Q&A: The Bakineers

What’s your advice for aspiring engineers?

A: Stay humble, continuously ask why to get to root understanding of the problem and bring your creativity to work.

G: Pick the sector that best suits your talents and ‘taste’. Engineering is a vast field, and it might look daunting to whoever approaches it for the first time. But matching your studies to your inclinations is the best way to guarantee that your job will never feel like working.

R: I always say, ‘be true to what you like’, and engineering is about solving problems, so don’t get caught up with traditional boxes and definitions. It’s obviously important to know the basics well, but also important to keep that creative mindset open.

What’s your advice for aspiring bakers?

A: Expect to get it wrong the first time you try a new technique! Nobody picks up a paintbrush and expects to be an exhibiting artist, so set the bar low and learn from the mistakes, enjoy the process (and tasty results).

G: Start simple, focus on bakes that you know and like to eat, but crucially: take it easy. It’s very tempting to give in to frustration at first, but if you are familiar with what good looks like, it will be easier to guide yourself through your beginner’s journey. Your early attempts might not be perfect, but success will taste delicious when you finally achieve it.

R: As above! It’s definitely very important to know the basics about how things work. A lot of the time people get a recipe and follow it but forget to actually think about why that recipe works. Once you understand that, then you can start to create your own recipes. Also problem-solving and knowing how to improvise well. You might not find the same ingredients  but if you know how the ingredients and the recipe work, and you can find something similar, you can probably make it work. It’s the same kind of thinking as in engineering.

Was there a moment when your engineering knowledge helped you in the tent?

A: Definitely in the technical challenges, particularly when we had to make a marjolaine, which is a layered almond meringue dessert. I'd never heard of it before, but I applied first principles thinking to the components to break down the problem. Also, gingerbread bridge construction!

G: Constantly! Every single time I bake anything, I use my materials engineer mindset to visualise what’s happening to the cake batter, at what stage the egg proteins set, when the moisture evaporates or at what point the baking powder creates the all-important spongy structure. Knowing what’s going on at any stage of the bake helps me to control the process more closely and manage it more accurately.

R: A lot! Especially things like when you’re stacking cakes, or for any structure to build up – you need to have at least three supports, because two supports will not make anything stand up. You need to have that equal distribution of load. Also, what happens to the cake when you put it in the oven? The water and starch gelating and the protein hardening is what creates the structure, so you need to make sure that it’s stable, like scaffolding, before the gas (carbon dioxide from bicarbonate of soda) expands and makes the cake rise, otherwise you’ll get a dip in the cake. You learn why things work and why they don’t work.

Has there been a moment when your experiences in the Bake Off tent helped you as an engineer?

A: There were several high-intensity moments in the tent where I had to stay cool during a crisis, and I hope I've taken some of that resilience back into my day job in aerospace. I think it's also encouraged me to throw myself into learning new topics in a way I wouldn't have done before.

G: During the final showstopper, I realised only at the very last second before I was ready to bake that my oven had switched itself off and it was not at temperature. Thankfully, I rescued my muffins by replanning the sequence of tasks ahead and managed to accommodate an extra 15 minutes of oven warm up even in the very tight Bake Off time constraints. I suppose that from an engineering perspective this means… always be ready for the unexpected and keep yourself flexible enough to react constructively to the proverbial spanner in the works that the job will undoubtedly throw at you.

R: I can definitely say I’ve never been so pressured in my life. Being in the tent showed me how much pressure I can actually deal with. It’s fun, true, but at the same time there are a lot of parallel things happening. You have to look after your job, practice all your bakes, go into the tent and bake it on time, you have to talk with the producers, probably it’s better if you don’t remember that you’re being filmed at the same time, and you have to do well! If you go through that, then I think you’ll be knackered and drained by it, but ready for life, any stressful moments – you’ll get through it.

What most excites you about engineering?

A: Its ability to tangibly improve life for humanity, be that in huge or small ways. You could be working to improve sustainable transportation or designing the next best headphones for people to enjoy while running. It's certainly what drives me. 

G: My brain gets very bored very easily, but my engineering background has allowed me to work regularly on very exciting projects, often designing prototypes, developing new products or solving new technical challenges. An engineer rarely gets bored and very few jobs provide such a luxury!

R: I would say problem-solving. I work with a lot of metrology and inspection – how to measure really small things – and that challenge of finding a solution excites me every day. I don’t think I’m the kind of person who switches off at five o’clock, I like to think about it all the time, whether it’s baking or work, and I think I enjoy it, in a way. Thinking about to improve something or make something good or better – that’s what draws me to engineering.

What most excites you about baking?

A: There are always more techniques and flavour combinations to discover, plus unlimited abilities to devise your own unique creation. Even better if it has an engineering twist.

G: Sharing the end-product with friends and family. I hardly ever bake for myself, and very few things in life give me as much joy as sharing food with others.

R: I think baking for me is a perfect way to mix my engineering and my arty sides together. Because engineers are very good artists – they have to be, or they wouldn’t be able to build things like bridges and buildings. And I love eating, and the person who loves eating likes to feed other people and play with food. So in that way, creating something with food and making people happy with food, everything to do with that draws me towards baking. 

What was the first cake you baked?

A: My gran's recipe for chocolate cake - it's been at every family birthday I can remember

G: My first ever cake was a tiramisù, although strictly speaking this is not at all baked. Probably my very first baked sponge was a seven-pot cake, one of the easiest on the market. So easy, it does not even require scales [and the recipe found its way into my new book!].

R: It was in 2016 and it was a Victoria sponge. I didn’t know the difference between a fan oven and a normal oven, so my first cake was kind of burnt on the outside and raw in the middle! The other thing for engineers is you need to learn from your mistakes and not repeat it again…

Fondants or foundations?

A: Foundations - I can't stand fondant!

G: Foundations! Fondant should be banned. I hate the sugary stuff with a passion.

R: Foundations for anything is important. The outer layer can be buttercream or fondant or anything, but foundation is important.

Biscuits or bridges?

A: Biscuit bridges!

G: Biscuits. Bridges make my head spin.

R: How about a bridge made of biscuits? That gives me a good idea, if I have time this Christmas... I would usually make a gingerbread house, but maybe I can make a gingerbread bridge!

Torque or torte?

A: A deep and dark chocolate torte

G: Torte. I’m good with a whisk, not with a wrench.

R: Oh, torque! Without torque the Earth wouldn’t even rotate! So definitely torque. Discussing torque with a slice of torte.

Pi or pie?

A: Pie, provided there's no soggy bottom in sight.

G: Pie, always. Nothing is more satisfying than a savoury pie.

R: There is an amazing book called How to Bake Pi [by Eugenia Cheng] which is about how you divide a perfect pie. So, I would say dividing a pie perfectly using pi.

What do you think is most important to the structural integrity of a cake?

A: Choice of sponge. I've learnt the hard way about choosing a robust sponge like madeira as soon as you go above three layers of cake in a tier. Beyond this, internal structure using dowels and cake boards is essential to avoid a collapsing disaster!

G: As in engineering, every step of the process contributes to the structural integrity of the bake: ratio of the ingredients, means of combining them and systems of assembling.

R: I think measuring the ingredients correctly and following the recipe correctly if you’re a novice baker. Try a recipe that you’ve tested before, follow the recipe and measure the ingredients properly, and your cake will be sound.

What do you think is the pinnacle, or should we say, the Panama Canal, of baking?

A: Some of the bakes that were created on Baking Impossible, the Netflix show I devised. I've never been more impressed than seeing a six-foot-high gingerbread skyscraper survive an earthquake shaking test...

G: Some modern techniques for sculpting and manipulating chocolate are a proper form of art and nothing short of phenomenal.

R: It has to be meringue. It’s just egg whites and sugar and you can create so many different things with it – a base for biscuits, cakes like chiffon cake, angel food cake, Dacquoise. It’s very important for any bakers to know – a wonder material indeed.

What do you think is the crème de la crème, or should we say, the croquembouche, of engineering?

A: For me it's got to be the jet engine. I'm completely biased but I've always been fascinated by aircraft and they still seem a little magic to me, even though I've worked on thermodynamic design and future airframes!

G: We put a man on the moon in the sixties, and the more I read about it the more I wonder how they managed such a feat with the limited tools they had available back then. It’ll never stop to amaze me.

R: I have a soft spot for bridges, whether it’s the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol, or the Howrah Bridge, near Kolkata where I’m from. It’s a cantilever bridge, so it has a support at one end, a roller at the other, and literally nothing underneath. That’s amazing engineering, considering it was completed in 1942.