All

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: