BakeOff

Sorry that I missed episode 8 – the 1947 Club and a cold put paid to it – which was a shame because Tudor Week was unusual and amusing. Though also saw the loss of Benjamina, my fave; it’s probably just as well I didn’t recap through the tears. We’re back on more traditional ground for episode 9 with Patisserie Week – and when I say ‘traditional’ I of course, as ever, mean ‘offensive French accents and unlikely French puns’. But not before Mel and Sue have given the intro by reading every other word each. I once got moved in an English lesson for suggesting the same thing when we read out a poem in a group. See, Miss Webb, I was just ahead of my time.

As usual, with the semi-final, we get all the bakers telling us in various ways that it’s the semi-final. Take your pick, bakers, of whether you prefer ‘the last week before the final’, ‘the last time that somebody will be out’, and ‘the last time that somebody will be Star Baker’. The last of those (Candice’s bon mot du jour) is perhaps the biggest stretch, and only half true. Or SEMI true, if you will.

Mel and Sue embrace what I assume is meant to be an homage to French New Wave Cinema, but ends up looking like two Ray Charles impersonators have been co-opted into a Ronan Keating video.

The bakers wish each other luck as the Signature Challenge starts (bless them), and for the FIRST TIME in Bake Off HISTORY (look, perhaps, I haven’t checked) we don’t get a face-on shot of the judges and presenters at this stage. I can’t do Blazer Watch in the usual format! IS NOTHING SACRED? Instead, here are those blazers from behind – which does enable us to see that Sue’s says ‘Happy’ on the back, which is either adorable or a bizarre Seven-Dwarfs-themed version of 20 Questions.

The Sig Chall (no?) is to make savoury palmiers. I’ve only had palmiers in the sweet variety, bought from Marks and Spencer bakery counter, and I could contentedly eat nothing but those for hours on end. With them in mind, I found it difficult to embrace a savoury version from the off, I’ll be honest.

With so few bakers left, we fill the time with Candice just saying ‘semi-final’ (with no attempt to elaborate in any way), and Andrew loitering suspiciously by the microwave, clearly about to swipe a lemon.

Paul kicks off a trend by talking about ‘layers’ (one syllable) which are apparently essential for a palmier. Without those dear, dear layers, it will apparently ‘just be pastry’. To clarify: the recipe is literally a pastry. It’s a puff pastry. I don’t know what Paul is trying to mean.

There is some debate about whether strong flour or plain flour or both should be used to make the pastry. Again, I am sure that this debate has been concocted entirely to get Andrew to say ‘flour’ as often as possible; it is wonderful in a Northern Irish accent. Candice is using both, and everybody gathered around the bench implores Paul to tell us whether or not this is correct – Mary quite literally clutches his elbow – but he will not be moved to speak.

Candice is making red onion, cambozola, and walnut palmiers (yummmm), and mushroom, bacon, and parmesan palmiers (at which point I realise there will be a lot of meat in today’s offerings). Colouring Pencils Man opts to depict them in a singularly unappetising shade of grey/beige (greige is, you may be surprised to learn, a real word).

Apparently that swirly shape is ‘elephant ear shaped’, and it’s also what Jane is doing for some of hers – the others being in a ‘puffy flower shape’ which looks a little (though, admittedly, not a lot) like a capital E with an extra line.

“The key to puff pastry is chilling” says Selasi, almost as though he were deliberately serving up a ‘chilling’ pun. If ever somebody was chilling out max and relaxing all cool, it is this gentleman. He certainly seems to be having more success in the accuracy stakes than Andrew – who, rather surprisingly given his narrative of engineering addiction, has a bit of a messy pastry.

Paul sidles over to judge, and waves his eyebrows around when he learns that Andrew is only using plain flour. Or maybe only strong flour. I forget. I was rather knocked around the head with how many times Mary B says ‘dry’ in the next few moments – not, as one might immediately presuppose, ordering her sherry of choice, but observing that Andrew is putting dried dry bread crumbs into an already dry pastry.

Again, because there aren’t many bakers left, the time must be filled with the actions and reflections of just four of ’em. We are treated to lingering shots of Andrew putting something in the fridge, and Candice chopping mushrooms (did anybody else have flashbacks to mushroom forager Rob of a few series ago?). And then there’s the excellent bit where Selasi finishes Mary’s sentence (with, admittedly, the fairly guessable word ‘palmiers’) and she reacts with delight. She’s always been fab on camera, of course, but in this series she really seems to be enjoying herself in every moment.

Selasi is definitely getting ideas above his station – and takes it upon himself to announce to all the bakers that there are two hours left. Sue gleefully lambasts him for taking his role (“It was all I had – I was like the talking clock with puns!”). Mel joins in, and they threaten to take over the baking. It’s all so wonderful and nobody on Channel so-called 4 will be able to live up to it. (Ditto Mel applying to lipstick to Candice in the next bit.)

Having less fun is Andrew, who has decided to start his pastry again from scratch. DRAMA.

Selasi says that you shouldn’t have too much filling (his somewhat lacklustre ambition is to make it so ‘the judges taste something’), while Candice wants it packed to the rafters. Andrew, meanwhile, says he would have done a lot of things differently, which sounds like the opening line to a musical number from Sunset Boulevard.

Pastry is rolled, palmiers are chopped, and bakers make the not-particularly-revealing confessions that they’d quite like to win. And just as I’m starting to wonder whether or not Jane has an obsession with comedy moustaches…

…her palmiers go flying!

Selasi’s are scattered a moment or two later too (the spirit of Val remains in the tent), but by then it’s old news. He is also pacing with nerves – which Sue observes with the caring glee of somebody who realises that the cool kids get sad sometimes too.

And – they’re done! Most of the bakers have served their palmiers in baskets (and Jane has even thoughtfully served an entire basil plant alongside); Candice has hung hers in an ornamental birdcage. Because of course she has.

Jane does well, but Candice’s has too much filling. “Is it palmier or is it a pastry?” poses Paul, meaninglessly. Selasi’s are underbaked – even raw – but the flavour is apparently good, while Andrew’s (served in a mini chest of drawers, as you do) and gets praise reviews from Mezza and Pezza. The bakers give their feedback in the bright sunshine, while Candice mournfully crams her palmiers – IF that is indeed what they are – into her mulberry-shaded mouth. Which sounds like a brilliant idea whatever the judges’ opinions, tbh.

Paul advises, for the Technical Challenge, that they should make something that’s nice (Sue sends him off to Banalities ‘R’ Us) – and the challenge is a savarin – which is, I believe, French for ‘how are you, Rin?’. All the bakers seem to have dimly heard of it, but their descriptions are pretty vague, and some are clearly just read directly off of the recipe they’ve been given. Selasi “doesn’t think” he’s made one before – would that not be something one would recall? – while Andrew gives me an opportunity to highlight something I’ve been intending to highlight all series. Why does he always lean over the desk as though he’s eight feet tall? You’re not that tall, Andrew.

Paul’s sample savarin (which he immodestly labels perfect) does look pretty good – though that sugar work is rather strange. Apparently it’s the sort of cake (bread? breakcake?) that requires a label.

Early signs are that the amount of liquor spread throughout will be this week’s Arbitrary Decision-Maker. But for now, the bakers are having protracted monologues on what sort of hook to use in their electric mixers. Use your hands, people, or a wooden spoon. (I got mocked for this the other day – but I don’t have an electric mixer, and I always use elbow grease except for situations requiring handheld whisks, like meringues.)

While the doughs are rising, the bakers draw ovals and make chocolate labels – Sue mops down Selasi’s forehead – and they have to make caramels. Apparently caramel is Jane’s nemesis, as hers keeps crystallising. I never have trouble making caramel, which leads me to assume that I’ve probably been doing it with much lower standards than I should have been.

Of all my made-up tent romances (whatever happened to those #lingeringlooks between Candice and Selasi?), I hadn’t picked Jane and Andrew for a pair – but Mel alleges that Jane is all Andrew can talk about. To the best of my knowledge, all he talks about are dough hooks.

It’s always fun to watch bakers try to pipe writing – but, sadly, they are pretty good at it. They also get to practise quite a bit, and it starts to look a little like The Shining.

The savarins are coming out of the ovens, all looking pretty impressive to me but in quite a range of colours – and the bakers start dousing their creations in liquory syrup – or, potentially, syrupy liquor. “It will come as a surprise to nobody that I’m doing another caramel,” says Jane, perhaps overestimating how much we recall about her caramel mishaps. She worries that her savarin might be shardless – much like an incomplete London skyline.

Aaaaand – time is up! Not before Andrew has managed to make plonking fruit on a cake sound like a complex engineering task. The displays look pretty impressive to me – albeit with some melting cream, but apparently Paul is (gasp!) willing to overlook that.

None of them have the syrup dispersed throughout quite as much as Paul and Mary would want, so they have to turn their attention to (of all things) the membrane of oranges. Sure, why not. On such things do kingdoms rise and fall – and the Technical Challenge concludes with Selasi limping into last place, followed by Candice and Andrew, with Jane taking the crown. She screams in delight in a meadow.

The final challenge is, but naturally, the Showstopper Challenge. They have to make… 36 fondant fancies! Which is rather recycling the fondant fancy technical challenge of a few series ago, but NEVER MIND. I don’t remember if these are British-only treats, but if so – rest assured, non-Brits, that nobody would dream of making these themselves. Thinking about it, nobody would really consider buying them unless they were entertaining their grandchildren or planning a picnic at the last minute in an almost-sold-out M&S local.

Andrew eschews the opportunity to use garish colours (see below), and opts for ‘Philharmonic Fondants’; Mel perjures herself by saying that they’ll be topped with sheet music and bow ties. If Colouring Pencils Man’s sketch is anything to go by, that is the least informative sheet music I have ever seen.

We haven’t had a Mary Berry Reaction Face for a while, have we? Well, Candice isn’t planning on thickening her cherry filling – instead, she’ll be putting individual cherries in the middle of her fancies. What does Mez Bez think of that?

Paul has more or less given up pretending to be helpful, and dispenses advice including ‘do it well’ and ‘finish on time’. Handy, thanks Hollywood. Over at Selasi’s counter, Paul recycles the top tip to do well, and prods the bright pink sponge Selasi has made.

He decides to make the sponge again – because Mary makes a comment about sifting flour to avoid air pockets. I always sift flour, guys. Even if there’s no flour in the recipe, I just sift some on the side for good measure.

Mel makes references to Ultravox next to Candice, who is at least five years too young to understand them.

The fondant fancies are coated in butter icing, to help the fondant stick and remain neat. With 36 fiddly fancies to coat, this must be numbingly time-consuming. Enough so that Andrew completely and unblinkingly ignores Mel’s entire skit about his stance. Seriously, she asks him questions that he totally blanks.

And those garish colours? Jane – who wins more of my love by determining that there’s ‘always time for a cup of tea’ (truth) – demonstrates the level of restrained tastefulness that one can expect from a fondant fancy.

The bakers coat icing all over the place while the GBBO orchestra merrily plonks along in the background, choosing the ‘something amusing is happening’ timpani arrangement – before we segue into the ‘everybody is busy busy’ strings arrangement. You could probably understand the whole show just by listening to the score.

And – with some scurrying – it’s all over! Candice’s are, naturally, displayed on a small pink piano. Where did she find it? Did she already own it? Did she borrow it from an orchestra or classically-trained church mice?

She does rather well, and her cherries haven’t bled, so there’s that.

Selasi’s look rather classy for fondant fancies – well, they do in this level of lighting, and not so much from the side – but they don’t get great feedback from the judges. Paul says the sponge is good (“if I’m honest” – sounding rather like a guard in a ‘one of us can only lie, one of can never lie’ logic puzzle) but the overall fancy is too sweet, while Mary isn’t ‘madly keen’ on the flavours. What would her delirious response be if she were, one wonders?

The side of Jane’s fancies are a bit shambolic, but from an aerial view that decoration is very impressivo.

Andrew has arranged his fancies in some orchestra stands, which he also apparently had to hand. They do look nice, and get positive feedback from the judges – who are rather phoning it in at this point, as Paul more or less just says ‘good’ a few times.

After a quick debrief, during which the person leaving the tent seems completely evident, the Star Baker accolade is awarded to a very surprised Andrew.

And we say a sad farewell to…

I’ll miss him, cos he was fun, but I need the winner to be a crier. I think any of the others would cry. I need RAW EMOTION ON TELEVISION PEOPLE.

I hope you’ve enjoyed patisserie week. Only a couple of days before the final, everyone! I’m cheering on Jane now, but they’re all fab so it’ll be a nice outcome any which way. See you next time!

The 1947 Club kicks off tomorrow (for the uninitiated – across the blogosphere we’re encouraging everybody to read and review any book published anywhere in the world in 1947, to get an overview of the year collaboratively) – so I thought I ought to make sure the GBBO recap happens first. After the somewhat confusing theme last week, we’re back to tradition with… dessert week!

And… we don’t get any Mel and Sue bit before the titles. This is rather disconcerting, and a Taste of Things To Come. Instead, we get our brief recap, that young girl eating raspberries in the opening titles (I hope she’s now doing shopping centre appearances and signing autographs; she is the most recognisable silent TV child since that lass who pointed at the blackboard next to the terrifying doll in the old BBC test card), and a bevvy of bakers putting on aprons.

Andrew assures us that he is ‘a desserts man through and through’, and the interviewer somehow engineers a way to get him to say ‘down’, as it is one of the best words to hear in a Northern Irish accent. Jane, meanwhile, says of the other contestants “I love them all, but” and I stop listening because I don’t want to be the witness to the death threats that will inevitably follow.

Nah, but I love Jane. My favourites are Benjamina, Selasi, Candice, and Jane – but Jane is the only one of those I’d feel able to talk to in person, as the others are so young and cool and collected that I’d just giggle and cry. I hope Jane takes this in the warm-hearted spirit with which it was intended; essentially, I can see us at a coffee morning together.

Candice points out that, with so few bakers left in the tent, ‘there really is nowhere to hide’, which suggests that hitherto she has evaded eviction solely by folding herself up into the fridge.

Tom talks about The Curse of the Star Baker – apparently Mel and Sue’s efforts the other week to make that an accepted benchmark have succeeded. What has ALSO succeeded – segue much? – is the attendance at Blazer Watch. All four are lined up for inspection, and you can tell by his face that Paul knows he hasn’t brought the necessaries.

Verdict: loving Sue and Mel’s blazers and colour combos. That’s not really a blazer, Mary, but we’ll let it slide because it’s colourful and you’ve made an effort. Mr Hollywood – see me later.

The signature challenge for this week is a roulade – of the sponge variety, rather than meringue, and known as the Swiss roll to many of us. I have made a rather bad apricot and brandy snap roulade in my time, so I feel fully equipped to assess. What I will say is that this follows the trend of the series of doing relatively simple challenges. (Incidentally, I made Viennese whirls this weekend, and they were very tasty though my piping is very much not up to scratch.)

Benjamina confides in the listener that it is another week, while Selasi adds the helpful addendum that we are getting closer to the final. Having sorted out the rudimentaries of time, we’re ready to see some roulades being made.

Mary is in the Garden of Instruction, letting us know that a roulade should have a nice spiral (which is a step better than these segments usually are, as Mezza and Pezza tend only to advise that the baked good should be ‘perfect’). Yes, she just moves her finger round in a circle, rather than a spiral, but we’ll take it.

Andrew is playing to his strengths – having ginger hair – by introducing orange stripes in the sponge of his bake, a technique which has a French (?) term that I am not going to attempt to type down. It’s a nice idea.

He’s possibly the only baker who’s doing very much out of the ordinary, in terms of technique and decoration. Selasi, for instance, is making a nice lemon and strawberry roulade with the rather unambitious addition of piped cream. ‘Fresh’ notes Colouring Pencils Man, doing the best he can without a lot to excite.

Mary advises that she wants no crack at all in the roulade – the sort of request one need only make if one has already been offered a hash brownie.

Slightly more adventurously, Tom is intending to put the ingredients for millionaire’s shortbread in his roulade – possibly (I wouldn’t like to guess) in a veiled comment about Paul’s decision to pursue money rather than honour in choosing Channel 4 over the BBC. Look, it’s possible. Also possible is that Paul detects this subtle jab, and this is why he seems uncertain about the introduction of a biscuity-type-thing (technical term) to a roulade. I couldn’t say. (NB: I do realise none of this is possible.) (Or is it?) (No.)

Benjamina is making a pina colada roulade, replete with cocktail umbrella, but this is all white noise for Mary B until she hears the word ‘rum’. Which earns Benjamina (hurrah!) this excellent Mary Berry wink.

Candice seems to be relegated this challenge to being the baker who tells us what the time is, and puts things in and out of ovens as a marker of said time. Which is a shame, because her raspberry/passion fruit/white chocolate roulade sounds entirely delicious. Those flavours are making me feel desperately hungry. I shouldn’t recap before dinner.

We head over to Tom, who is starting again – much to Mel’s consternation in her usual doom-laden voiceover. He seems pretty chirpy about it himself, waggling an eyebrow around with aplomb. Meanwhile, Jane is busy taking the controversy of the week – rolling her roulade the wrong way! Gasps a-plenty. Colouring Pencils Man makes sly digs at this decision, with his illustration that preempts the lack of a complete spiral in Jane’s roulade.

Apparently she does this to get more slices out of it – which seems rather unnecessary in the context of the competition, but I do also like that she’s sticking to tried and true techniques.

Various curds are made – Selasi makes a victory grimace at the camera when Benjamina enjoys his – and then Mel seems entirely overcome by mere proximity to Selasi. We see bakers spread cream or curd or sauce in their roulades, and there is much talk of overfilling. Let me tell you, I wildly overfilled that one roulade I made. And then – rolling! They all make the rolling look pretty easy. It’s almost a relief to see Tom spread chocolate with the (sorry Tom) lack of finesse that I would anticipate in my own efforts.

A little orchestra, and a montage of people doing absurd things like filling raspberries with cream, tell us that the challenge is over.

Jane’s roulade looks delicious – but, as Nostradamus with the colouring pencils predicted, it does not have a full spiral.

Paul isn’t sure about the alcohol, but Mary enjoys the mixture, and looks delightfully self-aware about her boozehound status.

Benjamina does OK, though her fake coconut is too fake, and Tom is told he should have added cream. Over at Casa de Candice, I enjoy once more the amount of effort she puts into the presentation of her bakes – an effort which, as always, appears to be entirely overlooked by the judges (especially since Selasi gets fits of giddy appreciation from Mary after dumping his roulade on a photo frame – presumably the closest thing he had to hand at the time). But just look at this.

Andrew comes out on top, though, despite his swirl being rather collapsed because of the softness of the filling. Selasi does well, but doesn’t provide enough lemon curd for Mary “loves a lemon” Berry.

Aaaand it’s Technical Challenge time! The bakers are being asked to make… a marjolaine. Sure sure. My response was not unlike Candice’s:

Turns out it’s a French layered gateaux, with cream and meringue and ganache, and nobody knows anything about it. Tom immediately claims that the only part of it he’s made before is ganache – I absolutely refuse to believe that he’s never made meringue before.

Andrew pronounces the ‘l’ in almonds so he swoops to the bottom of my rankings.

They start off with a dacquoise – which Mary Berry describes as a ‘glorified meringue’ – and we whisk (ahahaha) through the initial stages so quickly that I can only assume it’s quite easy. They make what they can of a ‘to pipe or not to pipe’ moment. It’s the Hamlet/Magritte mash-up we’ve all long been waiting for.

In the blink of an eye, everybody seems to have done more or less everything except compiling and decorating, and two excellent things happen. Firstly, this little lad:

and, secondly, Mel delivers her intro to Whither Baking? by popping out from behind a tree, squirrel-like.

This takes us to a history of praline that you’d know about if you read OxfordWords. Sue matches her personal best with awkward interviews; the poor French folk she quizzes don’t seem to get her sense of humour at all. At one point she starts mocking the French accent. Let’s go back to the tent, shall we?

The bakers are removing their dacquoise (whatever the plural is) from the oven, and make an impressive job of taking them out of tins without them crumbling into piles of piped dreams. (I am on FIRE with my pipe jokes today, n’est-ce pas?) Andrew’s does crack, but Mel promises to keep the secret to the grave – apparently unaware that they are being filmed.

My favourite moment of the episode is when Andrew describes the desired look as ‘like a Viennetta but posher’, and Sue replies ‘Doesn’t get posher than a Viennetta, my darling’. Do people have Viennetta outside of the UK? Will that translate? It’s a wonderful cultural benchmark.

How should one pipe the chocolate around the top? This has all the marks of the Arbitrary Judging Factor that will prove all-important.

Some nuts and whatnot are scattered in intriguing lines on top, and everybody is finished. I’m super impressed by this line up. It all looks extremely good – and very similar – to me.

Mary and Paul make the most of the judging – and yes, of course, the chocolate piping comes up. They manage to say ‘layers’ a lot, even though everybody has done them correctly and there is nothing to say. Paul is left with such evident nonsense as “though it’s crisp, there’s a nice chew to it, and the chew melts”.

From last to first… Selasi, Tom, Jane, Benjamina, Candice, and Andrew. Well done Ando. He described himself as ‘chuffed’ in the outside interview bit, which I hope will baffle some non-British viewers.

Time for the Showstopper Challenge, you say? Well, you’re not wrong, give or take the judges and presenters sitting around the table and telling us that pretty much everybody is in trouble, Mel and Sue included. Heck, even I might be in trouble. Anyway – they will be making mousse cakes. Yum!

Mary and Paul describe what the texture of the mousse should be like (combined, oddly, with shots of Benjamina cutting apples and Candice zesting a lemon) and Mary warns that it should not be too set, whatever that means. Back in the tent, I’m already very impressed with Jane’s fleur-de-lis. I have spent much of the episode wondering if this had initially been French week, and then changed to dessert week, and these do nothing to dispel that suspicion.

Apparently these are created in ‘decor paste’, which sounds disgusting, but is actually just cake mixture with egg whites instead of the whole egg. Whatever it is, sign me up. Only partly cos Colouring Pencils Man gets to dig out his non-beige-scale crayons.

Less enticing, to me, are Benjamina’s and Tom’s – as they’re both using apples. I like an apple, but it’s always at the bottom of my list when it comes to dessert ingredient choices.

Mel makes dire warnings about the time mousse will take to set. Selasi intends to use the freezer for a bit, and Mary thinks this is an excellent idea. “It adds an extra chill” she notes to Selasi, who must surely have known what a freezer does. Mary is still remembering the days of being sent down to the ice house, of course.

I learnt something in this episode about gelatin. Apparently it comes in sheets. Who knew? (It’s also making me wonder if all the mousse I’ve eaten in restaurants over the years has secretly not been suitable for vegetarians… oh well!) Here’s Jane tossing some sheets into her bowl.

Guess what? Too much gelatin is TERRIBLE. Too little gelatin is TERRIBLE. ‘Twas ever thus in the Bake Off tent.

Tom is piping mousse into his hipster sandwiches (don’t ask) and doesn’t seem to be put off by Paul’s elaborately horrified reaction to the news. “You’re PIPING mousse?” he asks incredulously…

Candice is making a million different components to her delicious-sounding desserts. (Let’s call them desserts, sure.)

Though it is nothing compared to the five mousses Jane is making, and she seems to be constantly surrounded by enormous – albeit apparently empty – baking bowls. These sit precariously over her desk, and she appears to be counting them over and over in the early stages of some sort of breakdown.

Tom has brought the best equipment to the tent: this handheld fan.

It’s not even battery-operated. He has to turn a handle to generate the fan. It can’t possibly be any more efficient than wafting those bizarre paddle-fans around. But I am a gent who loves a fan, and recently made the middle-aged purchase of a battery-operated fan in Marks and Spencer – as well as quite genuinely considering my enormous fan as among the best investments I have ever made.

Some delicious-looking chocolate and raspberry mousses are going around the tent. And then we cut from Andrew’s mint mousse (a subtle hint of green to it) to Selasi’s mint mousse… erm…

Jane is worried about whether or not she’s included gelatin in all her mousses. Since this is never mentioned again, I can only assume she did. There is much talk of whether or not mousses will set in time, and some very delicious looking concoctions coming out of freezers and fridges… speaking of, is this a secret fridge we haven’t seen before?

Perhaps they were wary after #bingate?

Let’s have an update from Selasi’s radioactive bunker before we finish:

And they’re done! Some very good mousses. Mary describes Jane’s as ‘startling’, though apparently that’s meant to be a compliment – and Paul responds with ‘that’s mousse!’, as though waking from a dream and discovering anew where he is. Mary applauds the ‘moussiness’. Let’s take a moment to applaud her fleur-de-lis cakes.

Selasi’s mousses are too big, and the layers are in the wrong order, so we are told – but his passion fruit mousses get a thumbs up.

I can’t begin to understand what’s going on with Candice’s display. The mousses seem to be floating on jelly or something in wine glasses. I feel like Damien Hirst maybe had a hand in it all.

Benjamina’s look bad but taste amazing (definitely the right way around, IMO), and Paul seems almost reluctant to concede it. Having said that, his concession includes ‘more mousse-like’, which is rather damning with faint praise.

Tom’s hipster sandwiches help us learn that piping mousse doesn’t work. Live and learn. Doing rather better, though, is Andrew and his Ferris wheels of mousse.

We get the post-judging debate, but I can’t remember an episode in any series where it was more obvious (from the comments and general tone) who was going to win and who was going to lose.

Star Baker is…

And, going home, is…

Hope you’re enjoyed Dessert Week, y’all! Come back next time for… whatever happens then. And now I’m going to immerse myself in 1947 books for the #1947Club…

Sorry that you had to put up without my recap of last week’s episode (in which we bid a sad farewell to Dame Val, mere days after I’d finally decided what to call her) – and general apologies, to those who read StuckinaBook for the bookish bits, that I’ve been rather absent of late. But let us put those things out of our minds while we think about… botanicals!

As usual, Mel and Sue are hanging around in the sunshine for our opening bit – and they make an elaborate riff on there being 7 bakers left in the tent – just like the 7 dwarfs. I would love to spend some time working out which of the contestants matched which of their descriptions – shakey, cakey, etc. – though I was distracted by the constant anxiety that they might break into Achy Breaky Heart. Seeing them together is now always bittersweet, since their days in (and around) the tent are numbered.

Mere moments later, as the bakers sidle in, it is pouring with rain – which is apparently worth at least three establishing shots, as well as many interviews with bakers under clear umbrellas (which are swiped away from at some point in the few steps between lawn and tent by an invisible crew). Before we look more at this week’s themes, let’s take a quick swing by Blazer Watch – and I’m loving the yellow/grey that Sue has going on. And Mary is looking fabs, of course. Dr Death over on the left has given up even interacting with the others.

Jane thinks botanical week “could almost have been made for her”. Either responding to the blank look of the camerman, or the vocalised question of the production team, she adds “because I’m a gardener” in a sing-song voice, as though addressing a peculiarly stupid child. Jokes on you, Jane, because your gardening abilities have zero relevance to the tasks in hand today. Tom makes brave guesses at what the theme might mean (“…aromatic?”) before adding, with evident reluctance, “anything that grows goes!”

And what’s the first challenge? It’s citrus meringue pie. Which is delicious, ticks the box for ‘people might want to try this at home’, but… botanical? They make repeated assertions that anything that has stuff that grows in it is botanical, but this generous description includes literally every cake (sugar; flour). It also includes literally every foodstuff that isn’t dairy. It’s a mess.

But I’m very much here for any challenge that allow somebody to make a lime and coconut meringue pie. And it’s encouraging to see that even GBBO bakers seem to get orange everywhere while grating it for the zest.

Speaking of Selasi’s general awesomeness, he is wearing a floral shirt – as is Jane (a rather nice one, actually; well done Jane). I love this commitment to a theme, and wish we’d seen more of it in the past. Blue and white stripes for French week. Queen Victoria costumes for cake week. About the only week they’ve done this for before was gluten-free week, during which I can only assume most of the outfits were, indeed, gluten-free.

Mary gives the useful advice – from her vantage in the once-again-sunny outside – that the citrus meringue pie should be ‘sheer Heaven’. Has anybody even said ‘citrus meringue pie’ before, incidentally? I fear not. To illustrate ‘sheer Heaven’, we have Selasi choosing to hold his ingredients as far as possible from the bowl.

Paul, in turn, is just playing a botanical version of Kim’s game, listing citrus fruits in the garden (again, sunny), before realising that there are basically only three. “Grapefruit” he adds hopefully, while the cameraman slowly, sternly shakes his head.

The downside of an accessible challenge is, as always, that is nothing very unusual to say. Rav is putting tequila in his (somewhere, Mary’s sponsor winces), to help live up to his week one bio of using “unusual” ingredients; the other side of the tent has to make do with the non-earth-shattering stem ginger chosen by Andrew. While we’re recovering from that excitement, Mel explains how to make pastry while we get a montage of bakers’ hands obscuring their ingredients entirely. My favourite tip was “…and sugar, for sweetness”.

Tom (interviewed while using his food mixer on its loudest setting) tells us that he isn’t making a sweet pastry. He’s using something to give ‘a savoury, aromatic sweetness’. I listened a few times and couldn’t work out what that something was, but I’m intrigued as to what could provide sweetness better than a sweet pastry. (Or is this the sugar-free challenge all over again, where adding melted sugar somehow counted?)

Selasi flirts with Mary over his shirt – he will flirt with anybody, it seems, and more power to him – and explains that he is making a grapefruit, orange, and mint meringue pie. To see those words again in a different front, look below:

My favourite bit of this section, of course, is where Mary asks Mel if she’s ever had a ‘sharp-edged kiss’, and then turns this look at Selasi:

But this is also the start of another adorable narrative in my head: the love (possibly fraternal/sororal) between Benjamina and Selasi. It’s lovely. They are both making grapefruit meringue pie, and bicker over it like a pair of siblings who want their parents to pick them but also don’t really care, because the process is fun in itself. They have a bit of a giggle while using rolling pins.

The question of the day is about presentation of meringue. You can tell that this will be the part Mary and Paul judge most assiduously. Not even whether it’s French, Swiss, or Italian (sidenote: why doesn’t Mel’s voiceover explain the differences between these, which I imagine would be more elucidating to most viewers than ‘sugar is sweet’?) – whether it’s piped or not, and whether it’s blow-torched or oven-baked. Paul enquires whether Benjamina will be ‘dumping’ her meringue on the pie – something of a leading question – and she quickly replies with a negative, saying it will be ‘piped nicely… with a… nice nozzle’. The word ‘nice’ seems rather redundant here.

Andrew, meanwhile, has always remembered the flavour of his mum’s key lime pie. Lime, one suspects. “I enjoy a good citrus tang,” he adds, immediately regretting it.

In this series, Paul has started using the word ‘fascinating’ in place of every negative adjective. “That will be fascinating to see” he says of breads he thinks will be underproved, flavours he abhors, and identifications at the morgue.

Jane tells us that she is making a lime and coconut meringue pie inspired by a Harry Nielson song – a joke that I assume you have to be a couple of decades older than me to understand – and she tells us this while we watch a close up of her juicing a… lemon.

People are pairing off, and Candice/Jane are the new Selasi/Benjamina – i.e. they’re both making coconut/lime meringue pies. There is rather less chemistry here, and the editors swiftly move on – to Mary restating that she prefers an oven to a blowtorch. Well, don’t we all, Mezza.

The Bake Off, bless them, finally trust us to know what blind baking is – but I do wonder, with Tom’s, whether or not he remembered to put the baking paper between the baking beans and the pastry? His looks rather riddled with bullet holes.

SOMEBODY RESURRECT TOMORROW’S WORLD. I WANT THESE TWO TO TEACH ME SCIENCE.

All of the bakes come out pretty well – because, after all, they are simply putting curd in pastry – but things get a bit more tense with the meringue layers. Some are gloopy. Some are stiff. Some look like the fever dream of the Hulk. (Yes, that’s you Candice. In retrospect, Colouring Pencil Man’s depiction looks like a cruel and sarcastic joke.)

Too cruel, Colouring Pencils Man, too cruel. Why so cruel, with all your cruelty?

A medley of blowtorching later (who actually owns a blowtorch?) and we’re all good to go. Long story short: the women do better than the men. Jane probably does best, and I entirely want to faceplant in her meringue pie. It looks so good.

Outside, the bakers do more interviews in the rain. Have the production company arranged so it’s sunny when the judges and presenters are outside and rainy when the bakers are outside?! I smell a conspiracy! (Ed: no, they haven’t. Many apols.)

Onto the technical challenge! Paul’s words of wisdom are ‘be patient, and remember the shaping’ – Sue adds that it’s something of a catchphrase for him, reminding me how much I’ll miss her. It’s the French classic ‘fougasse’, which apparently slips into botanical week solely because it’s got herbs in it. They might as well just be whipping up some creme de menthe and calling it a day. This is apparently what the fougasse should look like:

You know how the technical is always based on one criterion which is very specific, entirely arbitrary, and completely unclear? In this case, it’s the lines down the middle. Should they be next to each other or in a single line? “Who cares?” I hear you ask. “Just gimme some delicious bread, and put the lines wherever your sweet mind wishes.” Well, thank you for the kind words about my mind, but I’ll tell you who cares: Paul. It is all that occupies his not-so-sweet mind.

More on that anon.

For now we see the usual flour-sifting, dough-kneading, proving-drawer-opening montage – and this curiously poignant still of a pencil on the floor by Selasi’s station.

Despite Paul’s example ‘leaf-shaped’ fougasse being demonstrably rectangular, this is less important than those lines. Andrew helpfully tells us that, from an engineering background, consecutive lines are one on top of the other. I think the bakers are divided about half and half on the topic of lines, but I’ve become more or less snow blind on this issue now.

(Herbs might have mentioned in passing, but I don’t recall.) (#botanicals.)

They do all look delicious, and I love that Tom takes fougasse as a cinema snack. That is such a good idea. I’m off to see Bridget Jones’s Baby on Thursday, and I now fully intend to take some foccaccia in a bag. Imma live dat life.

The word fougasse, you would think, leaves little room for puns. Oh ye of little faith. Mel and Sue do their best with ‘fougastric bands’ and another one that I didn’t understand even while it was being said. The pun that is probably in your mind was, blessedly, left unspoken. Sue, meanwhile, has joined Selasi in his recumbent position – and, more importantly, the pencil has been rescued from the floor. Look, it’ll never be as iconic as Richard’s pencil, but every pencil needs its moment in the sun.

The cameramen/camerawomen know that there isn’t much going on here, so we have close ups of people’s mouths, lots of cooling racks, and nothing whatsoever of interest beyond Selasi lying in various positions on the ground. And then bakers waving around fans that look like they work in air traffic control.

The judging is mostly, as we suspected, Paul pointing at lines. He isn’t content with saying that the cut should be in a line down the middle, but repeats it for every. single. bake. Mary does her best by saying the word ‘crispy’ occasionally. Ultimately, they all seem pretty close – but it goes Selasi (last), Andrew, Candice, Jane, Rav, Benjamina, and Tom wins out. Why is he wearing one blue glove? Answer comes there none. But it’s raining again for the baker interviews.

The sun has come out for the showstopper challenge, and it’s the first one which could be even loosely considered botanical: floral cakes. My well-documented dislike of floral flavours in cakes has, it seems, made not a bit of difference to the powers that be at GBBO. I’m not disappointed, I’m just angry.

Various bakers tell us that they’ve got a lot riding on today – presumably they’ve all been down to the bookies to put their money on Benjamina to win – and the camera guy loses his head completely with this Candice shot:

It’s a fun challenge, but pretty vague. It’s got to be three tiers, but there’s no stipulation about whether they have to be different flavours or not, or even if there has to be floral flavours in there. Rav, for instance, is only doing one flavour, and that is flavoured with orange blossom. How this differs from orange, in terms of taste, I don’t know.

Tom is making tea-based cakes, though no honest English breakfast in sight: it’s jasmine and… some others, I forget, I got too caught up in my immediate desire to drink a cup of tea. Paul and Mary warn that it’s hard to get the flavour across, which sounds like it might rather be a blessing.

Candice, if you’ll travel with me to her side of the tent, has added an extra tier – stymied, as she is, but the number of seasons there are. She is basing each layer on a season, though this does include such tenuous links as ‘chocolate and orange for spring’.

In a touching moment, Candice is using a sheet of paper written by her gran for the top layer. That’s quite sweet, but I do rather dread how much will be made of this sort of thing when the show moves to Channel 4. Learn some lessons, C4.

Jane is using orange (“a flowery flavour”) but no actual flowery flavours – instead, she’s concentrating on moulding flowers and making a white chocolate collar for each layer, with abstract flowers. It sounds perfect to me, and probably the one I’d be keenest to sample.

(Selasi, for some reason, has a pineapple – though I’m pretty sure there was no pineapple in his recipe.)

This is what happens when an engineer is allowed to bake. I feel – and I can’t emphasise enough that this is based on a profound and total ignorance of it – like I’m at the New York Stock Exchange.

It’s all good fun, but they’re essentially making sponge cakes. It ain’t tricky, and it’s tense. It sure ain’t no fondant fancy. The bakers do their best to amp up the drams, though, with Jane pouring away some mixture, and such exciting pronouncements as Rav’s “I’m just putting some food colouring in my buttercream”; Mel and Sue seem to have popped to the pub for a quick half, as they have nothing to say throughout almost all of the cake baking. Except on the Voiceovers of Doom, naturally.

Watching people decorate cakes is often quite stressful. We’ve all been in the crumbs-in-the-icing stage, but (contrary to the rules of most activities) watching other people do it is more stressful than doing it yourself. Amidst Rav miserably forming icing flowers, Candice peering at butter icing, and Benjamina wisely deciding to go for deliberately poor icing, we have Selasi – demonstrating a rather astonishing icing talent. And so fast. Check out these roses. I don’t even know how he’s got the multicolours so perfectly.

He and Candice are the only ones who come close to the decorating panache of previous years. I can only imagine the wonders that Frances would be producing right now. I also quite like the abstract flower collars Jane has crafted, though she (and, later, the judges) don’t seem happy with them.

How do things go? Candice’s does quite well, and Mary gives an excellent (accidental) subtle bitch comment: “It’s like you – over the top”. She makes another needlessly gluten-free layer, but we’ll forgive her for that.

Andrew’s is rather simple (“blobs” – Mary) and the flavours are too subtle to detect. Look, basically the cake is hardly there at all. The whole thing is a postmodern illusion.

Benjamina’s is a little underdone, and they ain’t fooled by her “deliberately unfinished” look. The same argument, it turns out, also doesn’t work for roofing or open heart surgery. Live and learn.

Rav gets a whole lot of blah for his.

Jane apologises a lot for what looks like a delicious cake to me (though Mary corrects Paul’s “overdone” with “only a little overdone”):

Selasi’s is an ombre dream:

Poor old Tom gets told that he’s done a “very simple finish”. This is at least ten times more complex and beautiful than any cake I’ve ever decorated. (Apologies for the slight blur; this screenshot comes from a moment when the cameraman decided dramatically zooming in was both warranted and tasteful.)

So, how did things work out in the end? After some debating, and some interviews with the bakers that aren’t in the rain (but which are on some overgrown steps; go figure), the Star Baker turns out to be… Tom!

And going home… Rav. Bless him, it’s probably time. (Sorry that they don’t come with the usual images – iPlayer stopped working just before the end of the episode.)

I hope we’ve all learned a lot in botanicals week – even if, sadly, not what ‘botanicals’ means to an meaningful degree. See you next week!

Look, let’s not ignore the elephant in the room. You’ve almost certainly heard by now that this is the last full series we’ll get on the BBC, before GBBO moves to Channel 4. For those not familiar with British channels, this is admittedly the classiest channel after the BBC… but the idea of ad breaks in the Bake Off is anathema. And this couldn’t be more of a BBC show. It’s quite heartbreaking, and I was quietly proud of how outraged the British public was. I felt a bit like I was in mourning myself. And I’ll be taking next week off recapping, I’m afraid – partly because of mourning; mostly because I’ll be in Italy.

And we’re gonna also lose these two! (No word from Mary and Paul, at the time of typing.)

Anyway, let’s get on to the episode itself – and it’s Batter Week. You will see very little baking this week. They should have stuck to cake… it is batter the devil you know (a joke I made before Mel made it on the show, I’ll have you know thankyouverymuch). I’m not above thinking this episode was chosen solely for the fresh new range of puns it afforded – and Mel & Sue leap right in the deep end with an elaborate skit based on the word ‘bat’. It’s the most innocent, ridiculous fun.

The bakers parade in, wrapped up in dozens of layers and – is that frost I can see on the grass? #Spring. In this crowd I can pick out Andrew and Val, but have no clue who the others might be. Who’s that person in the blue check? Have they just got extras to fill in? And is that the cake from the opening titles and is it seven years old?

Before we get onto the controversies of Batter Week, let’s have a quick peek at Blazer Watch. Well, we’re down to two blazers – as Mary is rocking an asymmetric bomber jacket. But these might be my fave blazers so far (my fazers, if you will) (no, of course you will not; that was a given) – I especially like Sue’s navy and yellow combo. Strong work, team. And thank goodness there was a 4-for-1 sale on straight leg jeans.

So, what IS baking? Dictionary definitions seem to be pretty much all-encompassing (anything heated not over an open flame, apparently, which would seem to include anybody standing near a radiator) – for me, it’s cakes, biscuits, bread, and pastry. And that’s it. The challenges today are cooking and frying. It just ain’t right.

The first challenge, indeed, is Yorkshire Puddings. One can only assume that somebody in the production team heard the word ‘pudding’ and is labouring under the misapprehension that they are some kind of dessert.

Mary – swathed in an enormous jacket – sits outside and gives us the usual helpful info that she’d like the bakes to be good, if it’s not too much trouble. She mimes the shape of a Yorkshire pud – presumably not to scale – and looks rather as if in the process of yelling hello at somebody across a great distance.

She’s after identical Yorkshire puddings – a feat that has yet to be achieved, or even attempted, by anybody, ever – and she wants to leave room for filling. Literally nobody has ever made a filled Yorkshire pudding. You might put stuff in them afterwards, sure, so long as it’s roast potatoes, carrots, peas, or gravy. Nothing else is welcome in a YP. I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.

Paul talks about the rise coming from eggs – and this is helpfully accompanied by a brief montage of eggs, for those unaware of what they are and curious to find out. It does beg the question what this baker, Jane I think, has used the enormous knife for – as, so far, she has only sifted flour into a bowl.

“We’ve all got a different family recipe for Yorkshire puddings,” Mel alleges in the voiceover, falsely, while Andrew suggests that the ‘Yorkshire pudding community’ has much debate about the number of eggs to use. Presumably that debate is more pressingly occupied with such questions as ‘Why have we formed a community?’ and ‘What are friends?’.

First stop for Mezza and Pezza is Dame Val’s counter – as Mary says, somewhat accusingly, “You’re from Yorkshire”. Val laughs her way through a story about how her husband will effectively throw her out if she doesn’t win this week. She is cut off midway through a story about her mother teaching her to make Yorkshire puddings which would, one has to imagine, have continued in an indefinite spiral of “and her mother before her“, until we reached Eve.

It seems unlikely, though, that Val’s Mum would have added chilli to them – if only because, again, literally nobody ever has added fillings to Yorkshire puddings.

Candice is growing on me quite a lot – partly, today, because she drops her fork on the floor and is witty about it. Certainly not for her ‘deconstructed beef wellington’ – it seems to be deconstructed only in that she’s not putting it in pastry and it is, thus, not a wellington. Look, I don’t know how much I can bring myself to write about the monstrous things these bakers are planning to do to the humble staple of a Sunday roast. About the only acceptable one is Jane’s Meat and Two Veg (a euphemism that Mel and Sue miraculously leave alone). There is the caveat that she insists she is terrible at Yorkshire puddings – a brave admission, one might think, though taken with surprising indifference by The Male Judge.

One of the few vegetarian choices is Rav’s – which has Thai tofu in it. Look, I can’t. The Thai meal sounds delicious. But in the name of all that is sweet and pure, keep it away from my Yorkshire puds. Serve it on a Monday, when Yorkshire puddings are but a distant recollection of Sunday’s dinner.

Does Paul like tofu?

Also vegetarian are Tom’s ‘fusion puddings’ – no – because he insists that the only vegetarian meal you can eat on a Sunday was at an Indian restaurant. I mean, sure, let’s pretend that’s a thing. He’s decided the best thing to do is use chickpea flour. Mary, be a doll and sum up how that makes you feel?

He’s also using nigella seeds, which ends my speculation about whether or not the word ‘nigella’ can be used in this programme.

Bakers briefly debate whether or not to chill their batter – they really are making the very simple process of making a batter seem inexluctably complicated – and we wander back to Rav’s to see him making candles or preparing for this week’s laundry or something.

Selasi is filling his with various forms of pork, and apparently took the recipe from his girlfriend’s mum – news which filled some of my colleagues with heartbreak, I won’t lie. It’s the first time that pork crackling has been on GBBO, Mel advises, and Selasi could not seem less interested in that information. “Chill,” he may or may not have replied.

Kate tells a dark story about compromising over Christmas because her husband – innocently enough, one would think – quite likes a Yorkshire pudding and her family “never, ever had them”. She speaks of them as though they were something rather indecent. Her compromise seems to be… simply to make Yorkshire puddings. I don’t know. It also looks rather as though there is a fly in her batter mix, as the camera pans past.

Benjamina is doing what Tamal did in a previous series, and is choosing her flavours – onion, brie, bacon – based on what she’d like in a sandwich. Well, why not. She also tells us that we need “smoking hot oil” – which is a rare instance of ‘smoking hot’ used in its literal sense. (Val, on the other hand, asserts that you have to use beef dripping, though where she has found this I can’t imagine. I sort of assumed dripping grew extinct around 1957.)

It’s quite fun watching the bakers pour or spoon their batter into the trays – mostly because of how unabashedly inept many of them are. Here, for example, is Jane’s attempt…

…while Mel is so incensed about Tom’s slapdash approach that she leans over him, and scolds him like a disappointed aunt. “They’re all over the shop! Look, you were star baker last week; you’ve got to raise your game, my love.” Bless.

It sounds like it’s time for oven-staring, am I right? Stare away, bakers, stare away.

They start to emerge pretty quickly. Some are very big (Selasi’s are huge); some are little more than biscuits. What nobody has achieved is consistency, of course. Yorkshire puds cannot be uniform.

Saddest of all – and please take note – are Tom’s disasters:

Luckily they seem to have ages, so plenty of bakers start afresh – presumably leaving Selasi et al to kick back and relax, or marinade whatever non-Yorkshire filling they are planning to destroy their puds with. Tom cannot fill his, of course, because they are mini Yorkshire plates. He seems to deal with it well, but this is rather horrifying:

Somehow, Mary and Paul stomach these bizarre concoctions as they go bench to bench. Paul’s gibberish for the episode is ‘irregular air pockets’ – which, of course, is something we’re all dying to see when we tuck into a Yorkshire pudding. It’s a little confusing because ‘irregular’ is also a criticism when he’s looking at Kate’s array.

Incidentally, they use a curiously large knife to chop the YPs, scraping the blade against slate in a manner calculated to send shocks of horror down the spines of those of us of a nervous disposition.

Who does best? Selasi, Rav, Andrew, and Val come away with happy nods – and Val gives a pantomime sigh of relief that is something akin to a hot air balloon deflating and seems to take about 20 minutes.

Are you ready for the Technical Challenge? It’s… lacy pancakes. Tom’s response is a look of kind confusion, perhaps assuming (as the rest of us naturally had done) that this was a slip of the tongue, or some kind of belated April Fool. Mais non, mes amis, this is what passes for a challenge in Batter Week. I can only imagine the execs at Channel 4, watching this together in their Knightsbridge apartment, turned silently to each other at this point and slowly shook their heads. Perhaps a single tear ran down one of their cheeks.

“Lace pancakes were traditionally eaten by the rich at their dinners,” lies Mel in the voiceover, cleverly crafting a statement that can’t possibly be checked or verified.

“Paul, why did you choose lacy pancakes?” poses Mary, rather more appositely.

Paul mumbles about it being a vast improvement on the regular pancake while Mary looks on sceptically. He even discusses “that great pancake flavour”, presumably because there is so little surface area to it that a flavour is all you’re going to get.

This is one of the worst challenges I can recall. Because this isn’t baking. And pancakes aren’t difficult. And they don’t have the same designs, so they’re not even compared like for like. AND they’ll be served cold and unpleasant. It’s all so absurd.

The poor editors are left having to cobble something together about the thickness of batter (yawn) and try to fill up the time with incidental shots of grass, people leaning on desks, and Benjamina doing a solid impression of a high schooler with a crush that she’s desperately hoping somebody will ask her about.

Rav has sketched out some crosshatch, while Selasi apparently can’t even draw an empty heart. Bakers have one practice pancake they can get rid of before they have to commit themselves. “Paul hasn’t said what temperature they should make the pancakes at,” Mel warns – which is fair enough, since (a) making pancakes is childishly simple, and (b) they would have no way of reaching a specific temperature.

All of my criticisms are made to look rather stupid in the face of the beauty of Benjamina’s design. No, it wouldn’t be pleasant to eat once it’s cold and congealed – but this is still something pretty impressive:

Rav loves to burn things, doesn’t he? “The tester was much better than this one,” he comments of a charred pancake, “I wish I hadn’t dropped it on the floor now”… leading one to wonder at which stage he was pleased that he’d dropped it on the floor.

Selasi loses a couple cool points at quite how thrilled he is to have flipped his pancake. Dame Val has, of course, made a series of mismatched horrors, and doesn’t care at all. (Oh, by the way, I am now going to call her Dame Val. She deserves no less.)

Mary and Paul bravely face an array of unappetising looking cold pancakes, and apparently test them by flinging them around, smacking them against slate, and eating minute corners of them. They have, of course, absolutely nothing to say about them. At this point, I should say that my housemate made lacy pancakes while we watched, and they were very nice – but we got to eat them while warm.

Rav comes last, followed by Selasi and Kate. The top three are Jane, Candice, and Benjamina.

The bakers stand in the rain and reflect on the results.

But it’s sunny for Showstopper Challenge – which is churros! Paul, incidentally, uses ‘churros’ as both plural and singular throughout, but I am advised that this is not correct. Churros are traditional served with a chocolate dipping sauce, advises Mel – she seems to be doing the bulk of the voiceovers this week – but you can imagine that the bakers are going to play fast and loose with that unbeatable recipe. Dame Val, for instance, is adding orange extract – “for a nice hit of orange”, she cordially explains. Benjamina, meanwhile, is including “every kind of coconut”. I’m pretty sure that totals one kind, right?

Tom, on the other hand…

Nobody likes to see a pestle and mortar more than I, but fennel is not a flavour to include in a sweet dish. Or, to my mind, in any dish. Not a fennel fan, thankyouverymuch. And I’m *also* not a fan of the fact that Tom always puts his name into the title of his bakes. (I use the word ‘bake’ loosely – this is, of course, a deep fat frying challenge.)

Clearly churros should be served with chocolate, toffee, caramel, or something in that family. It shouldn’t have matcha or be served with ‘white chocolate and wasabi’, which is what Rav has done. He explains matcha to us, in case we’ve forgotten from that time someone used matcha a couple of weeks ago.

Consistency and uniformity are, as ever, the watchwords of the day. Some of the bakers are piping theirs out onto greaseproof paper – Dame Val’s are unexpectedly precise – while others are loitering around, waiting for this stage of the filming to be over. Kate, meanwhile, is apparently making bunnies – and it feels a lot like Colouring Pencils Man is sassing her with his depiction which is anything but lapine:

I should say, my exception to just-serve-it-with-chocolate is Benjamina’s: coconut and passion fruit are the keys to unlock my heart. Just in case you wondered.

Chill, freeze, or stand? The choice is yours. But I’m guessing (by Mary’s look of incredulity at Selasi’s choices) that freezing is not the best idea. I mean, I also saw the episode, so I do know that it wasn’t a good idea. Soz, Selasi.

Dame Val wanders into shot and says “CHOCOLATE ORANGE”.

“My children’s favourite,” she adds. Her children must be fifty if they’re a day.

From here on, most of the rest of the episode consists of close-ups of deep fat fryers. Or, I learn, friers. But not friars. (I will let you have a single shot of one:)

I wonder how many bakers were able to practise these? I suppose you can do this with vast quantities of oil in a big pan, but otherwise I can’t imagine many of them can lay their hands on deep fat fryers. We had one once, I believe, though goodness knows what happened to that.

Each baker is making 35 (or was it 36?) of these, minimum, and it feels like we’re in a repeating montage of boiling fat. It’s somewhere between calming and unnerving. It definitely made me want to eat some churros – which, dear reader, I have yet to do since the episode aired.

It’s judgement time, and I spend most of salivating. Churros look so delicious.

Query: where did Tom get astroturf from? And why?

His feedback is very bad – they don’t like the taste, texture, or appearance. REMEMBER THIS, READER.

Indeed, quite a few people get negative feedback – Selasi’s frozen dough, Val’s doughy churros, Kate’s oily churros, Rav’s unpleasant flavour – but Jane does well and essentially has hysterics, while Benjamina also gets smiley nods all round with this very tempting display.

Mary throws around the word ‘impregnated’ far too often for my liking.

Judges and presenters huddle around the table and mull over everybody’s chances. It seems pretty obvious to me who ought to win and who ought to lose.

The winner is (hurrah!) is…

The person leaving the tent is…

Tom was convinced he was going – and he’s not the only one. I reckon he was the clear loser this week (nice though he seems), and I’m rather perplexed. Not just cos I’m out of my office sweepstake now. It does seem like the production team might be playing a bigger role in deciding who stays and who goes this year – because we’ve had a series of unlikely choices… hmm…

Next week: some baking, maybe? As I say, I’ll be away – but I’ll be back recapping in a fortnight’s time.

Sue is back (with hair so different from the rest of the episode that it was either very windy or this is filmed long afterwards), a laboured pun has been made on the word roll (PUN KLAXON), and somewhere Paul is looking in a mirror and saying “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, who’s the breadiest of them all?” It must be… Bread Week!

Tbh, I always find bread week a wee bit annoying. Partly because there are very few ways one can be creative with bread without making it substantially worse than regular bread, and partly because Paul suddenly fears the challenge of anybody else in the bread arena, and wildly criticises everything he sets his eyes on.

But, as promised, Candice is wearing red for bread. I’m wondering how distinct her different lipsticks have to be over the series. By the final, will she be donning a shade of ultraviolet?

Blazer Watch, you ask? No? Well, here is is. Some very muted colours this week. And some intriguing turned-up sleeves from Sue.

In the Signature Challenge, they are making chocolate bread (“the bread must contain chocolate”, as Mel helpfully elaborates). I’m going to come in with a hasty ‘no’ at this point, as I don’t think sweet bread is a thing or should be a thing. If I want sweet bread, I’ll have cake. I do not want chocolate bread. I do not want chocolate on my bread. I hope I have made myself clear.

Mary, though, is apparently excited about the challenge, because they haven’t had it before. As the series go on, they will have to come up with increasingly unlikely (and unappetising) challenges. “Pineapple bread,” Mel will announce in Series 9. “METAL BREAD” squawks Sue in Series 12. By Series 15 they’ll be making flatpack furniture while Paul murmurs the word ‘bread’ in the background.

Another downside to bread week is that it’s not the most fun to watch. We learn (grab your notebooks, stat) that yeast is involved, and that people are putting entirely normal and bread-like ingredients into their bread. We’re left to gasp in awe and/or dismay at Candice putting in 250g of butter. Paul Reaction Face time, for a change:

KNEADING DOUGH HELPS DEVELOP GLUTEN PEOPLE.  (An object lesson in the importance of punctuation.)

Val apparently kneads her 500 times, and wearily counts to eight before the camera mercifully pans away. I suspect she is the sort who would skip numbers while playing hide and seek.

Rav is making a babka, which he thinks is a Middle Eastern bread. Paul says it’s a Polish cake, and waltzes away. Right over to Benjamina, who thinks she’s making a babka, but is apparently make a couronne. Gosh, it’s intense. Sorry, no, it’s just in one tent. *orders some new sides because mine have split*

Mary tells Paul not to be ‘grumpy’ about it (glorious) and Colouring Pencils Man totally has Benjamina’s back when it comes to the name of it.

Kate is making two types of chocolate dough, because apparently some of her family will get knifey if they don’t get the one they like. She laughs nervously about pleasing everyone.

Over at Tom/Michael’s desk, he’s doing the windowpane test – which someone does most years, but GBBO always tells us about as though it were a fresh new invention. One can imagine GBBO as a caveman, forever trying to impress people with a circular stone or fire.

This year, we skate past the usual prove-in-proving-drawer-or-oven debate, in favour of Andrew’s daring (apparently) decision not to double prove. Look, I had no idea double proving was a necessity, but then I’ve never made bread. Mary is certainly shocked, and Rav treats it with the polite subdued horror that one would the tid-bit that a friend was considering bestiality.

The downside to proving and long oven times is that the bakers don’t have much to do for a while. Not enough screaming and running about and trying to turn demerara into a miniaturised sculpture of Weston-super-Mare. Selasi is really committing to his relaxation schtick.

Val takes a jaunt down memory lane, telling us that she couldn’t afford chocolate as a child. That can be added to the lollipops she couldn’t afford last episode. I’m fully expecting her to continue on this path throughout the series, confiding (by the end) that she couldn’t afford grass or friends or the number seven.

She does advise that you can make your own chocolate spread, instead of buying it. I economise by not having chocolate spread.

Michael (they just said his name! I’m golden) is every one of us who has tried to spread cold butter onto a sandwich:

People fill their doughs, twist them, cut them, and worry about whether they have too little, or too much, filling. Selasi wisely decides not to go for “too much”, suggesting only that he knows what the word “too” means. Andrew, meanwhile, with his SINGLE PROVE – remember that scandal of a paragraph ago? – has little to do but stare into his oven, and perhaps wonder if that butter wouldn’t be better off in the fridge. Otherwise it might be butter off, amirite.

I’m ten minutes into the episode and I can’t bear hearing the word ‘prove’ anymore. This always happens.

This is a shot that the editing team decide is a keeper:

We get intermittent shots of streams and daffodils, suggesting that we have inadvertently wandered into the mind of William Wordsworth, and then effectively a montage of people taking bread out of ovens – and a shot of Candice apparently taken by somebody lying on the floor.

She is wearing quite the fancy dress, incidentally, looking a fair colleen, as our Irish friends might say.

The fiddles come out, and the final minute is filled with people fanning their bread, scattering nuts, and saying “glaze, glaze, glaze” with the wild-eyed intensity of an insane ceramicist. Adorably, showing just how friendly this competition is, everybody rallies round to help Candice in her hour of need. She is doubtless grateful, but also adds “I hate oven gloves” – though presumably the alternative would be worse.

And there we have it. Suddenly the breads are all revolving in front of us, and we’re ready for some judging.

Paul likes Andrew’s bread DESPITE that single prove. Or single proof. Hmm. Not so good for quite a few of the other bakers, who have an unusually high proportion of underbaked bread. Which Paul invariably calls ‘raw’. Surely it is underbaked rather than raw? Isn’t it only raw when it’s a pile of ingredients? Look, Paul says “less curls” so I have no faith in anything he says, thinks, or feels. (He also tells Candice that hers is “down to the eat”, whatever that means. Whatever it is, it’s not good; she has a little cry and it’s very touching.) (THIS is how unsporty kids feel in your P.E. classes Candice, let me tell you from bitter personal experience.) (This took a turn.) (I’ll stop.)

Rav seems to do the best at this stage, and he adopts a Little Miss Muffet stance under a tree. Still wearing his apron, which doesn’t seem particularly hygienic.

That sun has suddenly disappeared by the rainy Technical Challenge – which is one of the more unpleasant sounding (and, it turns out, looking) bakes they’ve had for a while. Dampfnudel. I forgot to ask my German colleague if anybody actually eats these in Germany, but Benjamina is all of us on hearing the task:

We get our usual collection of bakers telling us that they haven’t heard of it, and haven’t made it before – they have this in common with literally everyone ever – and Candice says she was rather hoping to be making toast. Paul’s defence for assigning this task is that “we’ve never steamed bread before on the Bake Off”. Again, nor has anybody, ever. The camera operator does their best to make the dampfnudel look attractive in panning close-ups, but this only serves to ensure that nobody will ever make these again.

Like all the best breads, it’s served with a spoon. Mary damns it with faint praise by saying it is like an iced bun without icing. Mmm.

Selasi uses those muscles of his to slam the dough against the counter, and the BBC’s Foley artist has a high old time creating unlikely noises to go along with it. He also does something in the line of a fan dance with it.

Oh excellent. There’s an interesting history of dampfnudel saving a town or something that takes Mel off on her hols and allows Germany’s foremost food historian to repeat everything she’s just said in her voiceover.

Apparently dampfnudel is still very important to this community, as proved by a photo from about 1996 and a barbershop quartet singing something that almost all of the audience won’t understand, myself included. That’s quite enough of that. Let’s get back to the tent to see bakers making that noted baked good, plum sauce, and watch Candice attempt to divide 900 by 12 solely with the use of her fingers.

Somebody’s found some timpani, and that’s what accompanies the bakers putting unattractive looking dough balls in saucepans, and looking gloomily into the steam-covered lids. We see but through a glass darkly, y’all. At some point, inexplicably, foil gets added.

Having been told earlier that the bakers shouldn’t lift the lid early, it is with a delicious sense of dramatic irony that we watch every baker do precisely that.

Val. I love you.

Mel makes an excellent ‘rising dampf’ joke – see, she can do it when she needs to – and the unappealing dampfnudel are presented in their pans to the judging eyes of Mezza and Pezza. In short: all of them are hideous. It’s inconceivable that anybody could want to eat these. That German conflict probably ended because both sides developed a common enemy in the dampfnudel.

Rav comes last, followed by Jane. Winning the technical challenge, much to everyone’s surprise and consternation, is Val. She puts it down to the “pure luck that I’m older that everyone else”, showing that she has only the vaguest understanding of how time works.

Aaaand we’re onto the Showstopper Challenge. It’s ‘savoury bread’ (this should be a tautology), and we have to go through another year where we accept the harmless fantasy that a bread centrepiece is now, ever was, or ever could be a thing.

Oh, and they’ve got to have plaits in them.

Things kick off with Kate, who is taking a turn for the pagan with her corn maiden – but it does give Colouring Pencils Man another opportunity to show off his admirable shading.

It does sound delish, with foccaccia and goat’s cheese and other good things. Mel raises the topic of fertility and Kate violently asserts that she doesn’t want any more children. It all gets a bit awkward, and we wander over to see Michael plying Mary with (the prospect of) a Cypriot alcohol akin to white spirit.

Andrew is making a basket; Tom is making Thor’s hammer; Val is making… Noah’s Ark. While I am fully willing to believe that she was a passenger on said ark, her actual construction ambitions only seem to be tangentially related to it. She’s essentially shoving a few animals into a basket. “Yes, it’ll be plaited,” she explains to Paul, with the bright smile and weary patronising tone of an exhausted kindergarten teacher.

Look, I haven’t got a clue what’s going on in Colouring Pencil Man’s illustration, but it does end up eerily accurate.

There is quite a sweet moment where Mel queries why there aren’t two giraffes, rather than one (Bible knowledge time: there would actually have been seven giraffes, as there were seven of each animal considered kosher) and Val says “they’ve argued”. One of the doves, she adds, has flown away – which has more of a scriptural precedent.

Selasi tells some anecdote about sitting under a tree that apparently justifies his centrepiece not being a centrepiece. His voice remains like one that Marks and Spencer would use to advertise caramel puddings. Rav, meanwhile, is making something he’s calling pesto but which has seemingly none of the correct ingredients – and is interrupted by Mel and Sue playing ‘guess the smell’, where Mel tries (and fails) to fool Sue with a timer. I remain wholly in love with the fact that these two have the professionalism of two teenage girls putting together a dance routine for the end of year assembly.

Oh good. Lots of close-ups of cooking meat. I suppose that’s the price we pay for bread being appropriately savoury.

We scurry around the tent finding out who can’t plait (Selasi, Val), who can (Kate), and who has decided just to make a basket instead (Andrew). Kate, of course, used to do this to her pony.

Tom refuses to join in Mel’s naughty suggestions about the shape of his dough, because his mum will be watching. I applaud you, Tom, to the extent that I think I’ve finally established that your name is Tom rather than Michael. I’m not promising anything.

The word ‘prove’ has lost all meaning. I want a company to set up that does PR and baking, and it could be called PR.OVEN. And it would be wonderful.

Less wonderful is Val who, in the process of ignoring Mel’s questions about her Noah’s Ark animals, manages to… cut herself on an oven tray? I’m pretty sure she burned herself, and Sue has got entirely the wrong health and safety response in mind.

Paul looms around the tent like some sort of grim reaper, and we get our usual flurry of ovens taking things out of ovens while Val wanders around with her hand still in the air, apparently doing nothing whatsoever. Except look a little like her Statue of Liberty from last week.

After a quick final immersion in daffodils, we’re onto the judging. I don’t think any of them look particularly nice enough to feature in a ‘my favourites’ section. Instead, let’s have a gander at Val’s debacle. (“You can do design,” lies Mary, stroking the bread.)

Most people do pretty well – perhaps something with actually giving them enough time to bake the bread properly – but Selasi is criticised for just dumping a pile of shapeless loaves on the table, and Michael’s is considered a mess. There is not, I am sorry to tell you, enough coriander.

Most heartbreakingly, Candice gets all upset at her quite bad feedback on her underworked dough and appearance, but they do like her flavours. She’s obviously one to take things to heart – as opposed to our Val, who could be told that she was literally on trial for her baking ineptitude and would cheerily, madly, laugh it off. They seem to narrow it down to Val and Candice going home, in their pre-announcement debrief.

Then, rather out of nowhere, the winner is…

Tom – whom Mary describes as having been “consistently in the middle” over the past weeks – which, can I remind you, have only numbered two so far. How consistent can one be twice?

And it’s not Candice or Val heading home – but rather:

So, Tom has won and Michael has gone. Finally I can conclusively remember which name is whose. Sorry it took this, Michael, and all the best! You’ve still got hockey.

Next week – besides the threat of a return of Kate’s pagan doll – we’re on batter week. Who knew that was a thing? In what world is making pancakes a baking challenge? We’ll find out next time – hope you can join me!

Thank you for your very kind comments on last week’s episode – it’s lovely to have lots of people enjoying the Bake Off together (and many apologies to those in countries which can’t watch this series yet! There will be many spoilers, I’m afraid.) Sorry that I haven’t replied to comments yet; I will soon, promise.

It’s biscuit week, and for the first time ever – he says, without troubling to check – Mel is flying solo for GBBO. And, to emphasise this anomaly, she is huddled, miserably, in an anorak at the end of the drive.

She isn’t woebegone to the extent of not making a ‘snap’ and ‘crunch’ pair o’ puns (and presumably also quoting the name of a rip off cereal from Lidl). Like some sort of ghostly ancestor, Sue remains on the voiceover. She is lingering, much like the looks exchanged by Selasi and Candice (thought I’d forgotten that? Mais non.)

Our bakers enter to jaunty music, and the cameraman finds ever more unlikely ways to obscure them in the establishing shots. We see Tom or Michael or someone through a cloud of mist, and a concerned Jane from behind a pillar.

Even sans Sue, we can’t omit Blazer Watch – and we have some lovely pink and – what – cerise? burnt salmon? another pink? – from Mary and Mel. Mary is looking at Mel with “I’m sure there used to be two of them” etched into her eyes.

The first challenge is a fun one – 24 iced biscuits. I’m really enjoying this series’ return to everyday bakes, because it should inspire more home baking – even if we can’t all hope to achieve biscuits “as crisp as Paul’s hair” (Paul stoically ignores Mel, as per). Jane confides that she has practised the biscuits but hasn’t practised icing them, to be honest – we appreciate your honesty, thank you Jane – and Selasi says something calming but irrelevant about taking each day as it comes. I’m 90% sure that he’s lowkey auditioning for a Stop Smoking in Forty Days audiobook.

Mary waffles about consistency, in the garden, huddled in an enormous coat and clearly freezing, while the camera pans in on Louise shovelling some teabags around a glass bowl. The poor thing has clearly lost her mind completely.

Paul says something provocative about dunking, and we’re over to find out more about Louise’s biscuits. She’s only had a chance to say “Welsh fruitcake” – the joke is too obvious, so I shall leave it to one side – before we see her partner dragging her up an otherwise deserted hill. Yay! It’s hobbies week!

It ain’t looking good for our Louise, as she answers the “snap or shortbread” dichotomy with something akin to a halfhearted sigh, and a concession that the biscuits will probably be disappointingly soft. “Good luck anyway,” says Paul.

Val’s hobby, meanwhile, is shrieking with laughter at her grandson, whose witticisms – couched, as they are, in stoney silence – left me rather cold. She does also laugh at the rather heartrending tale of childhood poverty she tells, though, so perhaps she sees merriment where others do not. Andrew, for his part, is in the world’s smallest musical theatre group.

Kate, having missed my edicts about flower flavours in biscuits, is making a lavender and bergamot array. We get one of my fave ever Mary Berry Reaction Faces:

Kate is, of course, a Brownie leader – but it looks rather like the only members of her brigade are her daughters.

Selasi, poor boy, is putting hot peppers in his biscuits. I mean, why? Tom, meanwhile, has made 300 practice biscuits – which smacks of a dangerous and debilitating obsession, if anything. Early fave, at the design stage, is Benjamina’s chocolate orange biscuits, which wisely note that flowers should only be seen as an inspiration for decor, not as a flavour. Colouring Pencils Man has done a lovely job of drawing them, though his arrows remain vague at best.

Rav – who, for some reason, I keep forgetting exists – was apparently inspired by a visit to Goa for his daring and unusual combination of… coconut and lime. Guys, I’ve made coconut and lime biscuits before and, as far as I know, I’ve never been to Goa. He’s looking closer to home for his decor, as he’s directly ripping off the tent bunting.

Disaster strikes for poor Louise – as her biscuits take something of a tumble:

She is clearly one of those who deals with difficulties by resiliently and silently continuing – and Candice helps her as she scoops away the debris and starts again. It’s a better response to disaster than Val’s – of deciding that she can probably just use the floor biscuits anyway.

In no time at all, the ovens have done their magic – and 24 biscuits are coming out of everybody’s ovens. Except for Candice’s, as she’s made 48, to sandwich and double up. “24 on the top,” she notes, pausing for an extraordinary length of time before adding the second half of the sentence, which can hardly be considered a thrilling denouement: “24 on the bottom”. She does also, however, confirm that she will be wearing a different shade of lipstick every week – which is enough to warrant a high-five with Mel. Mel responds with the desperate uncoolness of the schoolgirl who can’t believe the popular kid is talking to her.

Everybody is icing, except Val – who, with supreme unconcern, announces that she hasn’t done any yet. Mel flutters around her in a panic, and Val considers a quick nip to the end of the garden to see how they’ve got their delphiniums so hearty.

Various bakers are furiously counting their biscuits – something you’d think they’ve had considered earlier in the process – and Val stalls around 19 including, I believe, two which remain in a dispiriting state on the floor.

And – the icing is over. I think special mention has to go to the impressive uniformity of Michael’s flagons of ale.

There is no crime so great as a soft biscuit, it seems, and Andrew, Louise, and more get penalised on those grounds. I stand by my admiration for Benjamina’s decoration – and Paul approves of the chocolate and orange. Well done for inventing that combination, Benjamina.

Best burn? Mary telling Val “I’m sure you can pipe well”. That’s the sort of cruelty that Paul can only dream of with his overt insults. She comes a second best with labelling Kate’s icing “informal”. As it looks pretty darn impressive to me, I can only imagine she’d describe my icing as straight-up vulgar.

Tom gets… the Paul Hollywood handshake!! He gives the camera a glowing look of pride.

Sue wanders into a posh hotel (in jeans) to learn about biscuit dipping. I will avert mine eyes, and we’ll pick it up at the technical challenge (“an afternoon of misery and stress”). And it’s a good’un – I’m quite keen to try it myself. Viennese whirls!

Mel, incidentally, is doing a brilliant job on her own – and I am not the sort of man who’ll fault either her whirl, or her Viennese accent. She does tend to lean in far too close in her conversations with bakers, but we’ll let that slide. She presumably wants the company.

Don’t these look delicious? Mmm. Even Paul doesn’t dunk these, by the by. Oh, and is that a flowerpot shaped like a handbag AND a teapot in the background?

Everybody’s made jam in a matter of moments, and we’re onto the perennial thrill of being told how to cream butter and sugar. Val jokes that she should probably have the right number – well, perhaps – and we get a shot of Kate that makes me proud to be British.

Consistency of mixture is an issue for all, and Rav is having rather a hopeless time of it – to the extent that it looks rather as if he is using Viennese whirl mixture to illustrate the shifting shapes of the lunar cycle.

Bake or chill? The debate we all face on a Friday evening. Some of the bakers pop the trays in the fridge or freezer before the oven – still more, I suspect, wander around opening and shutting the fridge doors, possibly at the direction of the production crew. Said crew are also very keen this week to give us sweeping wide shots of the tent – perhaps they are proud of its placement, though it does seem to have been erected in rather a curious diagonal.

The bakers act as though making butter icing were a complete unknown, wander around, open and shut ovens, and… some of the whirls come out looking great, and some rather flat. And then the cream and jam is added, and Selasi’s aren’t looking so great… presumably unaided by the looming voyeurism of the cameraman who (as luck would have it) still manages to find a way to obscure a section of the tray.

The music ferociously tells us that the climax of the challenge is over, and the bakers mill around with trays covered in whirls while Mel explains the concept of blind judging in the voiceover, for those viewers who’ve tuned in for the first time in the past three minutes (and have previously had only minimal acquaintance with the English language). Perhaps the saddest moment comes when Paul says “broken” and the camera shows Louise, who could be given the same adjective.

Selasi comes last (all the way from winning the Technical last week, if memory serves), and the top three are Benjamina, Jane, and Kate. I will try making these whirls before the series is over, and feed back with my results.

Mezza, Paul, and Mel debrief on the first two challenges while the bakers sidle into the tent, mutter to each other, and – in the case of Candice – apparently put on two aprons.

The final challenge is to make gingerbread memories, or something – basically turning those home VTs into gingerbread sculptures. The important thing is that they taste nice, says Mary pointlessly, while Paul illustrates the need for them to stand up with an anecdote about his Christmas gingerbread houses still being standing in February. It doesn’t speak wonders for their mass appeal, does it?

(Everyone presumably laments Lee’s early exit, as we can now no longer make jokes about him having been a builder, or laboured references to the fact that two of the bakers are making churches.)

Val is making various unrelated gingerbread pieces and shoving them together, so far as I can tell. It has all the design cohesion of a pile of rubble from an overturned lorry. She also appears to want to commemorate a precious memory of that time Louise made sheep biscuits earlier that day.

There’s not much to say about flavours and biscuit choices this week, since nobody is veering far from a standard gingerbread, and so everything is about the design and construction. They make what they can of Selasi using honey, and a lacklustre conflict about whether or not to include eggs, but it’s not exactly maverick.

Louise is apparently remembering the future, showing her forthcoming wedding, complete with the easiest conceivable sculpture shape, gravestones – all illustrated here in what turns out to be a rather charitable depiction from Colouring Pencils Man.

Candice is compiling a whole pub – Mary’s face lights up – while Michael (Tom? I’m not putting this on, honest; I forget the moment after their names are mentioned) is devoting his gingerbread sculpture to a time he met Santa at Lapland. And, apparently, made gingerbread and created a souvenir… tablemat?

Over with Kate, she’s making something or other to do with Brownies (for audiences unfamiliar with this, it’s in Girl Guides movement where young girls get together to make trails and tie knots and foist slings on each other – all clear?). Mary and Mel launch into the Brownie Promise and Mary, adorably, has to pause during “…serve the… Queen”, since presumably the last time she had to say it, it was a King. And that King was Harald Hardrada.

It does seem early in the competition for a challenge this hard, and I’m impressed by how all the bakers are rising to the occasion. There’s lots of flatpack construction (Andrew has 37 pieces), while Candice is making a green jelly for a pool table. She fondly recalls times her younger brother played pool, when he could barely see over the top of it – which rings alarm bells to me, personally, and I wonder if social services should be contacted as a matter of urgency.

A couple of people seem to be making the Empire State Building, and Val talks to the camera about trying to get the right number of windows – while cheerily disregarding even matching one side to the other in this shot.

Sue warns us, in the voiceover, that pieces of gingerbread not only have to go into the oven, but also have to come out of it – and Jane confides in the audience that she doesn’t want to overcook them.

Memories of Ugne come to the fore when we get a passing moment of Kate saying “the children are cooked now” – but she loses Ugne points for not laughing maniacally at the same time.

Construction time has come for most, with royal icing or caramel being used to hold pieces together. Meanwhile, Val has opted for an approach of just moving things around the counter.

Mel stalks her around the tent, adorably shepherding her back to her post.

Now starts the stage of the episode where I was more or less constantly shrieking at the television. Walls are collapsing, glue isn’t setting, and the Statue of Liberty – in what I can only assume is a poignant metaphor – has had her head snapped off.

There is literally a montage of collapsing pieces – my HEART, my NERVES – and it culminates with this heartbreaking moment, just as music and Mel alike signal that the challenge is up: Louise’s church completely falls apart, each wall going in a different direction.

Again, I can’t emphasise enough how impressed I am with Louise’s attitude. She deals with it so well. I would be a sobbing mess, subtly trying to dislodge other people’s creations. Louise, you are a hero.

The bakers are, somewhat cruelly, made to carry their creations to the table – a distinct disadvantage for those at the back of the tent – and Mary and Paul get to judgin’. Here are some of the creations which most impressed me:

[Not pictured: Tom/Michael’s rather demonic Santa scene. “I wouldn’t give top marks to the actual piping” – Mary in understatement of the episode.]

Winning this week – despite rather clear indications throughout that Kate should have won – is…

Leaving this week, which is sad but perhaps not a surprise…

I hope you’ve enjoyed it :) Tune in next week for bread week! Here’s something inexplicable to whet the appetite…

Guys… it’s back! And it’s CAKE WEEK. I can’t promise my recaps will be well-timed, but they will be presented beautifully. And that’s the nearest you’re going to get to a pun from me (he lies).

Things kick off, as usual, with Mel and Sue hamming it up and generally pinching themselves that they get to waffle nonsense on camera for a living. That beats flogging Warburtons, doesn’t it, ladies? Said nonsense includes (unless I am being prurient) a coded reference to sex toys… Yep, guys, they’re back with a vengeance and it’s like the Carry On films never left us.

We start to be introduced to the bakers, accompanied by sweeping aerial views of an unidentified stately home, and various contestants stand in isolated woodland and tell us that it’s exciting to be there. ‘There’ being, presumably, the competition – rather than the woodland. Though Val looks like she’d be thrilled to be anywhere – and is mostly excited that the tent is real. Here speaks a woman who has never fully trusted television.

Lots of early impressions are flying around. I had – but of course – already scoured the line-up and descriptions, and have Kate in the office sweepstake. But my first thoughts are that everyone seems pretty fab – even (and I can’t believe I’m saying this) the P.E. teacher. I didn’t know it was in me to like a P.E. teacher.

Shall we gloss over Mel’s list of ‘Kates’? I feel like it’s a pun we’ve had before, and it wasn’t welcome then. What IS welcome (I can only assume) is Blazer Watch. As the summer gets warmer, will we see these disappear?

The first challenge is a goody. It’s drizzle cake. And Mel adds to the stores of my undying love by saying “no presjz” for “no pressure”. If GBBO has done anything, it’s made abbrevs socially acceptable. Right? It has, right?

…Right?

The bakers start by urgently moving things around their counters in a way that looks entirely like over-enthusiastic extras pretending to be busy in the backdrop of a soap opera. Somebody (who?) just mutters “Scissors, scissors”.

I like that they’re making a drizzle cakes, because that’s something that somebody might conceivably want to do. As Paul acknowledges, the challenges have got a bit eccentric over the years – remember that dry-as-the-desert pancake-sponge-cake they had to make one year? – so Well Done Bake Off Team.

Bakers tut and sigh and show us whether or not their hands are shaking – presumably prompted by the production team, since I can’t imagine anybody would volunteer the numbingly dull information that their hands weren’t shaking – and we’re flung into activity. All is not quite well in the world of hands, though; Jane is our first blue bandage of the night.

Mary is, of course, banging on about lemons – but she is ‘expecting the unexpected’. And I can only hope that she is talking about Val and her genial insanity. She struggles with opening a jar, and seems to believe that Paul and Mary have come over with no other purpose in mind but helping her get the lid off.

I love Val: she uses margarine in cakes rather than butter (as do I), she’s from Somerset, and apparently does kitchen aerobics in her slippers while somebody stoops to take creep shots from the doorway.

One downside to a good, simple recipe is that there aren’t huge surprises. People are grating oranges and lemons, creaming butter and sugar; the usual. Until we get to Louise, whose chief and best quality is being Welsh. Love to hear a Welsh voice on TV.

Mama didn’t raise no fool with this one, as my friend Adam would say – she knows the way to Mary’s heart and that is through soaking everything indiscriminately in booze. Orange liqueur it is. And… lemonade? Let me tell you, I put lemonade in a cake once – aged about eight – and the unpleasant taste is still in my mouth.

My favourite bits of GBBO might be the at-home segments, where people tell us that they are married to their husbands or work in their workplaces. As the selfsame Adam pointed out (or was it you, Rachel?), they ain’t writing the Dictionary of National Biography. Having been told that Louise is a hair stylist, we get video proof for the avoidance of doubt. Which is just her murmuring ‘roots’ at this unsuspecting lady.

Paul H has found his first nitpicking to do: drizzle or icing? The gameshow writes itself. It then also rejects itself, screws itself up into a ball, and throws itself into a recycling bin. As Louise astutely notes, Paul does know what he’s talking about, because he’s a professional. He is no longer eligible to bake in the Olympics.

Lee’s butter is too clumpy, and I marvel afresh at the number of people who apparently cream their butter in a food mixer. I was brought up to use me ‘ANDS. ‘ARD GRAFT. &c. &c. Lee is a builder-turned-church-minister (the repeated use of ‘church minister’ rather than ‘vicar’ – and the fact that he is dressed super casjz while giving his split-second talk – leads me to assume that he’s non-conformist. HE CERTAINLY IS WITH BAKING AMIRITE.)

Mel assures Lee that he’ll be all right – which, hmm – and (as if realising her mistake) quickly waffles about consistency and the need for it to taste like cake, and “the perfect ratio of wet to dry ingredients”, which sounds rather as though you were trying to describe a shopping list to a synaesthesiac. Then we zoom in on this rather dramatically.

We’ve seen Louise and Lee at work, but nobody is interested in seeing a financy something or other at their desk. Luckily Selasi rides a motorbike and, in his spare time, pretends to be a superhero.

Selasi is the chillest contestant ever to be in the tent. He’s entirely unflappable, and the show knows it. Several times in this episode we have little montages of bakers shrieking or announcing hysterically that they’ve never been more nervous in their lives, before seguing to Selasi murmuring that he’d be quite happy to take a quick nap any time. He also has a tea towel around his neck, or over his shoulder, at all times. Why? Nobody knows, least of all Selasi.

Colouring Pencils Man! He’s back, he’s not changed, and he is nothing if not hazy in where he believes cinnamon might be on this drizzle cake.

Kate is putting apples in her cake – which doesn’t win her points with me, I’m afraid, as I’m no especial fan of the cooked apple. Particularly in a cake. In a crumble, and we’ll talk. She apparently picks them from her orchard – or, indeed, gets her two children to do it gratis. They’ve also picked the blackberries. Said children appear, complete with unexpected flapper haircuts, flinging flour at each other instead of rolling out the curiously tiny lumps of pastry in front of them.

Candice is making a gluten-free cake (oh lord, why) but is rather adorable when describing how she’s going to poke in the custard, giggling away while she earns our first Mary Berry Reaction Face of the series. Which looked lovely in passing, but is a trifle terrifying in still.

Dear Mel and Sue – could we go through one episode without you telling us that putting food in the oven at the wrong temperature is wrong? It sort of goes without saying, right? The only catastrophe is Jane forgetting to add ground almonds, so she busies herself with starting again. Forgetting is catching, as Selasi has omitted the cinammon – suddenly the vagaries of Colouring Pencil Man’s artwork are explained – but he is less panicked. Instead he wanders over to Candice (who is doing washing up, which I’d always rather assumed was done by the production minions) and… well, I don’t remember precisely what he said, because I was too busy concocting a tent romance between these two.

I’m going to have to get pacier on this recap, particularly with so many bakers in the tent, but we can’t ignore the baker who is putting gin in his drizzle. Because:

This is Tom’s handiwork (I realise now that I had amalgamated Tom and Michael in my head) – he’s also using boiled-down tonic to make some sort of… well, I’m not sure what, because presumably boiled-down tonic is just sugar?

Yes, Val listens to her cakes. There was rather a hullabaloo about this, but I’m sure other bakers in previous series have also given their cakes a good listen? I’m not gonna lie; based on how she does this week, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it as best practice.

Louise steadfastly refuses to join in Sue’s attempts to innuendo her cake out of existence.

Rav is using yuzu, and seems astonished that Sue hadn’t heard of it. Since this is a lady who, seven series in, tends to need the rudimentaries of self-raising flour explained to her, it shouldn’t really have come as a surprise. His description of it as being “a cross between a lemon and lime” does beg the question whether he wouldn’t have been better off with… a lemon and a lime.

Now, Andrew seemed perfectly likeable. I was prepared to cheer him on. But then this happened:

I realise that it looks like he’s snorting something, but he is (in fact) chopping up rosemary. He believes that infusing his drizzle with rosemary will ‘give it a bit of a twist’. Well, I’ll give you a twist in a minute, Andrew, because NO. Every year somebody starts doing this, and I think I summed it up best on Twitter:

STOP PUTTING ROSEMARY IN CAKES. THIS IS AN ANNOUNCEMENT TO ALL. #GBBO

— Simon Thomas (@stuck_inabook) August 24, 2016

With roast potatoes – yes please; I’ll be offended if you don’t. In anything sweet? Absolutely not.

If you’re after close-ups of pastry brushes and dripping icing and (of course) drizzle, then you’ve come to the right place. Val manages to dislodge her edible primroses – an accident which can only be considered a blessing in disguise and a massive hint from Dame Gravity – but she obviously isn’t bothered, and decides ‘we’ll get away with it’. We being her and the cake which has been confiding in her, presumably.

“You’re the first,” says Mary to Benjamina, who nervously says “Yes”, and it feels like some archaic version of YouTube comment threads. Benjamina is also involved in an elaborate discussion of whether a section of cake is undercooked or drizzle-soaked. Spoilers: it’s fine.

Nobody does disastrously, though Kate’s “that’s disappointing” in response to unenthusiastic feedback is a little heartbreaking – and also an excellent idea for a serial killer’s catchphrase. If anybody writes this screenplay, I am more than willing to appear in the credits as an executive producer. Other highlights from this section? Tom/Michael’s gin is apparently powerful but tasteless, Paul comments of Candice’s cake “Fascinating that it’s gluten-free” (is it?), and Paul criticises Rav’s cake for not being quite lime or lemon enough. Which, considering it had neither lime nor lemon in it, is unsurprising. Most importantly: lingering looks between Selasi and Candice.

And… we’re onto the technical challenge! Mary’s only piece of advice is “It’s suggested that you do things in an order – keep to that order”. This nugget may not be helpful in and of itself, but at least she delivered it in the middle of a rap battle.

12 JAFFA CAKES. Do people have jaffa cakes outside of the UK? I’m going to be honest, I thought it was trademarked. They’re a fairly dry sponge, fairly unappetising orange jelly, and fairly uninspiring chocolate. Somehow, together, they are a Great British institution. They’re also about 65p for a pack of 12, so making them by hand is something nobody would dream of doing for a moment.

Paul helpfully points at the different bits of it and names them – “Chocolate on the top” – concluding with “that’s a jaffa cake right there”, suggesting that he mistakenly believes he has wandered into the world’s easiest version of Kim’s game. Oh, and a crisis was caused across the nation when this debacle happened:

“We don’t do that in the South, you know,” says Mary, and she is right. I’m anti-dunking in general, and certainly wouldn’t make an exception for jaffa cakes. What I love about our ridiculous nation is that the maker of Jaffa Cakes, McVities, actually released a statement on the matter.

Everyone starts with the orange jelly, and it’s nowhere clear for a moment how they’ve done it. We see them poke an orange or two, and then suddenly we have trays of orange jelly littering the tent. My question: did they use gelatin or pectin? Are these vegetarian? Why do we have to spend so long having the concept of stirring explained to us by a bevy of bakers, when this essential question is left unanswered?

People are spooning their sponge mixture into trays, and Val says she is going to try to “guess the time”, while prodding the timer enthusiastically and seemingly at random.

And then we segue, of course, into bakers staring into ovens. Oh, the eternal love between baker and oven. It makes the looks between Selasi and Candice seem almost not lingering. (But, to clarify, they definitely are lingering.)

My favourite moment of the first ep might be this one – Candice acknowledges that she has illicitly added orange juice to the recipe, against the instructions, and Mel sotto voce asks her where she got the orange juice from. “The orange,” says Candice, in the voice usually reserved for encouraging the first words of a recalcitrant infant.

Various bakers umm and ahh over the size of the jelly in a jaffa cake (fair enough), and then, less explicably, they debate which way up they should go. I mean, wut? Have these people never encountered a jaffa cake before? “Who knows what’s the right way round?” poses Jane, answering her own question with these monstrosities:

(Having said that, I can definitely see myself entering the tent and immediately forgetting every single thing about every item I have ever beheld.)

In the end, only Andrew is doing them the wrong way round. He whispers his every thought at the camera, and – for no obvious reason – does a quick impersonation of Lurch.

Oh, and we got our first glimpse of the pheasant that got, I feel sure, more screentime than a good half of the bakers. And then, with some quick chocolate spreading and piping and the minister saying (I think) “I don’t know what a cross looks like”, we’re done. And they all look pretty amateurish, I have to say – the chocolate let a lot of people down.

Highlight, of course, is Paul’s “They are all uniform… ly bad”. It reminds me of Simon Cowell’s endless “You have successfully… not… got through… to going home… because you’re through” style banter. Once we get to Andrew’s upside down jaffas, Paul explains that they are upside down – and then which the right way might be, for the avoidance of doubt.

We meander through all the contestants, and there isn’t a huge amount to say. Andrew comes last (Paul reiterates that they were upside down, lest anybody has forgotten), and Lee and Val also do badly. Obviously aiming to confuse me, Tom and Michael (or Michael and Tom) claim third and second place, while good old Selasi comes top.

There are so many bakers that we obviously don’t have time to discover the unexpected history of cake – we get, instead, another shot of a pheasant – and (after a quick debrief from Judge Corner) we’re into the showstopper. And it’s Mirror Cake! No, I hadn’t heard of it either.

What is a Mirror Cake? Mary just uses the word ‘polish’ and ‘glaze’ over and over – and follows the theme of the episode by never quite telling us how one goes about making a glaze on a cake. I thought it was just a very good ganache, but it seems to be separate from that. I suppose we’ll never know (unless, of course, we are willing to google it – which we are not). What I do know is that it must have given Colouring Pencils Man a bit of a headache – but he demonstrates glaze admirably.

Next stop, Louise. Hers sounds delicious – being based on a white chocolate trifle – but she has more or less ignored the challenge, and is just shoving buttercream on the outside. “And mirror glaze” adds Sue optimistically in her voiceover, though we remain none the wiser as to what that could mean.

Sue also gives her annual explanation of what a genoise sponge cake is (“added air… and keeping it there”). Meanwhile, Val has developed a crippling addiction to the timer. I have a sneaking suspicion that she believes it is counting the remaining moments of her mortality.

Selasi is whisking over boiling water (“I don’t understand it… I just bake it”) and has forgotten to include raspberry seeds. Seeds? That sounds gritty. Andrew, meanwhile, is making something with salted caramel and orange which looks and sounds delicious – even if Ultimate Indulgence makes it sound rather like the last meal of a convict on death row.

Michael is using Matcha Tea sponge, which looks revolting, but… no, it probably also is revolting. Mary seems pretty unimpressed.

So, here’s a question. Why is there a bunch of roses on one of the desk? Has Selasi been wooing Candice? Is Val going to sugarglaze them? Answer comes there none.

Speaking of our Candice, she is having trouble with her genoise sponges – which aren’t rising. It’s an issue, I’ll acknowledge, but nothing compared to the name of her cake. If Andrew broke my ‘no-rosemary-in-cake’ rule, Candice is playing fast and loose with my dictats on naming cakes. I.e. be simple and straightforward. Don’t call it ‘Chocolate Paradise’ or ‘Midsummer Dreams’ and definitely don’t call it…

But she gets her comeuppance almost immediately; she flings a sponge against the wall, and starts again. She’s not the only one. Val, Benjamina, and Tom/Michael (possibly Tom AND Michael?) are also starting from scratch. While Louise says she’s making a creme pat, but appears to be mashing raspberries. Er, good luck with that. (It perhaps explains the ‘disaster’ with it that she later mentions.)

Oh.

Oh, Kate.

I hadn’t spotted this name the first time around.

It’s an oddly pessimistic name for a cake, thinking about it, but it’s definitely on brand: Kate is wearing a swallow dress, has swallow earrings, and I believe – though I may not have been listening as attentively as I could have been – once married a swallow.

Val gets a visitation from Paul and Mary – not in a spectral way – but busies herself with tasting the contents of the unnamed jars around her, ignoring them as much as possible. She narrowly avoids adding cornflour – which does pose the riddle: why are these jars unlabelled? Is it to reenact some sort of Portia situation?

Incidentally, this still life was created by Luigi Lucioni.

“I’ve literally done everything twice,” says Benjamina, much like Mum did when she had twins. Lee has made a horror of a ganache, Candice is waiting for a jelly to set, and everybody opens and shuts freezers, trying to find an empty one. It’s clearly Portia week. Benjamina, meanwhile, has a little cry because her cream or ganache or something is too runny. She seems to think that continually mixing it will make it less runny?

We see lots of sugar thermometers. Guys, since last year I have actually been given a sugar thermometer! It’s very exciting. I can make things to exactly the right temperature – and have indeed used it for Extreme Baking. Maybe I’ll mirror glaze EVERYTHING this week.

Aaand, with one excellent use of ‘Mother Hubbard’ as an expletive from Candice, we’re done! There are some truly excellent-looking bakes out there. Here are some other photos of the ones I loved the look of:

Matcha tea, we learn, is unpleasant in a sponge cake. Poor Candice is a bit upset about the state of her genoise (but has served her cake on a huge ornamnetal mirror), while Andrew surprises the judges with his excellent cake. And as for Kate’s luminous blue swallow cake? “Blue isn’t usually a good colour for icing,” Mary notes kindly, having evidently not tasted my (third-place) award-winning swimming pool cake of 1995.

Special mention has to go to Louise, who seemed to disregard the challenge entirely – but let’s not be hasty. Perhaps she misunderstood, and thought she had to do a cake that seemed like a mirror – in the sense that her cake has the exact colours of her hair, face, and lips.

All of which, thankfully, are great colours for cakes and faces alike.

We barely have time for another couple clips of the pheasant, before we’re into the announcements. Star Baker is…

Jane – to her surprise and, I’ll admit, to mine (but only cos I thought Selasi had it in the bag). Leaving us, sadly, is…

Bye Lee – you seemed a delight, and I’m sorry that we haven’t seen more of you. In fact, this group of bakers might be the nicest bunch we’ve had yet – as of yet, I’m rather fond of all of them.

Next week looks like it’ll be stressful. Biscuit towers, Viennese whirls, and collapsing trays. Can’t wait!

It’s been fun to be back – hope you’ve enjoyed the recap. And thanks to everyone who asked about it coming back :)

One more time:

Hi everyone – thanks for not nagging me last week, when I quietly cashed in my ‘one week off from recapping’ that I think I’ve used every year. You’ll never get to hear my thoughts about… whatever that episode was about. I’ve already forgotten. But, hey, here’s chocolate week!

It’s semi-final week; Mel and Sue optimistically refer to them all as ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ – one of them might just about scrape into that category – and, one quick recap of last week’s episode (I’m still not sure what it was about) over, we pan to Mel doing her best (or, we might charitably hope, he worst) impression of Forrest Gump. Which, fyi, is a terrible film, in my opinion.

Time for some Lacklustre Steps. What should we read into the order of the contestants? Nadiya’s folded arms? Tamal wearing a T-shirt while At Home We Have An Aga is in a massive coat?

It’s semi-final week, so it’s time to recap the whole series in soundbites from previous episodes. Taken altogether, we learn that sometimes the contestants are good, and sometimes they aren’t so great. There is – you will be surprised to learn – no clear frontrunner. Everybody doubts their own abilities, except Ian who thinks he’s in with a good chance – and, yet again, we don’t get a hint of their homelives. How are we to know whether their partners/children/colleagues think they’ll win or not?

Blazer Watch is a riot of blue:

Mel: “This week it’s the thing I love most in the world.”
Sue: “Guinea pigs?”
Mel: “No, chocolate.”

Though doubtless scripted and rehearsed, Sue is obviously amused at her badinage, and can’t keep the laughter out of her voice while she announces the signature challenge – which is chocolate tarts.

I do like this as a challenge, because it’s another one that people might well want to make at home, as well as offering the bakers plenty of scope for variation and originality. Yumster.

Nadiya requests that they don’t mention that it’s the semi-final – which goes against what the producers have planned for the episode, which is – as always at this stage – to mention it every five minutes. And by ‘mention’, I mean ‘define’. If you weren’t aware that the semi-final was the week before the final going into this episode, you will be by the end.

Paul spices up this bon mot by saying that a mistake ‘could be fatal, going into the final’.

There is a problem, with making chocolate tarts: there’s not much to explain to the viewer for a while. The bakers try to make adding cocoa powder to a shortcrust pastry mixture seem daunting and dramatic, but… it’s not, really, is it?

The trick to making good chocolate pastry is, apparently, making it the right consistency – so Sue confides in the voiceover. So… like regular pastry, right?

Watching this with friends, I asserted that somebody – most likely Ian – would be adding an unsuitable savoury ingredient to their chocolate tart. So I was pleasantly surprised to kick off with this delight from Tamal. Chocolate, raspberries, and pecans are among my favourite ingredients, so this looks wonderful. They keep going on about how simple it is, of course.

Demonstrating the technical know-how which explains why she’s paid the big bucks, Mary points out that chocolate is already dark, so it’s tricky to see when it’s baked. She’s also obviously as smitten with Tamal as every single viewer is:

The editing team for GBBO know what the viewers want, and have taken to including Nadiya Expressions in between other shots, entirely irrelevant to what is going on or being said. I ain’t complaining; they’re always priceless.

At Home We Have An Aga is, of course, festooning her tart in everything she can think of, and seems quite apologetic about this when explaining her plan to Paul and Mary. Of course, since she doubtless submitted her plans for each round months ago, she can’t actually do much about it now… More importantly, she does seem to have some sort of macaron Tourette’s. She just can’t help baking them; it’s involuntary. At least she’s only using sweet ingredients.

They’re all using flour or icing sugar or something to stop their chocolate pastry sticking when they roll it. I’m always too worried it’ll mark the pastry and have white splotches on it, when I make chocolate pastry, and just trust to turning it as much as possible. Just so you know.

Over to Ian’s desk. What are you making, Ian? A nice caramel and chocolate tart, mayhap? Perhaps putting in some traditional, sweet ingredients? I’m sorry, I must have misheard you. Because you can’t possibly have said “bay-infused caramel”. I’ll pop off to the GP to get my hearing replaced.

Nobody has ever eaten a chocolate and caramel tart and lamented the lack of a herbaceous border. I’m so angry right now.

Let’s move right on to Nadiya. She’s using a heck of a lot of peanuts, which I guess is fine, only I hate them. And peanuts so often pop up and ruin otherwise delicious-sounding chocolate brownies and the like.

Nadiya also waffles on about adding some starch thing to fats to turn them into powders, and nobody has a clue what she’s talking about. Mary laughs loudly to cover up the awkwardness.

At Home We Have An Aga is worried that her filling (passion fruit custard… mmmm) might turn into… (you guessed it)… scrambled eggs! Always, always, scrambled eggs. Meanwhile, Nadiya doesn’t want to add too much salt to her caramel, because she doesn’t want it to be savoury. Listen to this lady, Ian.

She also worries, a bit later, that she might have ‘overset it’. I don’t know what that could mean? How can something be too set? As she rescues her tart from one of the freezers (which, you note, no longer say ‘Smeg’ on them after the BBC got embroiled in some freezer bias scandal a year or two ago), somebody from the props department has stumbled upon a Chinese gong, and gives that an experimental clash.

Despite my bay-themed rage earlier, I have to admire the gloss Ian has got on his tart. This is quite spectacular. There are mirrors in my house that are less reflective than this.

Bakers are piping and spreading and spraying (?) and making white-chocolate bay leaves (??); At Home We Have An Aga has accidentally made some macarons.

And… we’re done! They certainly all look delicious, even if there is an unpleasant peanut butter surprise in one of them. Could someone be a doll and steal Tamal’s for me?

Mary loves the combination of textures; Paul can’t decide whether or not he likes it (it looks a bit as though he’s waiting for a producer to tell him in his ear), and eventually thinks he probs does.

Over to Ian’s Bay – they can’t taste the bay. Which can only be a blessing. But it otherwise goes well, give or take. It cuts well, according to Paul, whatever that means.

Mary likes Nadiya’s despite not being a peanut fan. Maybe there’s hope for me yet with peanut-flavoured desserts? Mr Hollywood likes it so much that he dishes out one of his handshakes.

Nadiya, of course, plays her cards close to her chest, keeps her poker face, and doesn’t give away the faintest indication of her feelings.

But what about At Home We Have An Aga and her medically-induced macarons? Well, Paul thinks the tart looks attractive, despite there being no obvious tart beneath the forestry. Appearance-wise, they’re pretty delighted, and the taste is ok – but her dessert has split. Oh dear… Paul doesn’t like her macarons. “If you’re going to do a macaron, do it properly,” he says – at which Mel gasps, and is only a millimetre away from saying “Oh NO he didn’t.”

In the post-judgement interviews (where, as usual, the bakers have been dispersed throughout the grounds – and Tamal seems to have fought his way into the Secret Garden), Tamal does what he seems to believe is an impersonation of Paul. Now, I yield to few in my inability to do accents, but Tamal is now one of those few.

Onto the Technical Challenge! And it’s a Bake Off first – staggered starts. Nadiya, Tamal, and Ian abandon poor At Home We Have An Aga in the tent. She shrieks “don’t go!” and Ian makes entirely inexplicable gestures to her, which hopefully this photo goes some way to capturing:

Sue suggests that it’s “all gone a little bit Lord of the Flies“, which suggests I need to give it a re-read.

And… chocolate soufflés! The instructions seem to be “make a soufflé” – which, despite her ten thousand French recipe books, At Home We Have An Aga has apparently never made. I, with my zero French recipe books, have made one once, with someone else, but it was a cheese soufflé, which I can only imagine is rather different. I certainly don’t remember making a meringue to go in it, but I also don’t remember anything else about my life, so I might well have done.

When Baker no.2 comes in, At Home We Have An Aga says “I’ve never been so happy to see you, Ian.” I’m sure she didn’t mean it to sound super insulting. Ian’s reaction to being told the challenge is, frankly, minimal – but the cameraman makes the most of potential drama with a sudden zoom. One that I can only adequately convey in a… GIF!

The same inspired cameraman has obviously spent some time lining At Home We Have An Aga’s head with the sun-window.

Everybody essentially panics. None of them have made a chocolate soufflé before, and apparently they’ve also all forgotten how to make anything at all. Ian worries about making a creme pat. At Home We Have An Aga isn’t sure about her meringue. Nadiya stares in confusion at an egg, wondering how you get the inside bit out.

Most confusing, though, are the paperclips. Nadiya and Mel have a little de-brief about them, leaving neither any the wiser.

Mel is also rather taken aback by Nadiya’s sass, when she says she’ll use the paperclips to file souffles under ‘never bake again’. It’s rather a fab little moment.

Despite the time staggering, we see all the bakers put their soufflés in the ovens in one single montage. Come hell or high water, the editors won’t let go of the putting-in-ovens montage. Nor, of course, the staring-in-ovens montage. Those will both be there with the cockroaches when the apocalypse is over.

The bakers now have 45 minutes to do nothing but clutch their faces in increasingly uncomfortable-looking positions. At Home We Have An Aga (one assumes) makes macarons.

Because the soufflés need to be served immediately, Paul and Mary have set up a little table for two facing away from the bakers’ stations.

For some reason, presumably either thrown by the change in the challenge, or with a voicebox addled by drinking cooking sherry straight from the bottle, Mary decides to whisper all her critiques.

Considering all their anxieties, the bakers all do pretty well. They aren’t keen on Nadiya’s lumps of unmixed meringue, but otherwise it’s more or less thumbs up all round. At Home We Have An Aga wins the challenge, followed by Tamal and Ian, with Nadiya bringing up the rear. For some reason, they felt they needed to restore the status quo with the gingham altar before they could tell anybody the results.

Three of the bakers talk about how glad they are that they didn’t come last, including this adorable pat-self-on-back from Tamal:

But Nadiya did come last, of course, and has a little cry in front of the camera, which was too sad for me to screencap. (*Whispers* don’t worry, Nadi, it’s gonna be ok.) Let’s whip straight to the Backstage Area of Pointless Debriefing. At its most pointless, this week, as Mel poses the Pulitzer-level insightful questioning of “Would you say, Paul, that it’s quite difficult to call who the three finalists are going to be, this year?”

In her defence, it’s certainly trickier to call who the finalists will be this year than previous years. Cos I can find those on Wikipedia.

Back into the slightly less pointless part of the tent, they’re making chocolate centrepieces. They have to be three dimensional – so no drawings of centrepieces will be accepted! And presumably any that break into the fourth dimension will also be disqualified.

The bakers, we learn, are feeling nervous. Paul pops up to tell us that this is “the last chance to get into the final next week” – he’s clearly been reading and re-reading the definition of semi-final until he’s blue in the face.

Incidentally, has there ever been a baked centrepiece outside of the Great British Bake Off? I’m pretty sure that I’ve never been at a meal with one. And are you allowed to eat them? At which point in a meal? So many questions, so few answers.

Tamal is making a bell tower – it doesn’t seem to be specific one, which is probably just as well, since I don’t think there are any real bell towers that masquerade as octopodes. (Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I know my plural of octopus).

Mary goes all schoolteacher and asks him if he can pinpoint the difficult bit she’s thinking of; he entirely disregards the question.

At Home We Have An Aga is making ‘the cocoa carousel’, which I’m pretty sure she’s chosen just because of how good that sounds in a Scottish accent. I love anything carousel-themed (except, oddly, going on carousels) so this is winning points in my book. And she even made her own horse-shaped cutter. Mel quizzes her on how she made it but, before she can tell us, Paul mocks it. He claims it looks like a dog; I’m pretty impressed by it, myself.

Now, guys, I love Nadiya – you know I do – but I’m pretty cross with what she makes this week. Yes, it is replete with ‘modelling chocolate’ – a concept I am convinced that she made up – but her chocolate peacock doesn’t seem to involve any actual baking. There are a couple of half-hearted biscuits flung down near it, but for the most part it seems to be a rice krispie cake, of the variety made predominantly by nine year olds.

Yes, it’s chocolate week – but it’s also The Great British BAKE Off.

Ian is making a fully-functioning well. I just don’t know what to say.

It dips down to a mixture of white chocolate and lemon, which doesn’t sound like a nice combination, does it?

Not a lady to steer clear of the garish, Nadiya recalls how fondly the judges looked on her electric blue ‘nun’, and is rolling out bright blue chocolate.

SOMEHOW we are over 42 minutes into the episode before we get our annual investigation into tempering chocolate. Have you missed it? “GRAINY TEXTURE”. Mel’s voiceover seemed to be leading into a trip to a Bournville factory or Kidderminster-based chocolate-eating competition, or something, but – no – we stay in the tent.

“I’m just making the white chocolate truffles,” says At Home We Have An Aga, pouring what is evidently a spirit into her bowl. Oh, brandy apparently. “I always think booze and white chocolate go well together,” she says, despite having only legally have been able to drink for about a year.

Here is a quick shot of the ONLY baking that Nadiya does in this challenge:

The Chinese gong gets dragged out again for Ian’s metal contraptions, btw and fyi.

There’s lots of tempering and piping and whatnot. And the first big drama of the challenge comes as At Home We Have An Aga is assembling her shortbread… oh nooooo! To her credit, she deals with it surprisingly calmly.

And, just like that, the ‘centrepieces’ are finished. We’ve only got time for three irrelevant establishing shots of the sky and some corn, and it’s judgement time. Here they are:

Tamal’s bell tower looks best from far away, says Mary, but up close his piping ain’t all that. However, the biscuits and whatnot are doing their job well. Amusingly, when they say nice things and the camera pans to him, he’s giving himself that pat on the back. When they say less nice things, the pat is retracted.

Yeah, I see you, Tamal.

Ian’s well centrepiece is described as ‘very contemporary’ by Paul – yes, he made it just then. But the handle snaps off when he tries to pull the bucket up. Mary pirate-eats the shortbread, and is a big fan of it, but would have liked to see more chocolate work.

I think At Home We Have An Aga’s looks stunning (though they think it has too much ‘bloom’, or something). Mezza and Pezza don’t like the taste of much of it, sadly, and the whole carousel crumbles to the table. “It doesn’t taste as good as it looks,” Mary sums up.

Nadiya is the fourth baker to turn down assistance from Sue, in carrying her bake to the table – why does she keep offering? Why don’t they accept it? – and the judges are rightly impressed by the beautiful design. At no point is it mentioned that she has barely baked anything at all.

Indeed, it’s enough to secure her Star Baker!

And, demonstrating the complete lack of importance attached to the technical challenge, going home is poor (let me use her name for the first time since episode 1) Flora. I’ll miss you, my dear, but I shan’t miss typing out that ridiculously long nickname I gave you.

Well, my two favourites (Tamal and Nadiya) have made it to the final, and I’m cheering on either of them. See you all for the final!

Is this theme a first for the Bake Off? It’s gone Victorian! Sort of! If you discount pretty much everything about Victorian baking! It does give a world of opportunities for jokes about Mezza’s age, and also provides one of the better Mel and Sue intros of the series – in which they hide in this tree and sing a heavily adapted version of An English Country Garden – a song which was first collected some 17 years after Queen Victoria died.

The bakers walk down those pitiful steps, wander into the tent, and Mel voiceovers that Victorian times were great for baking. Nadiya confides that she hasn’t baked a lot of Victoria recipes – well, what a surprise – and we’re already straight into Blazer Watch. It’s pretty much business as usual, though Mel is pepping things up with a full-on Easter parade of spring colours.

They’re making ‘raised game pies’ for the Signature Challenge – and my little heart sinks. Remember how I couldn’t cope with seeing a lot of meat and fish being cooked? This week is pretty tough for veggies. There is a lot of bits of animal being dumped on counters. The first time around I spent most of this section subtly looking to my side, rather than at the screen, so goodness knows how I’m going to recap it.

Paul-the-baker says it’s getting near the end, and “The slightest mistake…” – he then pauses, and realises that slight mistakes are still more or less immaterial, in a world where not filling your vol-au-vents is apparently de rigeur – and limps to the end of the sentence with “…isn’t something you want to be doing, really.” Powerful stuff, Paul.

And, snarf snarf, the next shot we see is Tamal knocking an egg on the floor. The cameraman does one of his trademark creepy looks-like-nobody-knows-I’m-here shots of said egg.

Mary waffles about how much the Victorians liked pies, and sounds precisely as though she’d personally known each and every Victorian.

Paul-the-baker is first up for describing his pie, and its ingredients sound like a stock count for a wildlife park. His concession to non-meats is juniper berries and shallots, which might make quite a nice pie on their own. But I suppose the Victorians weren’t famed for their vegetarianism. The pie includes wild boar, which I’d have sworn was illegal, but he does make a nice little pun on it.

He shows his tin and, as appears to be the case whenever literally anything is mentioned, Mary wanders into a lengthy reminiscence about baking in Victoria days. She is thus charmed by Mat’s genuine antique tin, which looks neither functional nor hygienic.

Do you want to see bits of animals chopped on boards? Well, the next montage will thrill you. Sigh.

Tamal is using Arabian spices and pre-minced lamb in a plastic container. And thus the charade of being a Victorian challenge crumbles to dust before anything is even in the non-Victorian ovens. I was hoping they’d have to use Victorian utensils – and maybe, should the producers be so inspired, wear ridiculous cloth caps and call Paul “the guv’nor”. Instead, there are electric mixers a-plenty, and I feel CHEATED.

Nadiya lists the spices she’s including in her pie, the first of which is orange. Is orange a spice, Nadiya? Is it? Mary – clearly on my side in the above paragraph – tells her that many of the spices she’s using wouldn’t have been available to Mr and Mrs Victorian, which earns her this Nadiya Death Stare.

The episode is basically one long History of Baking, so Mel makes the most of the voiceover by harping on about social standing as much as possible. Indeed, she seems to say the same things about it each time. I refuse to believe that the Victorian social scale was determined solely and irreversibly on pies. (Actually, strike that, it sounds entirely plausible.)

At Home We Have An Aga apparently entered pheasant-cooking competitions at school (the tabloid press are thrilled) though, as her anecdote continues, it increasingly seems like she was the only entrant. “I was called Bird Girl for a while after that!” she concludes.

Ian, meanwhile, describes himself as having a passion for picking up dead animals on the road and cooking them. Yes, he uses the word ‘passion’.

It also has guinea fowl in it… has he murdered the egg-producing wunderkind of last week’s episode?

The disembodied head of At Home We Have An Aga starts a saga about how long her pie should be in the oven.

Paul and Tamal offer advice, look anxious, and it’s quite sweet how collaborative they are. Game pies apparently have to reach 65 degrees – thankfully all Victorians owned portable food thermometers, it seems, and this is replicated in At Home We Have An Aga testing hers – which is only 26. “26?!” says Paul, fraught. “It ain’t helping being out there,” says Mat, somehow entirely as one syllable. Then Mat and Paul lean on counters and look astonished at her tactics.

Food thermometers offer plenty of scope for people to stand and say numbers at random, which is always a pleasure. Thankfully, at the last minute At Home We Have An Aga has got hers to the right temp, and the chances of giving Mary Berry food poisoning are pleasantly decreased. Her pastry has clearly also burned, but I think she’s beyond caring.

There are some rather lovely pastry decorations – did you know, I wonder, that the decoration on a Victorian’s pie was indicative of their social standing? – and Tamal’s is looking particularly lovely.

Less impressive is the decoration on Ian’s bird pie. He thinks it worthwhile to point out that he’s added an eye – which is quite literally just a hole.

My favourite moments? Paul saying he wishes that Mat had included bacon. Mat pointing out that he did include bacon. Paul trying to pretend that he knew that. A close second to this sequence, though, is Tamal getting a Paul Hollywood Handshake, at which he giggles nervously, bless him.

Everybody does relatively well, it seems, even At Home We Have An Aga – who looks both rather charming and like an extra from a BBC adaptation of a children’s book, sat under this tree.

Despite being a History of Baking episode at every moment, we’re still treated to a segment where Sue nods and puns at an unsuspecting academic – this time about Mrs Beeton, who apparently wasn’t available for interview.

It does include the fun anecdote that Mrs B’s first published recipe was for sponge cake… but she forgot to include flour. Equally amusing is that the Professor telling Sue all about it says ‘sponge CAKE’ as though she’d never heard the term before. She also, for some reason, is granted two long, lingering, silent shots where she tries unsuccessfully to find something to say in response to Sue’s jokes.

The Technical Challenge is super fun. They’re making… tennis cake! We pop off to see Paul and Mary in their side-tent, and get this establishing shot:

which suggests sunset, immediately followed by one clearly filmed some hours earlier:

This one looks super fun. I’ve never heard of a tennis cake before, and I have a feeling that the same sentiment could have been expressed by almost every Victorian, but that doesn’t stop it being a fun challenge.

Of course, it’s the decorating that’s tricky. Making a fruitcake in a cuboid is pretty standard fare, and even Mel’s fraught voiceover and Tamal’s comments on the chopping of fruit can’t convince us otherwise. Wisely, the show spends no more than three minutes showing the fruitcake-baking process.

Just when you were thinking that these cakes were a nice change from the meat-fest of challenge one… apparently they’ve got gelatin in them. “I think the Victorians might have worshipped gelatin,” ponders At Home We Have An Aga, doubtless correctly. Hers ain’t going so well, and we get a #bincident, albeit quite a low-key one.

And they’re colouring their grass. We see lots of shots of very light, white greens… then this from Mat, who has apparently only ever seen grass in the form of Astroturf outside a Mario Brothers themed pizza restaurant.

“It looks different from everyone else’s, doesn’t it?” he says. Nadiya can’t help but say ‘yes’, and does well not to say more. Lurid colour aside, it’s also got a grainy texture, and so he can’t spread.

The voiceover tells us that cakes, if not left in the oven long enough, may not be cooked properly. Who would EVER have thought that?

The bakers have to try to remember what tennis courts and nets look like. Lots of delicate white piping going on at most of the stations. And meanwhile, over at the radioactive workstation…

There is some debate between the bakers whether to put their icing in the fridge or the freezer or… the oven? Mat flings his in there, which suggests that he’s not watching anybody else’s actions. Which I guess is admirable? There is a glorious moment where Nadiya finds out that he put it in the oven, and they stare at each other in bewilderment for about twenty minutes.

And… they’re done. Nadiya’s net is the only one that’s looking good. Even when complimented on it, all she can do is be plaintive about Mat’s net-baking. It’s an obsession. But this fab little cake nets (AHAHAHA) her best baker in the technical challenge.

Here is Mat’s – which Paul, quite accurately, describes as having the net from Hades.

Unsurprisingly, he comes last.

One quick debrief later (which, I have to confess, I didn’t listen to) – and we’re onto the Showstoppers: Charlotte russe. It’s got ladies fingers, bavarois, and jelly. Yup, that’s a third challenge in a row with gelatin in it.

It’s all sounding very good until Paul-the-baker says he’s going to put rosemary in his jelly. Paul, Paul, Paul. We’ve spoken about this. How often will you put savoury ingredients in sweet things, bakers? No. Stop it.

He’s also planning on doing some fruit carving, which Colouring Pencils man wisely decides not to illustrate, and Paul H offers the sage explanation “It’s all about what you do with the knife.” Well, quite. Even with this informative tidbit in mind, Mel still asks if he’ll require a tiny hammer and chisel, earning her this look of disgust from The Hollywood:

Mat is only using strawberries – for every single element of the filling. I quite admire that, to be honest. At Home We Have An Aga, on the other hand, is using dozens of ingredients – including pomegranates, to which Paul responds with all the horror that would be more justifiable in Persephone.

Ian has a wooden “ladies’ fingers chopper”, which sounds horrifying and like the opening to a serial killer horror film.

Nothing particularly eventful is happening, unless you count me forgetting to note down what people are making as eventful. Jellies, sponges, the odd unexpected Italian meringue. And At Home We Have An Aga is preparing a back-up plan in case Mary doesn’t find the bake to her liking.

Will American viewers understand the verb ‘trollied’, I wonder?

Mat appears to have filled his with a tuna mayonnaise.

“The title of this cake is…” starts Ian, and I wince. Things go wrong when bakers start titling their cakes, Ian. Puns excepted. But the punning expert of earlier is fully into fruit whittling. Not gonna lie; they’re impressive – even if that apple doesn’t resemble any swan I’ve ever encountered.

“It’s what I like doing,” he says to Sue – apparently to the exclusion of all other activities. He’s lost friendships, careers, marriages to the sweet, sweet lure of carving fruit.

Already (because I’ve written so little about this challenge), everything is coming out of the ovens and fridges and wherever else they’ve been stored – but Mat has reached the age-old kitchen dilemma of moving something from Surface A to Surface B. I’m sure all of us who enjoy baking at home can attest to how often this stage leads to breakages! Thankfully Paul and Nadiya combine again to help him out. They are becoming something of a dream team.

There is a spillage! Mat’s response is Shakespearean in proportion.

Here are some of the lookers:

And, oh dear, Paul ends up with a flood. A very macabre looking flood.

Cheers, whoops, and many congratulations to this week’s star baker – who is very sweet on the phone to his mum about it.

It’s been pretty clear throughout the episode who’s going home, and I’ve already spoiled it for you. Bye, Mat! I still can’t believe how little we heard about you being one of England’s Bravest. Thanks for being funny; you were fabs.

It’s been a fun week on the show. Next year I hope they go the whole hog and blackout the electricity. See you next week! (And, yes, next week is probably this week.)

Having gone through quite a weird ‘freefrom’ week, we’re back to service as normal with… pastry! And some rather nice pink shirt/blouse/flower matching going on between Mel and Sue. Almost enough to ignore their intro. Were these ever good? I’m starting to doubt it.

First off, thanks to those kind people who identified Mat’s accent for me! Not one I’ve heard before, it seems, though I’ve definitely been to BOTH the Sussexes.

Nadiya is still glowing from being Star Baker last week – though correctly summarises that it is another week. Tamal, my friend, would you like to be Star Baker this week?

In a shock turn of events, it seems he would.

So, #BlazerWatch. Erm, guys. The linedance pose is catching. This is the end of life as we know it.

They’re making frangipane tarts, which is an opportunity for Sue to ‘show off’ her Italian accent. Isn’t a frangipane tart just a Bakewell tart? Have Bakewell got litigious? While Paul mutters something about gluten, Mary knows what the public wants – and gives us the first ‘soggy bottom’ of the series. And doesn’t she look delighted to have done it?

Mel (in the voiceover) and the bakers (in the real world) all pretend that we might not know how to make shortcrust pastry, and earnestly tell us that it should resemble breadcrumbs. Well, quite. Mat leaps miles up in my estimation for scorning a mixer (and the other bakers for using them). He stumbles down a little for having two pineapples and… radishes? on his counter. It doesn’t bode well.

“You don’t want a sticky dough, at the end of the day,” says Paul-the-baker. If you’ve only got dough at the end of the day, Paul, sticky or otherwise, then you’ll probably have failed the challenge.

Alvin isn’t poaching his plums, he is fanning them. Mel gurns and winks and all that sort of thing, but he manfully ignores her. Paul is poaching his pears – is poaching the new proving drawer? – and is apparently making ‘my version of a Christmas frangipane’. Is there a generally-accepted version of a Christmas frangipane? I’ve been missing out.

“How’s it going to look when you’ve finished? What sort of look are we looking at?” says Paul H, not having had our advantages with Colouring Pencil Man (and apparently thus relapsing into gibberish). “The pears will be going in a circular motion,” says Paul-the-baker. An automaton?? This gets better and better.

Tamal is the first baker of the night to wave alcohol under Mary’s nose – he’s using mulled wine.

One of Ian’s guinea fowl started laying eggs. I mean, sure.

Nadiya is keen to tell both camera and judges that her tart will, basically, taste of nothing. Mat, on the other hand, is making a piña colada tart, trumping Tamal’s mulled wine with a massive mason jar of rum. Mary immediately lunges for it.

“It’s a forgiving pastry” – Ian. I’m starting to realise that I don’t need to add much commentary to today’s quotations. Instead, let me remind you of the time my friend and I made a quiche. Bear this in mind when I start mocking the simplicity of the task.

The tent are divided over whether or not to blind bake. Mat says he blind bakes “because he read somewhere once that people do”, or some such. When I make Bakewell tarts, I don’t blind bake, fyi. And I think Mary Berry’s recipe for Bakewell tart says not to.

At Home We Have An Aga and Paul come to blows over having trimmed her pastry before blind baking it; Mel and Mary rather adorably rush to her defence, and he panics and reverts to saying “Thank you very much”, as he does in every silence.

At Home We Have An Aga pre-empts being crowned the Frances of the series by acknowledging that she may care too much about the appearance of her bakes. Well, Frances won, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that. Someone who should be worried – yes, thank you, that segue was all my own – is Alvin, who is rather behind everyone else, and has a half-baked solution about not putting much frangipane in, or something.

Meanwhile, At Home We Have An Aga is making amaretti biscuits, despite not knowing yet whether or not she’s going to put them anywhere.

Mel starts using a million abbrevs (“ten mins on your frange, obvs”) which led to a flurry of friends texting me to point out the similarities between Mel and myself. Or the sims, if you will. (I assume you won’t.)

The tarts are looking delish. People are glazing, icing, and – yes – scattering amaretti biscuits all over the place. Alvin is… still staring into the oven. Oh dear.

Onto the judging. OH. Paul wants a blind bake. I don’t know what to believe any more. Ian does quite badly, and Nadiya has… a soggy bottom!

Over at Mat’s station – Mary can’t taste enough rum! Oh noooo! I think, Mary my love, that’s what they call immunity.

Mary isn’t happy with the amaretti at At Home We Have An Aga – “just leave them out” and Mary and Paul argue about whether or not it’s bitter and burnt. But worse is to come over at Alvin Corner. His frangipane isn’t baked.

It’s rather heartbreaking. He keeps whispering “I’m so sorry” and I want to give him a hug. After that, Tamal does rather well – which apparently enrages Paul the baker (in a clip which, let’s face it, was probably filmed hours later).

So, quite a few people did surprisingly badly on a more or less simple bake – but the judging was very harsh. And, oh lord, Alvin is talking about the fact that his father was a general in the army and failure wasn’t an option, and I am getting vivid pictures of an eight year old Alvin being sent to his room in disgrace for not whittling the perfect flute or something.

So moving on, dear readers, apparently we can’t have any home videos, but we can have a story about someone who once almost died by falling into an eight-foot pie. Sue is given a brief – and, one assumes, entirely fictitious – history of the event by an out-of-work Bruce Springsteen impersonator.

All of this segment has to be a spoof. I’m starting to think the BBC has been hacked by trolls. The eyebrows of the gentleman in the supposedly genuinely old-timey video from Denby’s Baking Past are, by themselves, enough to suggest foul play.

Back in the tent, the bakers stare nervously around them, and the technical challenge is unveiled. If you thought things were traditional earlier, then… they’re doing flaounes. These are apparently big in Cyprus during Lent, so of course they make perfect sense for Britain in September. Mary hadn’t heard of them, and it’s more than likely that Paul has made the whole thing up. Though he wouldn’t be the first Paul to have a fondness for Cyprus. #BibleJokes

Oh, and they’re cheese-filled. Lent in Cyprus sounds fun. At Home We Have An Aga isn’t so sure. “It just feels wrong. The whole things feels wrong.”

Ian has put his cheese/sultana mix into the proving drawer. Things have gone too far.

Nobody seems to love mastick (or however you spell it), which is grainy and smells like pine trees and/or industrial cleaner. Flaounes are suddenly starting to sound a whole lot less tempting. They’ve also got yeast and everybody’s kneading it, which makes it seem like Paul has sneaked bread into pastry week. At Home We Have An Aga is certainly perplexed, but I’ve shown her perplexed face once already today, so you’re not getting it again.

Everybody is interpreting ‘fold in the corners’ differently, and Tamal informs the others that he hates them. Being, it seems, the anti-Ugne, it just sounds adorable.

The whole thing is over surprisingly quickly (presumably owing to the amount of time we saw Sue stand in a field where a pie was alleged to have been buried), and Paul and Mary come out to judge. They are judging based on qualities that the bakers couldn’t possibly have known needed to be there, like height or where the sesame seeds are. Since we’ve not seen any food pics for a bit, here’s some flaounes – as well as Nadiya’s excellent photocard face.

Mary clearly doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be looking for either, so throws in her usual comments about ‘lovely colour’ and ‘even’. I half expect her to start on the prettiness of the tablecloth. Tamal comes last, followed by Alvin and Paul. The top three are Ian, At Home We Have an Aga, and… Mat! Who looks incredibly surprised. And then salutes.

Tamal is quite witty about having seemed too cocky and being beaten down by the universe. Alvin, on the other hand, is completely dejected.

It’s raining and storming for the final challenge. Things aren’t looking good for Alvin. It’s the first time I can remember them not bothering to say more than one person in the ‘who’s in danger’ bit. Basically, he’s going. Can he make a miraculous comeback with vol-au-vents?

Spoilers: no, probably not.

They’re all making puff pastry, and this feels like a re-do of all the other puff pastry episodes we’ve had in the past – but with the added bonus of Nadiya smashing hers with a rolling pin in a violent frenzy, grimace on face.

Ian is making squid vol-au-vents, which is something that even Beverly Moss never thought of, and he suggests that jet black food is ‘a bit risqué’. I assume he means ‘risky’, right? Because otherwise I don’t know what to think or where to look. Paul is keen to get as ’70s as possible, and is including prawns. At Home We Have An Aga, on the other hand, is being daring and modern, with chocolate pastry. Oh, in the other one she’s got Parma ham. Order is restored.

‘Vol-au-vents’ is very amusing in Mat’s accent, by the way. It’s like one long glottal stop.

There’s a lot of meat and fish going on in the tent, and I always lose interest a bit when that happens. At least, with the vegetarian-friendly recipes, I can fool myself that I might make them one day. Also, this is veering suspiciously into ‘cooking’ territory, and that ain’t baking. No saucepans, please.

Tamal was inspired by an amazing sandwich. Bless him. Tamal for Prime Minister!

Nadiya’s face while rolling is an absolute joy. You lucky things, you get ANOTHER GIF.

She also seems to spend the whole of this section staring balefully at everyone else. It ain’t going so well for our Nadi. At some point she made a second pastry, but I seem to have been looking the other way when that happened. Mel comes over to whisper that she might want to put some filling somewhere (although it’s not really filling if it’s not filling anything, is it?)

Piping bags have been discarded; bakers are cramming filling in by hand. Nadiya has given up putting anything in at all. And I haven’t got a clue what’s going on here:

It’s all been pretty chaotic. Let the judging begin! I can’t say any of them look especially showstoppery, so just the one from At Home We Have An Aga in the Hall of Fame this week:

At the other end of the spectrum… deconstructed vol-au-vents from Nadiya.

But, bless her, they love the filling and she has a full-on cry.

Apparently egg yolk dripping down Mary’s hand is a good thing – though it sounds unsanitary to me – because our Mat is Star Baker.

Going home… well, it’s no surprise (even after Nadiya’s catastrophe), and it’s probably for the best for the sake of his nerves and, more to the point, mine. Your apologies broke my heart. We’ve loved having you, Alvin, you’re fab!

See you all next week :)