We’re now heading into week five of this year’s Great British Bake Off and we’ve seen some unlikely faces leave the famous tent already. Namely, the loveable Maggie, who stole everyone’s hearts in week one, with her infectious girly giggle and uncanny likeness to Prue Leith. Confessing that her baking style was ‘traditional’ it’s unsurprising that she failed to keep up, when creating the intricate bakes expected of the contestants at this point in the competition. And let’s not forget this IS a competition, not just some random people baking yummy cakes in a hot tent for the fun of it.
Over the years, Bake Off has ascended from requiring the bakers to make a jolly good victoria sandwich or a perfectly uniform batch of crispy ginger nuts. Oh no, these days you have to be able to turn out an elaborate and professional looking Joconde Imprime dessert, that also tastes beautiful. Not too much to ask surely? Personally, I’ve been baking for a long, long time (admittedly not quite as long as Maggie), but I’d never even heard of one of these, and will mostly certainly never be trying to make one, after witnessing last week’s attempts.
We are now beginning to see real talent emerge from the bakers, showing us what fantastic things they can produce. Early contenders at the beginning of this series were Guiseppe, fiercely competing with Jurgen. But now we have an also-ran in Chigs who, after admitting he’d only started to bake during ‘lockdown’, deservedly won last week’s star baker award after producing a spectacular looking black forest imprime, and getting this series’ second Paul Hollywood handshake.
Crystelle is also one to watch, with her bakes always displaying incredible attention to detail and resulting in perfectly georgous looking delectables.
It’s German week on tonight’s show, and as there’s a german on board it’s very unlikely the Jurgen-meister won’t excel at this. Guiseppe won bread week (it was remarked upon that it should have been renamed italian week), but with this show anything can happen, depending on who’s simply having a good or bad day, and whether there’s any chocolate involved!
8 o-clock tonight, I’ll be there. Will you?