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.
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