Welcome back, bakers! We open Dessert Week with some forgettable jokes about pudding – for some reason, Noel and Matt’s pun of choice centres around syllabub, a dish known only to the over 50s – but fortunately it’s over soon and we get into the swing of things.
As you may remember, last week saw a double firing: both Rebs and James went home, so understandably the bakers are wiping their brows this time around.
“Now it’s are only eight bakers left, so I think the judges are going to be more critical,” a worried looking Syabira says.
Compost Carole, however, is unbothered. “I think they’ve got faith in me, which is nice,” she tells the camera. Whatever you say, Carole.
First up, it’s the signature bake, and continuing on from syllabubs, the bakers will be trying their hand at steamed puddings.
The judges are really showing their ages here: Paul calls them a “classic” and adds, “We are known in the UK for producing some of the best steamed puddings.” How fierce the competition is he doesn’t reveal.
What he has in mind is probably something like treacle sponge. Well, get ready for Syabira, Paul, because she’s pouring purple liquid into a bowl. Apparently it’s a watermelon pudding, which has been designed to break open while steaming and reveal its colourful insides, because why not?
Around the tent, it seems most of the other bakers are also opting for rogue takes on traditional flavours. Janusz is making a pina colada pudding, while Kevin is making a variation on Scottish ‘clootie’ dumplings, which look to be rather similar to tiny, dense fruitcakes.
“I hope to spark a revival of the humble clootie dumpling,” he tells the camera. Let’s see how they taste first.
Meanwhile, Dawn is wrestling with her own childhood trauma. “Let’s forget about school dinners here with the steamed sponge,” she says. Unfortunately, Paul then promptly says, “Morning mum,” and tells her she reminds him of his mother. Charming.
“I’m not that much older than you,” she replies, whisking her orange and caramelised apple sponges. Doesn’t Paul know it’s rude to comment on a lady’s age?
Carole, meanwhile, gets a badly-timed visit from the judges, burning her caramelised plums just as they arrive. “I want to see good things from you, Carole. No mess ups,” Paul tells her. Oops. And in a worrying turn of events, she then worries that the boiling water she’s supposed to have added to steam her puddings wasn’t hot enough.
By the time people are taking their offerings out of the oven, everybody is looking damp and flushed. As well they might: this is the moment they find out if their puddings are cooked or not.
While most are done to perfection, Carole’s raw puddings collapse out of their moulds under Paul’s unblinking stare, eliciting a wince of sympathy from this viewer. When the judgement comes, it’s swift. “It’s heartbreaking, really,” Prue says. Eek.
Fortunately, everybody else does rather better. Syabira’s ice cream is deemed “sensational”; Abdul’s cakes are “moist and delicious” and Prue salivates over the coconut rum in Janusz’s pina colada offerings – while Kevin’s tiny clooties are a tad too humble and stodgy for the judges’ tastes. The clootie revival may have to wait another day.
For the technical challenge, there’s a reprieve: it’s a lemon meringue pie.
“This is my favourite pud, so please read the recipe very carefully,” Prue says. Well that is easy, Prue; the recipe reads: “Make a lemon meringue pie.”
The bakers collapse into fits of giggles, but Prue is sticking to her guns. They can do all three elements of the lemon meringue pie, she says. “Why do they need a recipe?”
But beware, bakers: as she points out, the spectre of the dreaded soggy bottom might raise its head for those who don’t blind bake their shortcrust pastries.
As the challenge gets underway, everybody is furtively eyeing each other’s benches, including Syabira, who’s making her first-ever lemon meringue pie and hurries to blind bake her pastry shell when she sees everybody else doing the same.
Dawn, of course, is unbothered. “They’re the sort of thing I do on a Sunday lunchtime,” she tells Noel. Then it turns out she’s not made enough lemon filling for her pie and is crushed.
Once the pies come out of the oven, the cracks start to show in the others’ bakes - literally. Abdul destroys his pie with his oven gloves, Syabira tries to save her under-baked offering by inserting it back into the oven with a minute to go and Dawn’s face gets longer by the minute.
When the judges come back into the tent, the mood is tense. “You can see, none of you needed a recipe, did you?” Prue says. Umm…
Sandro’s base has a soggy bottom, Dawn’s pastry is pronounced a “mess” and Kevin’s base is falling apart.
But it’s Syabira who scores last place for her pie, followed by Dawn and Carole. On the other side of the scale, Abdul’s pie is pronounced “pretty good,” but Janusz takes the prize for his perfectly billowing meringue.
“Dessert week is not going too well,” Carole says in what might be the understatement of the week. Syabira is similarly bereft, calling it a “nightmare come true,” while Dawn is “f***ing fuming”.
Well buck up, ladies, because it’s time for the Showstopper, which turns out to be a mousse-based dessert, which has to contain a surprise of some sort when cut into. As Paul says, they’re expecting “magic”; no pressure, then.
The key to getting the mousse right, apparently, is knowing how much gelatine to include – so naturally eyebrows raise when Carole says she’s putting thirty sheets into her cake. “We don’t want it to fall on the floor and hit the ceiling,” Paul says.
The other bakers are also stressing. Syabira is making a bee-themed cake seemingly based around the joke that a bee’s blood type is “Bee Positive”, Janusz is making a cupcake surprise to hide in his mousse cake, and Sandro is literally making the planet out of sponge and panna cotta – which includes red jelly for the earth’s core.
“I have to say, I don’t have a huge amount of confidence in this,” Prue says as she leaves. And of course, Carole has already underbaked her cake.
As the clock ticks to the hour mark, things start to go wrong.
Syabira’s biscuit bee topping breaks and disassembles itself under a layer of gelatine; Kevin has difficulty adding eyes to his fondant dog and Dawn is contemplating a mental breakdown should the insides of her cake collapse – which, as it turns out, it has.
“Mine looks like a car crash,” she says when the time is finally up. “My bag is ready to go. See ya.”
The stressful moment of truth arrives as the bakers bring up their creations for the judges.
Abdul’s galaxy themed cake comes away with flying colours. “That is one of the best mirror glazes I’ve ever seen,” Prue rhapsodises. Unfortunately, Abdul has added too much gelatine to both his glaze and his curd; a problem that persists with almost all of the bakers. Janusz comes away better, managing to balance all the elements to his double-cake surprise.
Maxy’s mousses are beautiful; the chocolate mousse on Kevin’s dog-themed cake is pawfect, but it’s Sandro who is crowned as hero of the hour for his Earth spectacular.
And Dawn’s cake is tactfully called delicious by the judges – though, as Paul says, there’s no surprise hidden inside, as it’s collapsed. “The surprise is, there’s nothing,” Dawn says listlessly, looking as though she’s had all the life drained from her and proving that not all surprises are good.
Another week over and done with. But the real question is, has Carole done enough to stay? “I’d still give it 50/50,” she says afterwards.
And indeed, the odds aren’t in her favour: she’s booted off in front of a mightily relieved-looking Dawn a few minutes later, leaving Sandro to claim the Star Baker crown.
“Now I’ve got Star Baker, I’ve tasted it and I love it,” he says, beaming at the camera. Bet it tastes like Earth-shaped mousse cake.
And next week, it looks like we’re heading for a Hallowe’en theme... pity the bakers, who had to get into the mood a whole four months early.
