So, after a week during which it was revealed that Paul will be moving with Bake Off to Channel 4, the pressure was back on the bakers in the tent as pastry week returned.
The first challenge this week was breakfast parties. In other words: Danish pastries (a real favourite of ours, especially after our visit to Copenhagen). Essentially, this task was a crash course in butter management. It did inspire us to want to make Danish pastries given the amount of rage that can be released by whacking butter flat!
In truth, while watching people fold pastry will certainly have a niche, this wasn’t the most entertaining part of Bake Off so far and was made worse by Andrew smugly announcing he was book-turning his pastry in order to get more layers.
While they had all tried hard, the only person who seemed to actually make a decent breakfast pastry was Jane, who hit the right notes before those in the tent were handed a technical challenge of making a Bakewell tart.
As debate raged in the tent about the age you have to be to make a Bakewell tart, it seemed as though age and experience weren’t helping Val, who seemed to have decided this was a challenge to make her version of a Bakewell tart rather than the one that Mary had asked them to make. Andrew managed to bring himself back down to earth and lost a touch of smugness after a 15 minute session of watching an oven that wasn’t turned on, leaving him in a real panic and his tart a total mess (though in one piece compared to Rav, who had seen some of his literally fall by the wayside)!
Val was the real loser with her DIY attempt at the recipe seeing her come second bottom, with only the technically challenged Rav below her. Jane seemed to have secured the star baker award with a stunning Bakewell that won over the judges.
And so on to the amuse bouche showstopper. With Rav and Val battling it out to stay in the tent, things looked bad for Val when she announced she had made, and hated making, filo pastry before while Rav seemed very much up for the challenge of once again undoing the damage of his technical round.
We haven’t had a go at any of the bakes this year and to be frank this task simply isn’t one that has inspired us to try to make amuse bouches! Fiddly and clearly not that much better than shop bought this was one of those times you watch the show and think that baking is a wonderful thing to watch rather than do.
Impressively, most of the bakers seemed to nail the flavours and the pastry and Candice put herself back into contention (after coming second in the technical) to get star baker after Jane inexplicably provoked Paul’s pedantic side by making her food too big. Val didn’t properly bake her pastry and was advised she had edged closer to shortcrust than filo pastry!
With this in mind, it was no shock that Val was the baker to be sent home, while Jane looked rather disappointed that somehow she had opened the door and let Candice sneak in and steal what should have been her own star baker crown!
Bring on botanical week…!