This week’s Bake Off tent saw the arrival of 4 new celebrities, all ready to show us their baking skills (or lack of them), and to participate in the nation’s favourite baking show in aid of Channel 4’s Stand Up 2 Cancer charity.
Strictly winner and occasional ‘journalist’ Stacey Dooley, stand-up comedienne Katherine Ryan, Jade Thirlwall from Little Mix, and KSI (aka JJ) best known for being a social media personality and rapper, were this week’s celebrity competitors (victims).
First off the celebs were asked to make fondant fancies, but with a twist – using a favourite cocktail as their chosen flavouring. Ouch – make it even harder why don’t you Paul and Prue?
I think the only thing that can be safely surmised from the outcome of all attempts to make these dainty, fondant covered sponges, is that nobody should ever, I repeat ever, try to make them and to leave them to good old Mr Kipling as his are pure perfection which can never be improved upon. I guess if there had to be a winner in this round it was Jade and her lurid orange ‘porn star’ fancies, which to be fair to Jade, did look fairly similar to Mr K’s most excellent version, but the judges were hardly doing cartwheels after tasting them.
Second round was the technical and a cherry lattice pie. Ksi unfortunately did one of the dumbest things ever seen in the tent, by turning his tart upside down, causing catastrophic cherry leakage (only slightly trumped when previous BO contestant Iain Watters dumped his disasterous baked alaska straight into the bin, and last year’s debacle when flies were flicked away by Sura, causing Dave’s pineapple upside-down cakes to fly onto the floor).
Final round was to make a bisuit and meringue show stopper of ‘things you can’t live without’. KSI made his room which surprisingly looked ok’ish and even tasted edible. Stacey made a mish-mash of biscuits and meringues in the shape of Gloria Estefan (you’d never have guessed). Jade made a stage with her and band mates Little Mix, which was an ingenious idea and would have been even better if it had ended up looking anything remotely like Tom Hovey’s sketch. And finally Katherine Ryan made a dog kennel from ginger bread and cute little puppies from meringue, which Prue loved the look of, and the fact that they were all chewy and toffee like on the inside.
The winner of the pinny this week was Jade, but she freely admitted she was the best of a bad bunch and touchingly stated that “me mam will be so proud!” I think it’s pretty fair to say that all this week’s celebrities should stick to their day jobs and leave the baking to those who can actually bake.
Of course, these celebrity versions of our beloved Bake Off are no substitute for the real deal, and I’m waiting with bated breath for the announcement of when the next series will be aired. Rumour has it we may have to wait until September. Oh well, I guess it gives me plenty more baking time until then….