It's week two! Due to a
malfunctioning TV I missed the first few minutes of the show and so
spent about half of it being confused as to why Sue didn't seem to be
doing anything this week. I still don't know where she was; I could
of course go back and watch the start of the show on iPlayer but I
sort of prefer being able to come up with my own explanations as to where she was. I'm currently going with
“penguin-saving expedition”.
The first challenge is
to make 24 iced biscuits. Mary advises not to be too ambitious as
making each one identical is a bit of a headache in its own right. Candice's response to that is to make 48 biscuits. I love her.
Everyone gets one
additional line of introduction this week, for some reason. Among
other things, we learn that ginger nine-year-old Andrew is into musical
theatre and Candice has a PUG (I get very excited when reality show
contestants have comedy dogs). She is also planning to wear a
different statement lipstick for every episode she is in, which is an
excellent plan.
Val and Louise's
biscuits both have unfortunate meetings with the floor during the first challenge, which sets up an
unfortunate precedent for both of them this episode. At judging neither goes over too well, as Val doesn't have enough biscuits
and Louise's are far too soft. Several people have trouble with
sloppy-looking biscuits, leaving only Tom, Selasi, Michael and
Benjamina getting good feedback for both presentation and taste.
We take a brief break
from the competition for Sue to go and learn the history of
biscuit-dipping, where she is made to eat what appears to be dwarf
bread. Then the biscuit-dipping historian brings out the biscotti and
vin santo and the two of them look like they're having a great time.
I would like to join them to get drunk and eat biscuits.
The technical challenge
this week is Viennese whirls, which of course leads to many
innuendo-laden shots of contestants squeezing piping bags and talking
about extreme stiffness. Rav is too stiff and Mel offers him “a
pair of warm hands, either on your bag or on you”. She then pulls a
face that I want to find a gif of and use constantly. Mel and Rav
seem like mates this episode, which I like because I can't for the
life of me remember anything else Rav has ever done. It's of course entirely possible
that Mel is just missing the presence of a comedy partner and both
she and I will forget about Rav again when Sue comes back. I'm
assuming Sue is coming back. I'm sure I would have heard if she'd
just quit Bake Off in a fit of rage. I honestly never thought missing
the first few minutes of a show like this would make any difference.
The final Viennese
whirls are mostly pretty good, except that Selasi, of all people,
completely tanks it. The whirls collapse and they taste oily. He
comes last, followed by Louise and Michael, with Benjamina, Jane and
winner Kate at the other end of the scale. I feel like Benjamina has
been doing remarkably well for someone we hardly ever see doing
anything.
For the Showstopper,
everyone is asked to make a 3D gingerbread “story” with at least
eight “characters” or “props”. I actually enjoyed this
challenge way more than I thought I would when they announced it,
probably because the idea of calling a biscuit a “story” makes me
feel slightly sick. However, the gingerbread displays are really
bloody impressive, with Val planning to make Yorkshire AND New York
AND Holland AND her sister, Tom planning a display of punting in
Cambridge with a bicycle Mel mistakes for a platypus, and Candice making a pub with a sticky ginger cake carpet and a lime jelly pool
table. Louise is making a gingerbread wedding (another phrase I
didn't know I needed to hear in a Welsh accent) with a bride, a
groom, a vicar, and... five gravestones. Prescient. If you think
that's morbid, here is Tom the Murderer to tell you about his
recreation of when he and someone called Pod nearly died on a
mountain. Made of biscuit. It turns out that my boyfriend knows
someone who went to uni with Tom, which is few enough degrees of
separation to make me question writing this stuff, but I also think
that if I went on national television and made a gingerbread
recreation of when my friend and I nearly died, and then I found out
that someone on the internet had nicknamed me “The Murderer”, I
would fully understand.
As always with the
building challenges, we then enter into Collapsing Bake Time, which
is a nightmare to recap because I keep flinching and shrieking
whenever anything falls or wobbles or slips. This is actually a
really stressful show. Val and Louise continue to have a terrible
time of it, with Louise's church tower and Val's Statue of Liberty
breaking, and then both sculptures completely falling apart when the
time is up. Louise looks completely defeated and it's horrible.
Showstopper Results in
Brief: Andrew's Cambridge sculpture is immaculately constructed but
one of the gingerbread men is winking at me and it's disturbing;
Val's is collapsed and not well finished but “your sister tastes
lovely”; Benjamina's Chrysler building is messy but tasty; Tom the
Murderer's Death Mountain is still weird but well-constructed and
tasty; Kate's Brownie camp (of course she made a Brownie camp) looks
good but is insufficently gingery; Jane's garden is too soft; Rav's
Christmas fair is both messy and burnt; Michael's Lapland sculpture
has become “Santa's workshop from Hell” but has the best tasting
gingerbread; Selasi's church is a nice design but also insufficiently
gingery; Louise is warned not to get married in that collapsed church
but her gingerbread is good; and Candice's pub gets raves all round.
Not only does it look completely amazing, but it's the undisputed
innuendo winner of the episode: first when Mel asks Candice if she
needs any help moving the sculpture and Candice replies “Yes, could
you grab my jugs?” (cut to a shot of Andrew sniggering, which earns
him a spot on my favourites list), and then when Mary Berry says
“I'll eat a bit of carpet”. Sticky ginger carpet, no less. It's
joyous.
This beautiful marriage
of appearance, taste and innuendo means that Candice has thoroughly
stomped the competition and has won Star Baker. Yay! She's my
favourite. You can keep your Selasi; he's alright, but he's not won
me over the way he has the rest of the country at this point. Things
may change, but right now I am Team Candice. Going home, sadly, is
Louise, who was another one of my favourites. She did have a terrible
week and it was inevitable that she'd be sent home, but I will miss
her delightful Welsh accent very much.
Next week: bread! I
totally didn't get round to making gingerbread for this week, and I
fully intend to outsource the breadmaking next week. Sorry about it.
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