This week we open with some scary music and Matt Lucas addressing us from behind a branch strewn with cotton-wool cobwebs. Yes, it’s Bake Off’s Halloween special.
And lo and behold, it looks like the bakers have dressed up too. Janusz is wearing Keith Richards levels of eyeliner, Maxy is wearing a black and white wig and Dawn, ever the icon, is wearing a crown of skulls.
“I’m excited about this week, it gives us a bit more opportunity to be more creative,” a bewinged Sandro tells the camera.
Kevin, wearing a pumpkin and candy corn-themed shirt, is feeling less optimistic. “If I get thrown out and have to do my leaving speech in this shirt, I’ll be well annoyed,” he says. That’s the spirit – and don’t get me started on Noel’s skeleton onesie.
Given that Halloween isn’t a cuisine (despite Starbucks’ best attempts with the Pumpkin Spice Latte) I’m intrigued to see what’s on store for the signature bake. As it turns out, it’s an apple cake.
“Apples have been intertwined with Halloween throughout history,” Noel intones. Think they’re reaching a bit here.
As the bakers get to work enthusiastically peeling their apples (and the apple peeling machine does look fun) the judges start their rounds. It appears that Janusz has actually decided to dress as Noel – and is wearing zebra-print heeled boots to prove it. My respect for him instantly shoots up several levels, before shooting back down again when he says that his favourite costume is usually “pregnant nun”. Okay…
Syabira, meanwhile, is mixing apples with chillies. “It’s Halloween, you need something spicy,” she says, hacking at the fruit – apparently, the chillies are going into the cream cheese frosting.
That aside, it looks like all the bakers are embracing autumnal flavours – Maxy is going with apple and walnut, Dawn’s cake will be topped with toffee apples and Kevin’s strudel and cider-poached apple cake gets Prue salivating. And of course, Sandro is going straight for Prue’s heart with whisky pipettes inserted straight into his skull-themed bake.
As time ticks on, the costumes also start wilting. Sandro is missing a wing, while Janusz frets that the steam from his cooking apples will ruin his makeup. And Syabira’s witch-themed cake ends up with some outsize eyeliner eyes.
When judgement finally comes, Sandro is first in the firing line, with Prue blasting the sugar skull on top of his cake as “ruining” the overall presentation. However, the whisky goes down a treat.
“That’s really got whisky in it. Even for me, I don’t think I’d put anymore in,” she says. “Well, maybe I will.”
The key problem for most of the bakers, it appears, is not being appley enough: Janusz falls foul of this, as does Dawn – while Kevin’s is pronounced rather more pudding than cake.
However, Maxy comes out on top. “I think you’ve done the apple justice,” Paul pronounces, before reaching out for the infamous Hollywood Handshake.
And what’s this – his hand stretches out again seconds later for Syabira’s chilli, sour plum and apple cake. Two handshakes in one bake! Maxy looks slightly crestfallen.
No time to dwell on it: next up is the technical, but turns out to be… s’mores. Syabira mouths the word to herself, looking confused.
As well she might – as with the tacos, s’mores seems to be stretching the baking brief rather.
“I’ve never had one but I’ve seen it in the movies,” Kevin says. At least the recipe is rather longer than last week’s one-line instruction – and Syabira is still vibrating after Paul’s handshake. “I haven’t washed it since then,” she tells Noel.
The three parts of the s’more are the biscuit, the marshmallow and the chocolate ganache, and it quickly becomes apparent that the marshmallow is going to prove the trickiest bit to get right: the bakers have to add a gelatine and sugar syrup to their Italian meringues at exactly the right moment.
Maxy and Abdul promptly forget to add the gelatine entirely, but Maxy has gone too far to back out now. “I’m just going to stick with it,” she says, while Kevin botches his biscuits and has to roll them out again.
Clearly, the bakers are struggling – Noel’s pronouncement that they are halfway through is met with incredulity – and by the time the marshmallows are “ready”, they’re not. Many of them are soggy inside, or haven’t set properly.
“It’s set from the outside but I think on the inside it’s still very wet,” Abdul says – and that’s before he burns his marshmallows with the blowtorch kindly provided to all the contestants. Meanwhile, Sandro’s ganache is practically dripping off the biscuit.
If it sounds like chaos, it is, and the judges waste no time sharpening their knives: most of the s’mores are promptly written off as “messy”. The messiest of the lot, Abdul, is put in last place (though he blames the blowtorch for melting his marshmallows).
On the other end of the spectrum, Janusz and Syabira net second and first place respectively. Syabira is having quite a week: first the Hollywood handshake, then first place in the technical.
“I’m really happy for Syabira, because she needs a confidence boost,” Janusz tells the camera afterwards. Sour grapes (or indeed sour plums) much?
Finally, it’s time for the showstopper. After an extremely weird skit about ghoulies (Paul’s goolies, to be precise) the bakers are given their task: to make a hanging Halloween lantern, stuffed with sweet treats. “It’s not difficult, surely?” Paul asks. Surely.
Naturally the bakers are soon going hell-for-leather. Janusz is making a hanging popcorn-box lantern stuffed with biscuits, one of which contains ground crickets. Yes, the bug; it must be a Bake Off first.
“They taste like eating bacon,” Janusz adds, but Matt is not convinced. As he says, poor Jiminy Cricket.
Across the tent, spiders seem to be the order of the day: Syabira is making one, as is Kevin, who confesses that his Christian parents never let him dress up as anything scarier than a grandfather clock for Halloween. Meanwhile, Sandro is making a 1.5kg skull-encrusted disco ball out of chocolate for his offering; I mean, why not.
Meanwhile, the stress is getting to Maxy, who is making several different types of confectionery to put inside her Halloween lantern, and whose voice wobbles as she explains how much she has left to do.
Dawn is similarly strapped for time, and ends up grating the two halves of her wonky biscuit spheres to try and get them to fit together properly. Across the tent, the mood is frantic: everybody is struggling to put together their lanterns on time.
“This isn’t going to be hanging on anything,” Dawn says of her mangled offering (it’s supposed to be a black cat); at the same time, Sandro takes an honest-to-god drill to his chocolate sphere to try and drill a hole for his treats.
“I don’t know whether to be shocked or turned on- I don’t know what’s going on here,” Noel says.
Maxy is on the verge of a fully fledged breakdown with her collapsing lantern, while Dawn has given up altogether and puts her cat lantern on a glass bowl instead, not wanting to risk a full-scale collapse. However when the time is up, most of them are hanging – including Kevin’s, which is supposed to be a spider and instead looks like something from the Black Lagoon.
“It looks like…” Sandro starts, and stops. Clearly, he has no words.
But the judges wait for no man, and Sandro is the first up. While the disco ball is praised, it turns out most of his bakes were too big to fit inside, and his fudge biscuits lay Paul and Prue out flat with their chilli kick. Next up is Janusz, who has left one more trick up his sleeve - his cricket truffles actually include a whole cricket, something that makes Paul splutter in the process of biting into it. But as it turns out, they’ve actually not got enough cricket in them at all. It’s not often you say that.
One by one, the bakers line up to have their lanterns smashed – even Dawn, whose lantern does, as it turns out, hang, but which is pronounced flavourless by the judges mere seconds later. In fact, Paul calls it “basic” - ouch.
But it’s Syabira who is pronounced hero of the hour for her terrifying spider lantern and biscuit fingers – though her orange and white truffle biscuits are panned.
“Syabira, you’re off your head, honestly,” Prue tells her, to laughs from the rest of the tent. “Orange and truffle does not go in a biscuit.”
And so to the final decision. The judges are agreed that Syabira is way out ahead as star baker. “She’s unstoppable”, says Prue and Paul adds there’s no competition for this week’s top prize. “There’s not going to be a shock.”
At the other end of the table, Kevin and Dawn are the ones in trouble and it’s Matt has the job of delivering the bad news. After a suitable pause and the dramatic music, leaving the tent is... Dawn.
“Game over,” she says cheerily. “I don’t want to shed tears over it because it’s just been the most amazing experience. One of the best experiences of my life... I’m really proud of what I’ve done.” As you should, Dawn. We’re all going to miss you.
And so on to next week, when the bakers are going to have to conquer custard. Until next time...
