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.
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