London Cocktail Week, part three

Previously: allergy fun and syphilis!

Thursday

After sitting Wednesday out because of the aforementioned beer allergy, I met my boyfriend after work and we went to the City of London Distillery, which is one of my very favourite bars. We discovered it at London Cocktail Week last year, and we liked it so much that we abandoned our previously enthusiastic bar-hopping to spend the rest of the evening there. They had a drink called Lionel Rich Tea! How can you not love that? I had been something of a gin sceptic up until then, but thanks to them I am now an avid gin cocktail enthusiast. 

Cocktail the first!

Green Eggs 'n' Ham! It's a dangerous thing to name a drink, because the natural urge is to exacerbate any negative feelings you have towards it so you can say "I do not like Green Eggs and Ham", but fortunately these guys really know what they're doing. The drink is gin, pistachio milk, pineapple syrup, lime juice and egg white with a twist of ham. Which sounds really weird, but trust me, it's good. 

We weren't bar hopping that night, so we had another. 

This is gin, vermouth and orange juice, which is not a combination I really wanted right then, but I didn't feel I had any choice as the drink was called Satan's Bush. I can't really give an accurate assessment of this one as my opinion is coloured by a) the fact that I didn't want it and b) the sheer amazingness of the name. An array of amazing terrible jokes, and because my boyfriend ordered a COLD Hearted, this was stuck in my head for the next several days:

Oh, Alyssa, I love you so much. 

Day three verdict: Gin! Bush jokes! Excuses to crowbar Drag Race into everything!

Saturday

In a way, this doesn't really count. We were both ill for most of the weekend, there was no evening bar hopping to be seen, and this place wasn't even participating in London Cocktail Week. But I was in London, I was drinking a cocktail, and it was this week. That's good enough. 

We were out, my boyfriend wanted a coffee, and since only fancy coffee would do we went to Bar Termini. Bar Termini was only participating in Cocktail Week as a stand in the Spitalfields village, but I was not going to sign up for a week of cocktails and only drink on three of the days, dammit. So I had a Bloody Mary. Reasonably standard as Bloody Marys go except with the addition of horseradish, quite spicy and strong, doesn't feel ridiculous to be drinking them at lunchtime. Nice.

Day four verdict: Low key, but you can't say no to a Bloody Mary.

And that was as much as we got to. Much less than usual and WAY less than London Wine Week... so look out for that, coming next year in between TV recaps to confuse you. Hooray!

London Cocktail Week recap, part two

Previously: Drinking!

Tuesday

We went to the second cocktail hub in Piccadilly Circus, which we didn't do last year. It was at the World Class House, which is five floors and a lot of strangely-placed foliage.

Cocktail the first!

OK, so these fuckers. We started out on the gin floor, which boasted a grand total of two cocktails: a gin and tonic for the normal Cocktail Week price, and a "French 75v" for £4 more. I'm not really a gin and tonic person, so we both went for the French 75v, which the bartender told us was like a normal French 75 but with mead instead of champagne. Replacing champagne with other stuff isn't normally how to get on my good side, but okay. After about twenty minutes of faffing about, we were handed our cocktails (with a small cone of popping candy on the side, eugh) and discovered that the "mead" was actually honey syrup and lager. Which I am allergic to. That is NOT a nice surprise, gin place. Even ignoring the part where I spent all of Wednesday recovering from a bad reaction, it was a properly unpleasant drink. The lager overpowered everything else, and even with his extreme dislike of a) waste and b) undrunk alcohol, my boyfriend also left his unfinished. 

We decided we were done with the gin floor and went in search of whisky. 

There were four whisky cocktails on offer, and since there were four of us we got all of them. I ended up with this one: a Cardhu Gold Reserve with pear syrup and vanilla, which was definitely my favourite of the four. Two of the others were also pretty good, and the fourth was flavoured with fudge syrup, which... don't do that to whisky, guys. The whisky floor was better than the gin floor by a long way, but honestly, if I'm going to have whisky I'd rather just have the neat whisky, thanks. 

We decided we were done with this particular hub and went to find a bar. The first two turned us away (Hix claimed to be too busy and Graphic was having a private party, which they could easily have put in the little booklet but chose not to. I'm just saying). After a little walking, we ended up in the queue for Cahoots. I'd never been before but because it's a 1940s bar and most of my friends are swing dancers, I already knew more about it than I did most of the places I go to on a semi-regular basis. 

Cocktail the third!

Smuggler's Top! Now this is what I'm talking about. Gin, Cointreau and lime. This was really good, especially with the lemon thyme garnish. I'm not sure if this is on their regular menu, but if it is I will happily order one at full price. 

For cocktail the fourth, we'd been planning to go somewhere else for another £5 cocktail, but after a disappointing experience in the hub, being turned away from two places and having queued to get into Cahoots, we decided we weren't taking the risk and ordered another drink each. 

I had Turning Over a New Leaf, which is gin, black raspberry liqueur, and tea flavours. It was delicious. There were three distinct phases to each mouthful, with the second one (I think the black raspberry notes) reminding me very strongly of something I couldn't identify. I hate when that happens. Definitely order this, it's amazing. 

Also, this is what the ladies' loos in Cahoots look like:

Thanks guys!

Day two verdict: Bad start, but redeemed at the end. 

Up next: ham! Yes, ham. 

London Cocktail Week recap, part one

What, you thought it was just going to be TV? Nobody ever said it was just going to be TV. Whatever takes my fancy shall be recapped here, and what takes my fancy right now is the week of booze I just had.

I had cocktails four days out of seven last week, which compared to last year is actually a pretty poor showing, but nevertheless...

Monday

We started off, as we did last year, in the Cocktail Village in Old Spitalfields Market. This is the main wristband acquisition place and has 40 or so little pop-up cocktail bars, meaning you get to try a wide variety of stuff without having to walk very much. Maximum booze, minimum fuss.

First task was getting past the guys with the alcoholic ice cream. Alcoholic ice cream is something I really ought to like (I consider my homemade mojito Calippos to be the very height of my personal culinary achievements), but it was nasty stuff. Artificial and overly sweet, even for me. Of course I'm far too British to say that, so we told them "maybe later" and scuttled off.

Cocktail the first!

A Bramble Royale from Happiness Forgets. You can't go wrong with champagne, gin, lemon and raspberry, though I didn't love it quite as much as I thought I was going to.

I remember there being more fun stuff in the Cocktail Village last year. There was a photo booth with props, and a bath full of rubber ducks for people to pose in, and a benches-and-barrels setup in front of an old camper van selling rum in copper cups. The most fun thing I saw this year was a booth shaped like a giant bottle of Cointreau. 

Dedicated to my brother, who has decided that he wants to be known for bringing Cointreau into conversations where Cointreau wouldn't ordinarily be. Here's to you, James. 

Cocktail the second!

A salt and pepper lemon gimlet from The Drinks Factory (my boyfriend's favourite drink-making people). I know it looks like a glass of slightly cloudy water, but it was delicious. One of my favourites this week, if not this year. Highly recommended. What you see behind it is my boyfriend's order; a little bottle of cocktail that claimed to be a fancy drink with fancy ingredients but was basically Calpol. Calpol taste, Calpol consistency. Calpohol. He loved it, I was less convinced, though it did give me a fairly powerful wave of nostalgia and remind me how upset I was when I became too old for the "nice" Calpol and my parents started buying the juniors stuff instead, which was bitter and much more medicine-like. Ah, memories.

Cocktail the third (after a break for dinner and a hard shake, which I was not a fan of) was from the Drinks Factory again, because our friends had turned up and wanted the Calpohol. This is a Marengo, and I've entirely forgotten what was in it because it wasn't particularly memorable. Oh well. 

Day One verdict: these faces. 

Coming up in part two: BLEUGH.

The Great British Bake Off Series 7, Episode Desserts

It's Desserts Week! No introductory pun from Mel and Sue this week, sadly, so we go straight to Andrew stressing about his inability to win Star Baker thus far. This is not a particularly endearing storyline for him, it has to be said. Andrew claims to be a "desserts man [desserts nine-year-old boy] through and through" and is on a mission to finally be the winner this week, meaning that either he will be or that he will flame out spectacularly. I speak reality TV. Candice is back on top lipstick form, and now I am considering breaking out the Goth lipsticks that don't suit me but remain in my make-up stash regardless.

For the signature bake, everyone is to make a roulade. Mary talks about getting the perfect spiral when the roulade is rolled up, and Paul brags about being able to get more cream in his mouth than the average person. Snigger. Nobody is making anything especially groundbreaking, though Andrew is making his all stripy because if he doesn't win he'll JUST DIE, and Tom the Murderer is making a millionaire's shortbread in roulade form. Paul thinks this will be "interesting". "Interesting as in genuinely interesting or in a sort of muahahaha classic creepy Paul Hollywood something awful's going to happen way?" asks Sue, who is the best. We hear but do not see Paul respond "Uhhhhh..." in a vaguely unsettling manner. Paul is not the best. Good luck, Channel 4.

Mary wants to see "no crack whatsoever" from Selasi, unlike 80% of the internet, and when she finds out that Benjamina is making a pina colada roulade with rum in it, winks saucily at her. I am on Team Rum with Mary. We scorn Team Crack.

Tom the Murderer has to make a second sponge after his first one goes extremely wrong, and sighs that a pretty cake is definitely off the table today. What he's making looks basically exactly how my Yule logs always turn out at Christmas. Informal, you might say.

Judgement time! Jane's looks good, though she's got very little roll because she rolled it up along the long side. The texture is good but Paul and Mary are split on the effectiveness of the alcohol because Mary likes drinking, you guys. Benjamina's looks and tastes good, though Paul is unsure about the coconut extract. Tom's is a bit squished-looking but tastes nice, Candice's is a bit cracked and slightly rubbery, Andrew's is pretty and tasty if a bit squished, and Selasi has made a really good sponge.

This week's technical is marjolaine, which I have never heard of. It's apparently some kind of layered meringue thing, except the meringue is made of nuts? That sounds weird. Selasi tells us he can't afford to come last, which means he will. We were all here for the Rav Debacle, show. Tom the Murderer has made almost none of the necessary parts of this thing before. He lists off all the different bits and when he gets to the praline, we take a break to learn about the history of praline. It is named after Mr Prasline, which makes me very happy. I might change my name to Jen Prasline. Then we return to Tom, who has made a caramelised sheet of nuts that he says he's going to have set into his door. Oh, Tom, you and your slightly psychotic baking.

Andrew's meringue breaks. Mel promises to keep it a secret. Sue asks him what he thinks a marjolaine is supposed to look like. "A Vienetta, but posher?" Andrew suggests. "Nothing's posher than a Vienetta," says Sue.Now I want a Vienetta, but I know I wouldn't want it if it were in my freezer. Hmph.

Weird meringue things are put behind corresponding photos and they all look pretty good, so Mary and Paul are picking on slight unevenness in depth and somewhat irregular piping. Selasi comes last, because that is the reality TV way, followd by Tom, Jane and Benjamina. Candice is second and Andrew wins, so this is definitely a Triumph of the Andrew week. Paul thinks it's an Andrew/Benjamina face off for Star Baker, and any of the other four could be in trouble. Mel and Sue, it is agreed, are always in trouble.

For the showstopper, everyone is asked to make 24 mini mousse cakes in two flavours. Everyone is making either chocolate and coffee or chocolate and mint for one of their flavours, except Tom the Murderer who is making a carrot cake and an apple and white chocolate cake in the shapes of finger sandwiches for his "hipster picnic". He explains that he's taking something simple and making it complicated, "which is the hipster way". I can't decide if I love this or hate it. On the one hand hipsters talking about being hipsters is infuriating, but saying "which is the hipster way" as though they're some kind of mystical tribe is slightly adorable. I find Tom the Murderer super confusing. He also notes that he and Benjamina are making a similar sounding apple cake, but suspects that they will "come out very different - not necessarily to my favour, I imagine". Tom the Murderer is weirdly defeatist for a murderer.

Andrew, still marching grimly towards his first Star Baker, has produced two small Ferris wheels on which he intends to display his mousses for a "day at the seaside" theme. The carriages are basically little hanging baskets wobbling about on hooks, and it all looks terrifying. Let's not have the stress of Biscuit Week all over again, please? Equally insane is Jane, who is making five different mousse mixtures simultaneously while also creating fleur-de-lys designs for her chocolate mousse, though she seems quite chilled about it all as she jumps from bowl to bowl.

It's a hot day because it's always a hot day when the bakers are making things that melt easily, so mousses are being filled with gelatine and being crammed into freezers left and right. Candice doubles the amount of gelatine she put in when practicing and ends up with a mixture so stiff she can't even stir it, so she starts again. Why did you think that would work?

Shortly thereafter, almost everyone's mousses start melting to some degree or other, ranging from mildly sloppy (Jane/Benjamina) to complete gunk-pile disaster (Selasi). Sue also notes that Selasi's mini-mousses are basically huge chocolate bricks and would only count as mini when being held by someone as beefy as Selasi. Selasi says "disaster" but still doesn't look particularly bothered by any of this. I respect that.

Showstoppers in Brief: Jane has a great-looking set of chocolate/coffee mousses and one slightly melty set of blackcurrant ones, but all five of her mousses are light and tasty; Selasi's raspberry mousses look and taste great, but his mint chocolate ones are just slabs of gunk; Candice's chocolate/mint mousse is more of a ganache and her blackberry ones look beautiful but are lacking a bit in flavour and texture; both Benjamina's chocolate/coffee and her apple crumble mousses look sloppy but taste great; Tom's sandwich things lack finesse and would be great for a completely different challenge not at all related to mousse; and Andrew's chocolate and forest fruits mousses look amazing, taste amazing, Triumph of the Andrew.

Star Baker this week is Andrew and they don't even pretend it might be someone else. As soon as he gets out of the tent he shouts "Finally, finally, finally!" I am not feeling this story arc. This leaves Selasi as the only one not to have won Star Baker, and do you see him giving two shits about it? No, you do not. Going home, inevitably, is Tom the Murderer. He says he knew it would be him, as did we all. I'll miss Tom the Murderer, with his confusing flavours and his determination to be either excellent or totally shit at everything and his terrifying murderer face. I will remember his Death Gingerbread forever.

Next week: Tudor Week. Oh, good grief.

The Great British Bake Off Series 7, Episode Botanicals

It's Botanicals Week! That seems like a very silly theme and I can't say I have much enthusiasm for it. Mel and Sue inform us that in the tent are six dwarves whose names rhyme with "bakey"...and Andrew. Poor Andrew. Always the Zoidberg. Rav is already telling us that this is not going to be his week. Prescient. Though has any week been Rav's week?

For the signature bake, everyone is asked to produce a citrus meringue pie. Mary says it's sheer heaven and emphasises that she wants crispy meringue. Let's see how many people pay attention to that, shall we?

In honour of Botanical Week, Selasi is dressed in a floral T-shirt, and Jane has come in a floral blouse that apparently only gets an airing once every three years. Everyone else has chosen to show up in plain dark tops. I want to know whether five bakers are ignoring the suggested dress code or two bakers are just incredibly enthusiastic.

Since there aren't all that many varieties of citrus, there are a few flavours going head to head. Benjamina and Selasi are both making grapefruit pies and are also clearly the best friends who ever best friended. At one point Selasi holds his bowl of meringue upside down over Benjamina's head to show just how thick and non-budging his meringue is. That sounds wrong. Anyway. I wonder if there are hours of best-mates footage sitting in the BBC editing room, cruelly cut for more time watching Val being non-specifically wacky. I would have been way more on the Selasi train if that had been his edit. Candice and Jane (also apparently buddies) are both making lime and coconut pies. Candice appears to not be wearing any lipstick, or wearing a lipstick which is less "your lips but better" and more "your lips but a bit dry and worried-looking." Poor show, Candice. You better come out in navy blue or bright orange or something ridiculous next week. Tom the Murderer says he doesn't like sweet pies and so is making blood orange and pumpkin pie. That sounds revolting. Why does he keep doing this?

All the bakers except Jane are planning to use blowtorches to brown and crisp up their meringue, and Mary Berry is NOT impressed. Every time someone says "blowtorch" she pulls disapproving Mary Berry face, and then she stands at the front grousing about all these stupid blowtorches and why can't people do it in the oven and make PROPER meringue, goddammit. It's great. I love when people have really deep convictions about stuff that doesn't matter in the slightest. Most people are piping their meringue onto their pies, except Rav who will just be vaguely flinging his on with a spatula. Oh, Rav.

Candice plans to use a small amount of green colouring in her piping bag to get coloured edges on her piping, which I am quite excited to see until she stuffs it up royally and ends up having to swirl the neon green bits in with the rest of the meringue. It looks exceptionally unpleasant, a fact of which she is well aware.

Judgement time! Benjamina wins Battle Grapefruit, beating Selasi and his dry curd, and Jane wins Battle Lime, beating Candice's green gunk thing (which nevertheless tastes very nice). Andrew's pastry is too thick, Rav went too light on the tequila, and Tom the Murderer's revolting pie is revolting.

The technical challenge is to make two herb fougasse. This appears to be some kind of leaf looking bread thing. Paul repeatedly emphasises the importance of getting the leaf looking bit right, but has only specified "two slashes in the middle and six more down either side" in the recipe, leading to a great debate as to whether the middle slashes go next to each other or on top of each other. A lot of people pick the wrong one, even though Andrew explains the exact engineering definition of "concurrently" which allows him to make the right choice and put his bread slashes on top of each other. (What a sentence that is.)

Since the tight time limit leaves very little time for the bread to cool, we are treated to the beautiful sight of a roomful of people with large paddles frantically wafting their bread. The idea of being able to buy and make use of a bread wafter almost makes me want to take up baking bread.

Selasi and Andrew come last in the technical, followed by Candice and Jane, Rav in an astonishing third place, and Benjamina and Tom the Murder at the top.Tom the Murderer does proper murderer face while his bread is being judged. It's genuinely frightening.

As we go into round three, Paul tells us that all the girls are doing really well and all the boys are in trouble. This does not match up with my viewing experience. I am still quite firmly Team Candice, but she produced an unpleasant green gunk and then came fifth out of seven in the fougasse baking. That's a weird definition of "doing really well".

This week's showstopper is a three-tiered floral cake. Mel does an exceptionally dorky floral dance to go with it. I love her. Several people know they need to pull the stops out to save themselves.

Paul and Mary do their tour of the tent to find some interesting decisions going on. Candice is going to make four tiers instead of three (because she does this) and make four different cakes relating to the seasons, Tom the Murderer is going to make tea-flavoured cakes because there is something wrong with him, and Jane isn't going to bother using any floral flavours at all and is just going to cover it in floral decorations instead. This seems unwise. Rav is planning to pipe his own buttercream flowers for the cake, even as he admits that's not a thing he can really do, he hates doing it and he doesn't know why he chose to do it, good luck Rav.

Jane tells us that speed is of the essence for her since she's decided to ignore all the possible flavours that would have fit the theme and will need as much time as she can get for decorating. She then immediately messes up her cake and has to throw it out and start again. Well done Jane. Cake checking abounds. Candice is pleased with her chocolate cake, while one of Andrew's has a wet-looking centre. Tom the Murderer decides to check the smell of his various cakes by lining them up and then bending at the waist to stick his nose into them like a drinking bird. What a strange little murderer he is.

Everyone starts decorating their cakes and... hmmm. There are a LOT of janky-looking cakes in that tent. Candice says her tier placement is intentionally higgledy-piggledy "like the seasons" but it doesn't look intentional, it just looks like she couldn't do it properly. Benjamina's intentionally semi-naked cake also just looks like she couldn't do it properly. Andrew and Rav appear to have done hardly anything to their cakes, and Jane's OTT decorations look a complete mess, especially her melty chocolate collars that don't look like flowers at all. Tom the Murderer is doing some okay piping that looks a lot more impressive than it is next to everything else, and Selasi is the only one making anything of any note whatsoever with some amazing piped flowers. Thank you, Selasi, I was beginning to despair.

Showstopper results in brief: Candice's "looks fun" (I thought it looked bad enough to put her in trouble, but eh) and three out of her four cakes taste good; Andrew's cake looks unambitious and none of his cakes are good; Benjamina's cake looks unfinished and only one of the cakes is good; Rav's is messy and uncreative, and his one flavour of cake is overbaked; Jane's looks insanely bad and mashed potato-like and her cakes are overbaked; Selasi's cake looks AMAZING and all three cakes are good; and Tom the Murderer's cake looks okay and all three cakes are good, which surprises Paul. It surprises me, too. I am not on board with tea-flavoured cake.

Star Baker this week is Tom the Murderer, for the second time. At first I was really confused by this, but if you look back at the challenges everybody massively screwed up at least one of them. CANDICE was somehow in contention to win this week. Again, I love her, but come on. Going home, finally, is Rav. Bless him, he was very sweet, but also quite rubbish and probably ought to have gone home weeks ago. By the end I found him quite endearing, I'll admit. Andrew considers himself a lucky duck and will have to step it up next week. I am concerned that Andrew might have some kind of meltdown.

Next week: Desserts week! It looks incredibly nerve wracking. There is nothing quite so intense as looking at a pudding that might possibly break or fall at any minute. Just one of the many lessons this show has taught me.

The Great British Bake Off Series 7, Episode Pastry

It's Pastry Week! To welcome us in, Mel and Sue invent baguette and Batternberg-based yoga poses. I don't know what this has to do with pastry but I really want some Battenberg now.

For the signature bake, everyone is asked to make 24 breakfast Danish pastries in two different flavours. Mary reminds us that breakfast pastries have a very high butter content and if the butter melts out during baking, you're left with a sad, dry heap of rubbishness. But I'm sure that definitely won't happen to any of these guys. Nope.

There are some interesting flavour things going on in the tent for this one. Benjamina is making peanut butter and banana pinwheels, which sounds horrendous, but not as bad as Tom the Murderer who is making one granola-based pastry and one Weetabix-flavoured ("wheat biscuit" if you're the BBC) one, apparently taking inspiration from the taste of the milk at the bottom of a cereal bowl. A couple of months ago I had a cocktail that tasted of Weetabix and I do not recommend it. Except that it came in a giant brass ant, which I absolutely do recommend. Tom the Murderer has been going in a really odd direction with his flavours the last couple of episodes. Candice is making a croque monsieur that looks super tasty, and is also wearing a necklace that I WANT. Is there a website that tells you where you can buy things seen on reality show contestants or judges? There must be. I am not going to look for it, because that way lies owning way too many lipsticks I will never wear.

Everyone starts bashing their butter into thin rectangles to layer up their pastry, and Andrew is measuring thicknesses with a ruler and making sure he has good corners on his butter. This is either endearing or annoying and I'm not yet sure which. Jane sings the intro to No More I Love Yous as she waits for her pastries, sadly without the Annie Lennox crazy face and other contestants popping up around her to do backing vocals. BBC, get on that.

Rav is constructing a "plaittice", in the words of Mel, who goes on to suggest that it looks like a cigar. Yes, let's go with cigar, just in case Rav's mum is watching this. In typical Rav fashion, he notices when his pastries are in the oven that he's forgotten to make his 12th one, so he just plops his last piece of untouched pastry on the side of his basket and laughs at it. Bless. I almost feel I'm softening a tiny bit to Rav, in spite of the fact that he's rubbish.

Judgement time! Val's flavours are nice but her pastry is underdone and falling apart (which she yet again claims was her intention all along); Selasi's pastry isn't quite done and Mary isn't sure about the rhubarb; Tom the Murderer's pastries are super dry on the granola side and completely inedible on the Weetabix side; Rav has one dry set of pastries and one tasty set; Andrew's look great but have been cut too thin to be proper Danishes; Benjamina's are raw and have no butter left in them; Jane has overfilled her sweet pastries but otherwise done very well; and Candice has two tasty sets of pastries with a slight loss of butter in the savoury ones. Undeterred by this, Mel picks up a pile of Candice's croque monsieurs (croques monsieur?) and runs away with them claiming she has a hungry family to feed.

The technical challenge this week is a Bakewell tart. I once spent AGES trying to get that feathering thing to work, and I couldn't, probably because I was about eight at the time. Still, I've never attempted it again. Mel and Sue helpfully inform everyone that a Bakewell should be baked well rather than baked badly. Mary explains what a good Bakewell tart should look like, takes a bite and is SO THRILLED at the taste of it. It is adorable. Paul then says "well done, Bezza" because he is terrible and she responds by tartly (hey-oh!) inquiring after his diet. Mary Berry's unimpressed face is a thing of pure joy.

Previous Bakewell tart experience in the room is varied. Selasi speculates that the more successful bakes will belong to "the aged" (which is a really odd and not entirely pleasant way to phrase it), Benjamina calls it "retro" and gets corrected by Jane, and consensus is that Val will walk away with this challenge. Cut to Val, who has been entirely making shit up as she goes along and has only just noticed that there is a second page of instructions having already started baking. Apparently she thought the instructions started at number 5. She claims she makes a Bakewell tart every week using her Making Shit Up method. Hmmm. "You're only allowed one teaspoon of almonds," she complains, "I'd have put two in." "Of course you would, Val," says Sue, "what's a recipe for if not to just totally ignore?"

Selasi makes the icing for his feathering incredibly neon pink, and Benjamina pisses herself laughing at this for some reason. I feel like we missed something (presumably either that they're best friends or she hates him, and either way I don't know why they'd edit that out).

Val starts flinging her piping bag around and assures Sue she isn't going to hit her. Sue, with an expression of calm despair on her face, assures her that at this stage, being hit with a piping bag would almost come as a blessing. I don't know which way to take that comment.

Andrew is watching his oven intently for fifteen minutes, wondering why his tart doesn't seem to be baking very quickly, before noticing that he hasn't actually turned the oven on. Yikes. But also it is slightly funny after watching him measure the corners of his butter earlier. Having now lost quite a lot of time, he starts rushing and panicking and turning the colour of Selasi's apparently hilarious icing. Despite not even being able to get most of his icing onto the tart, he still manages to come sixth out of eight because Rav's tart collapses on one side (last in the technical for the third week in a row, well done Rav) and Val has a crazy thick pastry and the dreaded soggy bottom. At the top are Selasi, Candice, and winner Jane.

Going into the Showstopper, Paul and Mary speculate that Jane and Candice are up for Star Baker, and that Tom, Benjamina, Val and Rav might be in trouble. Paul appears to notice for the first time that Rav has been doing quite badly for some weeks now. Never slow on the uptake, that one.

For this week's showstopper, the bakers are making 48 amuse-bouches in two different flavours - one sweet, and one savoury. Rav is already sure he's going home, because apparently he hasn't been paying any attention to Val this week, but is going to fling himself headlong into the challenge anyway.

After we learn that Andrew is making baklava, we take a very oddly-placed history break to learn about the origins of baklava and watch Mel try to roll out filo pastry. She claims she's going to eat ten trays of them and I believe her entirely.

A couple of the contestants are making tartlets. Tartlets. Nobody is making anything too weird this time, except Tom the Murderer who is making steak and chocolate pastries and pear and ginger pastries. I don't get it. Selasi's parma ham and asparagus, Candice's banoffee and whisky and both Rav's pastries sound delightful and now I'm hungry.

Pastry rolling time and Jane and Candice appear to be sailing through it like they've sailed through the whole episode, though Jane's complicated cone-shaped things do keep falling over. She also uses a bottle of alcohol to make sure her pastry is thin enough, which gets her a point. Candice is using a pasta maker to roll her pastry (smart girl), and Val is using a broom handle because the internet told her to. She's misjudged the ingredients in her pastry and it's misbehaving horribly. She is so far behind that she can only get half of her parcels into the oven, and has to take them out before they're done in order to present the judges with anything. Tom the Murderer is also having a bad time of it and is convinced he's going home, because he hasn't been paying attention to Val either.

Showstopper Results in Brief: Benjamina has done well with both pastries; Selasi's savoury pastries are dry but the sweet ones are tasty; both of Andrew's pastries taste good; Tom's look "informal" and Paul doesn't like the taste of either of them; Jane's look and taste good but her cones are too big to be considered an amuse-bouche; Val has failed entirely on all the levels; Candice has done so well that Jane starts chanting "Star Baker" at her; and Rav has miraculously redeemed himself by producing two sets of pretty and tasty pastries. Go Rav!

Star baker this episode was between Jane and Candice all the way through, and it goes to Candice for the second time. Team Candice! Or Candeeece, as Mary calls her. Going home this week, finally, is Val. Tom the Murderer tells us that had Val been able to bake all her pastries he'd have been the one going home. There seem to have been a LOT of people dodging bullets this series.  I'm not sure. Andrew tells us that Val apparently played games between bakes, like making everyone guess the prices of her shopping from 1977. I am torn between wishing they'd shown footage of that and wondering why on earth Val was keeping shopping receipts from 1977. Did she anticipate this would be a good game in 40 years' time?

Next week: it's Botanical Week! Wait, Botanical Week? I am not at all sure about this as a concept. It's fine to do something twice, guys. You can just do pies or puddings or a more specific variety of cake; nobody is watching this show for the innovative episode themes, I can assure you.

The Great British Bake Off Series 7, Episode Batter

So, before we start, we have to acknowledge the Big Thing What Just Happened: the BBC have lost the rights to Bake Off, it's going to Channel 4, Mel and Sue are not going with it, and Bake Off is essentially ruined forever. Whatever goes out on Channel 4 will be a very different and almost certainly much worse show, and unless a minor miracle happens it will probably die a very slow and embarrassing death. Ugh. But for now, it is our duty to aggressively enjoy the small amount of OG Bake Off we have left. Batter Week, show us what you got.

It starts with Mel and Sue singing a version of Ten Green Bottles where they pronounce "overworked" in a proper Accrington Stanley way in order to make it rhyme with "yurt". Oh, they will be missed. Then Sue comes as a cricket batter for Batter Week and jumps up and down on it in an adorably bad display of frustration when it turns out to not be that kind of batter. The BBC could basically knock together any show with Mel and Sue, some nice people for them to gently rib, and a setup that allows for terrible puns, shove it into the same time slot, and people would watch it. I know I would. I would possibly watch a channel that was just that, all the time, and have it running constantly in my house. Maybe Mel and Sue could live in my house. I'm sure that wouldn't be weird.

Signature this week is Yorkshire puddings. Mary tells us we need "a lovely dip to take the filling". Of course we do. I'm not sure about the idea of fancy-ass gourmet flavour Yorkshire puddings. The whole point of Yorkshire puddings is to fill them up with gravy, not to be bursting with delicate Thai flavours and tofu, Rav. Most people are just putting some form of miniature Sunday roast into their puddings, which I think is the right way to go about it.

What is not the right way to go about it is producing hard, flat discs of biscuit, which is what most of the bakers seem to be doing. Several people throw their first attempt out and start again, except Tom the Murderer, whose puddings are arguably the worst. He just shrugs and starts balancing curry on top of his weird Yorkshire discs. Mel appears behind him to say "Mate, you gotta raise your game a bit", and her tone is oddly serious - it's as though Tom the Murderer is an old college friend who's gone off the rails a bit, and by "raise your game a bit", she means "stop drinking so much". Tom the Murderer ignores her, as is so often the case in these sad situations, and continues defiantly arranging rice on his batter biscuits.

Jane says that she can't make a Yorkshire pudding to save her life, and Val worries that her home town will chase her away for good if she screws up Yorkshire pudding on national television. The stakes are high. Rav points out his single most successful Yorkshire pudding to the camera and declares it his favourite. Bless.

Judgement time! Paul likes the way Andrew has toasted his nuts; Jane has done everything well except the actual Yorkshire pudding which is awful; Candice's Yorkshire Wellingtons taste lovely but look incredibly vaginal (they don't say that, but it was all I could see); Val will not be kicked out of Yorkshire; Paul is so thrilled that Selasi has given him some crackling that he doesn't even care about the pudding; and Tom's weird curry discs are met with the disapproval they deserve. He says he will fixate on it "for at least a few hours" and I can almost hear Mel yelling at him. If I ever get to the stage where I can royally screw something up in front of millions of people on national television and only fixate on it for a few hours, I will have become everything I ever wanted to be. My brain still finds ways to fixate on stupid things I did when I was seven years old.

Also, I think I want Mary's jacket. Is that weird? I know Mary's jackets are a bit of a thing and M&S sells out of them within five minutes, but it's never been a thing for me before. Mary Berry is in her eighties and is wearing a white zip-up vaguely biker jacket-looking thing and deserves a round of applause from all of us.

For the technical challenge, everyone has to make twelve identical heart shaped lace pancakes, "like a doily you might find in Carol Vorderman's guest bedroom". They can make one test pancake, but have to present all subsequent pancakes to the judges. The instructions are minimal to the point of non-existence, so everyone is guessing, assuming, making shit up. Since there is no set design to pipe, the pancakes range from intricate latticeworks of beauty (Benjamina, Candice) to can't-be-bothered vague criss-crosses (Rav, Selasi), and it may or may not be coincidence that those contestants end up as top two and bottom two respectively. Apparently Selasi is still most people's favourite, but what is he even doing anymore? In the first week he was hilariously laid back in a really endearing way, but since then he's just been a bit half-hearted and dull. Sorry.

Showstopper time! This week Paul and Mary want 36 sweet churros. I love churros so much, but they're so often disappointing that I've stopped buying them. I expect this challenge to make me both hungry and a bit sad that the hunger will go a long time before being satisfied. Sue says "Churross Kemp" and I temporarily love everything and everyone.

Most people aren't going too mad with the presentation this week (it's been a bit of a toned down week, all in all), though Andrew is making flower-shaped churros in a window box and Tom the Murderer is making some kind of fennel flavoured snake. Fennel? Paul reminds him that the challenge is to make sweet churros and fennel isn't especially sweet, and Tom basically just shrugs. I don't know what's up with him this week. Also in Questionable Decision Corner is Rav, who is making matcha tea flavoured churros. Someone else definitely made a matcha tea cake the first week and got told it was terrible and just tasted like grass. Let me check my notes. Michael! Michael made a matcha tea cake. And look where that got him. Learn from others' mistakes, Rav.

Kate is making "hot cross bunny" churros and it's just not even cute anymore. The "bunny" is basically a charity ribbon with a couple of raisins stuck on it. It feels like such a reach for a gimmick that she might as well have not bothered. Especially as it all starts to go quite wrong quite quickly, and she takes them out of the oil saying, "I think I might have mucked it up." Sue watches Kate throw her churro bunnies into boiling oil and calls it "Kate-al Attraction". Which, ouch, but also I love that there is no pun too awful for this show.

Rav and Tom are piping their churros straight into the hot oil, which is apparently the traditional way, but it looks unsettling and reminds me of things I'd rather not think about in a dessert context. Val piping chocolate into the middle of her churros isn't much better. This is making me a lot less hungry than I expected.

Mel and Sue tell the bakers their time is running out while Mel tickles Sue under the chin for no discernable reason. Put them in more shows, BBC. MORE SHOWS.

Showstopper Results in Brief: Andrew's flower churros look good, if a little penis-y (again, they didn't say that, but it was all I could see) but overcooked; Tom's fennel snake doesn't look like a snake, is overdone, and isn't sweet; Rav's matcha tea churros are misshapen and fatty and matcha tea still doesn't work as a flavour; Candice's peanut butter churros haven't held their shape and are a bit fatty; Kate's bunnies look bad and are basically nothing but oil; Benjamina's coconut churros are well-presented and delicious; Selasi's lemon and anise churro bowls manage to be both burnt and raw at the same time, which is quite an achievement; Jane's pistachio and white chocolate filled churros are actually very tasty; and Val's chocolate orange filled churros look good but are too doughy on the inside.

Star Baker this week is Benjamina, and well deserved it is too. Maybe they'll actually remember to put her on camera occasionally now.

Going home this week is Kate. She takes it well, and she seems nice, but she was far from being one of my favourites and I'm glad I don't have to deal with any more of the twee. Tom acknowledges that he dodged a bullet. Rav tells Kate he feels guilty, and tells the camera he doesn't know why he's still here. Nor do I, really. He's spent the past four weeks being a little bit shit at everything but also so anonymous that they keep forgetting to eliminate him.

Next week: pastry. Last year for pastry week we made little pastry bites - some with brie and some with chocolate - and I really want to do that again. They all exploded and looked terrible, but NOM.