of the oven. There were a few things I would probably change about the recipe if I were to make these cakes again, which I have included in the recipe post here.
Pros and Cons of March´s Bake Off Box
Cons
I really like the idea of this month’s piece of “bespoke baking equipment”. Who doesn’t want to have a mini loaf cake mould? But I will admit that I was a little disappointed that it was a silicone mould rather than a proper, sturdy baking tin. I’m not sure if there is an advantage to using silicone moulds, but I find their flimsiness a bit annoying and difficult to work with. Plus, I think they are a lot harder to clean and it’s especially difficult to get the “greasiness” off of them from the butter/oil. And then, it takes for ever to dry, and if you use a dish towel loads of fluff get’s stuck to it… Maybe this is just me, haha, but I am really not a fan of silicone moulds!
And, one of this month’s limitations I suppose, will be that the recipe is difficult to do if you don’t have an 8-hole mini loaf mould. However, you could always use something similar (you could make walnut and banana cupcakes instead) or maybe even try making one large loaf cake. There is always a way around a lack of equipment!
Pros
Again, the mere excitement of receiving the Bake Off Box each month makes it totally worth it! Especially at the moment when we are all sitting at home and there isn’t much else to look forward to!
Another general thing I like about the Bake Off Box, like I said last month, is that I love the fact that you are given the exact quantities of all of the dry ingredients you are given. That means you can make it again another time!
This month was also great, because you hardly needed any extra ingredients, and they were all things that you probably have in the house anyway – keen baker or not. 2 medium eggs, some butter, a pinch of salt and 3 bananas were the only additional things you needed! This time, the more expensive ingredients, i.e. the walnuts and banana chips, were dry ingredients, which meant they were included in the box! Also, I was very pleased that the packaging is so good, meaning that the banana chips arrived (mostly) in one piece!
Cost of the Bake Off Box and Where to Get It
The Bake Off Box is available from their website here and costs about 20£/month. That covers the ingredients, equipment and packaging/postage. You will also have to bear in mind that you might have to buy some additional ingredients. This month, however, it was very basic ingredients that you had to add and most people probably have these at home anyway (bananas, eggs, salt and butter)! In total, the cost for the extra ingredients this month wouldn’t have been more than £2-3.
I hope you enjoyed this post about the content of the second Bake Off Box! Make sure to check out last month’s post, and stay tuned for these posts at the start of the next few months! If you have any other questions in the meantime, just leave a comment under this post!
