Don’t Bake Me Love You
BIG WARNING
spoilers ahead
In case you don’t watch TV, have social media, go outside, or you just live under a very large and exquisitely decorated rock, Bake Off has returned to our screens, as it has done every September for approximately three millennia plus the duration of a Godfather movie.
In a not-especially-funny-but-now-inevitable sketch, we’ve been introduced to our new host, Nigella Lawson.
Which comes as a surprise to nobody, given that they announced it in January. I can only assume that Channel Four’s in-house soothsayer had to do some serious unruffling of management feathers.
This year’s contestants are the usual blend of old and young, northern and southern, student and retiree, gay and straight, dog owners and non-dog owners. In terms of local entrants, we’ve got Shannon, who was born in Bristol (hooray!), and Danni, who is from Dorset (hooray-ish).
The first challenge is a chocolate stout cake, presumably as an homage to Nigellas iconic Chocolate Guinness Cake. They’re given two hours and fifteen minutes which doesn’t seem like a huge amount of time to make, bake, cool and decorate something this dense.
And it isn’t.
The only thing the bakers can do is mix their batter as quickly as possible and pray to the Cake Gods that their oven can somehow speed up time. Some bakers are doing bundt moulds, while others use sandwich tins in the hope that a thinner cake will take less time to cool. Neither works. But what is Bake Off without unnecessary pressure and an emergency cake collar?
The technical is new. And by ‘new’, I mean ‘a cake-based version of that game where you look at a tray of objects and then someone takes three of them away and you have to remember which ones and then someone points out that this is a boring game and then Auntie Jean goes and sulks in the kitchen and that’s the end of Christmas for the year’.
The contestants are making a coffee and walnut cake and, instead of a recipe, they’ve been given a picture of a cake. This is like asking someone to knit a sweater by letting them feel someone in a jumper and then handing them a live sheep.
While the contestants are, naturally, panicking, there’s a cut to Nigella and Paul discussing the attributes of a perfect sponge and then eating one in a way I can only describe as ‘horsily’. It’s as if the producer has told Nigella to eat things in the least sexy way possible to keep the show family-friendly, only she’s been on after 9pm for so long that she’s forgotten how.
Back to the tent.
The finished coffee and walnut cakes are all beautifully decorated, in a colourway that ranges from fresh-poured espresso to half-finished Costa latte. Tom has decided to candy some walnuts to go on his, despite them not being in the picture. He comes first. It remains to be seen if candied nuts continue to correlate with doing extremely well.
For the showstopper, the contestants are creating a two-tier self-portrait cake.
A two-tier self-portrait cake.
Which means the producers have presumably been coming up with the challenges entirely through Mad Libs.
The designs and flavours range from foraged sticky willy to a hibiscus compote to blue. Yannis has come over all Georges Seurat and gone for a pointillist self-portrait, which is a highbrow contrast to Tom’s Simpsons-inspired pic. Lots of the bakers have chosen lemon as their primary flavour, which seems to be a strange way of representing oneself - hopefully they all think of themselves as pithy and great at drinks, rather than sour.
Or kept in a net bag.
Of course, the showstopper is never without its drama. First, Shannon has to leave the tent because she’s unwell. And then, once all the cakes have been assembled and the bakers have finished the challenge, there’s a cinematic shot of Danni’s second tier oh-so-slowly sliding towards the edge of her cake, then toppling onto the floor. Filming this seems unnecessarily mean, but then so does making everyone do chocolate work in the middle of May.
spoilers below
Mo wins star baker, and completely deserves it. His flavour matching and technical abilities definitely seem to make him an early front-runner for winner. He’s also happy to make his flavours really pop, something that Paul repeatedly pulled other contestants up about. We’re looking forward to seeing what he gets up to in Biscuit Week next week.
In a form we’ve come to expect, nobody gets sent home. It’s fair to give everyone a full shot at the contest, but it feels like nobody’s been sent home in the first week for the last few series now.
But isn’t that what Bake Off is about? It’s not about delighting in mistakes, or cheering because someone dropped their cake. GBBO lets us see every contestant doing their best, to celebrate with them when it goes well and to commiserate when it doesn’t quite work out. It’s a showcase of backgrounds and flavours, all delivered in a pastel-coloured, bunting-filled safe space.
From Danni’s enthusiastic ‘indeed-a-rooney!’ to Clara’s ‘spectacular!’, Bake Off is back, with all the joy, excitement, and tent-based exhilaration we expect.
The Statistics
Hollywood handshakes: 0.
Potential Hollywood handshakes: 1, for Mo’s showstopper.
Innuendos: 3
Cake disasters: 2.
Early favourites: Mo, Tom, and Gary*.
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