You can spot the precise moment that Stacey Solomon stopped having fun after seeing two Showpieces collapse.
Finally, Channel 4 decided to do me a solid and actually put the episode online!
It’s back, and this time with a shiny new co-host in the form of Stacey Solomon
I think she was an inspired choice of host, with the show being so intense and stressful I think it really needed someone who was a little more calm and quiet – I certainly prefered her interactions with the teams more than Tom Allen buzzing around them like a formally dressed wasp stuck in a kitchen window.
But everything else remains the same – the 12 teams have been split into two groups of 6 so you will have entirely forgotten about the first lot by the time we get to Week 7 when they merge, the comedy segments are still tedious, Benoit still pronounces “sponge” in a way that makes me weak at the knees and Cherish is still dressing like the general of a very fashionable pop-punk militia
what is brand shall never die.
And if you need some help remembering the teams, here’s a handy Pre-elimination Elimination Wall
there will be a quiz afterwards.
Never A Fraisier to Reference
The first challenge of the series was the ominously titled “Mystery Challenge” – which is basically just The Technical Challenge from Regular soBake Off but this is Bake Off: The Professionals everything does have to sound a little bit like something a stage magician would do. For their Mystery Challenge, the teams were having to make Fraisier Cakes with each team being given the exact same ingredients and equipment. As well as the fraisiers, they would also have to make a small chocolate sculpture that somehow represented who they are as a team.
I was a little surprised at how many of the teams were completely unfamiliar with a Fraisier Cake when I, as someone whose entire understanding of patisserie is walking past a Patisserie Valerie window display, knew what a Fraisier Cake was. Luckily the instructions weren’t Paul Hollywood levels of unhelpful so everybody at least managed to decipher what they should look like in the end – with varying degrees of success in achieving said look.
David and Cydrick however were on very safe footing as they do make a fraisier cake in their shop – which really showed because they really took the time to finesse the finer details such as preparing the strawberries in a way that made them sound like tiny little strawberry scented robots
and it was certainly worth it because their cakes did look the best of the bunch, even with some minor slippage here and there
and the only complaints they got were that the cakes could have used slightly more mousseline.
As for their chocolate sculpture, they had chosen to make the Eiffel Tower as a nod to their French backgrounds
which Benoit was certainly taken with – shout out to the subtitler who decided it was best not to subtitle Benoit and David making the “hon he hon hon” sounds for a good portion of the judging.
While David and Cydrick managed to nail down a clear concept for the chocolate sculpture, some of the other teams were floundering, namely Nathan and Kevin who had seemingly just drawn a series of random shapes in the hope it would eventually come together in the end
and unfortunately it didn’t really come together in the end because their sculpture did look a bit like it had been made by a Random Bake Off Generator
the slightly limp chocolate leaves slowly creeping their way out of the ball like they’re aliens that have crash landed on earth is what really puzzle me. I would have quite liked Benoit and Cherish to have pushed them for a complete breakdown of the symbolism in the piece, instead they just moved very quickly on to their Fraisier Cakes which looked very pretty
the judges did appreciate the fact that they had chosen to caramelise the tops of their marzipan discs which added a unique flavour – but they did think that overall it was all a little bit too safe.
The trick to the chocolate sculpture was to keep it relatively simple so they could concentrate on the fraisiers because the judges were obviously going to have more to critique the Fraisier Cakes on. Jeffery however was doing the exact opposite and trying to build a more elaborate chocolate sculpture than a lot of the teams attempt in the Show Piece Challenges. His concept was to make a bird in a birdcage, inspired by the tradition in Hong Kong of apparently taking your pet birds on a walk to go and talk to other people who had also taken their birds on a walk. Cherish perfectly understood the inspiration, Benoit seemed thoroughly perplexed by the concept of an early morning avian meet and greet
which I think explains all of the Hon He Hon Hons.
The birdcage sculpture was however a little over ambitious and he probably should have changed tack at about the halfway point when it could have easily been turned into an octopus
but he was very committed to the bird idea and continued with his the anti-octopus agenda, resulting in a birdless birdcage, although he had still presented the chocolate that would have eventually become the bird, which sort of just sat on the side like a… it rhymes with bird
and with Jeffery putting so much effort into the birdcage, Venus was left to contend with the fraisiers, a cake she wasn’t all too familiar with and quite hesitant about which is probably why they ended up with a paltry 20% of the required 36 and their unfamiliarity showed with the proportions of the components being very out of balance.
They weren’t the only ones to end up with an unfinished sculpture as Boglarka had run out time to finish off the building block lacking the lettering she had planned, so her sculpture went from being a stack of child’s toy to a pile of geometry homework
they were also unfamiliar with a fraisier cake and had gone about making it in the most time consuming manner they could possibly have done, choosing to bake the required almond sponge inside the moulds instead of as a sheet, which meant they had to demould them and then trim them down, rather than just cutting each disc out using the moulds like everyone else. Their panic in the last few minutes of the challenge certainly showed because their fraisiers looked a bit like anxiety in cake form – wobbly and slowly collapsing
and unfortunately their mousseline had split
Cherish had also managed to find a lump of unemulsified butter that she proceeded chase around her plate with her fork in the most off-putting way she possibly could.
With the requirement of a chocolate sculpture, Mireia was on hand to tick off a favourite Bake Off: The Pros trope by making a chocolate rose which was promptly assessed by Cherish like she was Archimedes working out the purity of a gold crown and looking thoroughly unimpressed
Stacey Solomon was at least on hand to be suitably impressed it
the choice to make a rose was because they work at Levens Hall in the Lake District which has a really lovely garden. But 1 rose does not a chocolate amenity make, so they had also incorporated some moon imagery into their sculptures because… Robert just really likes the moon apparently
not to cast any aspersions on Robert’s character but… a fondness of the moon? Bearded? kind of cute? Frequently found roaming The Lake District while naked? The man’s a werewolf
also a distinct lack of shots of sheep interspersed this year, almost like some sort of rabid animal got to them…
Putting the Robert is a Werewolf conspiracy theory on ice for a second, they had attempted to style their fraisier cakes slightly differently by cutting their strawberries into rounds
I’m not sure it work particularly well, it adds a little too much bulk to them which takes away from the required finesse. There were also a few technical issues but they had managed to incorporate all of the required components, although I was surprised that Cherish didn’t mention their strawberry compote AT ALL considering she tasted it and viscerally winced when she did so, much to Robert’s obliviousness
His perception might not be great but his sense of smell though it out of this world.
And lastly we have Emanuele and Mariola who were firmly on Team We Have No Idea What a Fraisier Cake Is, Please God Help Us! Unfortunately God forsook them, possibly because Mariola was committing strawberry genocide
with so much of their brain power having to go into working out how to make a fraisier cake, at some point they had to completely give up on the idea of creating a chocolate sculpture, they didn’t even pull a Judi Love and just smush a load of chocolate into a vaguely sculptural form
although it did look like Emanuele might have been whitling his own sculpture of former Ballerina Anastasia
and then to add injury to insult, Emanuele cut himself while making his creme mousseline, and it’s hard to tell if he’s talking about said mousseline here, or his blood consistency
well, that was until Cherish cut into one of their fraisier cakes that it went from being a slightly sad cake to being an extremely sad starfish – it’s really quite an impressive splat
it wasn’t a great showing for the two of them but it is hard to get used to a very unfamiliar kitchen and cooking environment so Emanuele had some words of encouragement for Mariola
in the immortal words of Trixie Mattel: Oh honey.
A Fraisier Cake and Chocolate Amenity Ranking
- Much French, Very Paris
- Robert’s Lycanthrope Secret
- Good Cakes and Random Shapes
- The Building Blocks of a Good Bake
- I’m Like a Bird, I Only Fly Away
- An Effort Was Made.
Can’t See The Woods For The Treacle
For their first big Showpiece Challenge the teams had to build a 70cm display piece on which to showcase their reimagining of a treacle tart – a dessert that Cydrick was convinced was a joke when he first heard about it, and who can blame him? That’s pretty much just the modus operandi of British cuisine; weird things we convinced ourselves are food out of pride and lack of better judgement.
In order to keep it recognisable as a treacle tart, Benoit did want them to make sure that they kept the flavour profile of the tart – bold of him to claim the treacle tart as a flavour profile other than “grimly sweet”.
Continuing the general theme of not being particularly familiar with things, upon hearing that they had to make treacle tarts, Jeffery promptly ran to that font of all Patisserie Knowledge: The Tesco Bread and Cakes Aisle
and his assessment of said treacle tart was “one bite and then I forgot” – consider yourself ROASTED Mr. Kipling. In order to make their treacle tarts more memorable they had added a Caramelised Walnut Praline and topped them with a puff pastry crisp that did look a bit like a rasher of bacon
the verdict was that it was all a little bit too bitter, so Jeffery’s war against the treacle tart may have gone too far. The judges were also a little iffy on their display, I actually quite liked it
the finish could have done with a bit of tidying up but I think it was a clear concept and certainly had an atmosphere about it.
Most of the teams went about reimagining the tarts as individual miniature tarts, Robert and Mireia however were bucking the trend and instead making a pair of large tarts. They were also absolutely using this as an opportunity to practise for whatever they plan on making for the Jubilee Weekend with their tarts designed to look like a pair of crowns in front of the London skyline
I think it’s extremely clever and well done and the simplified London skyline certainly worked out great despite Benoit’s scepticism – he’s all in on a 20cm tall Eiffel Tower, but a 70cm chocolate version of The Shard? He’ll side eye that.
In order to combat the saccharine nature of the treacle tart, they had topped it with a very generous layer of Jersey Milk Mousse which went down VERY well with Cherish
and their addition of a very nice sounding Prune and Apple compote was always going to pair very well with treacle. The only thing that stopped them from winning was that their structure perhaps wasn’t as ambitious as some of the others, because Nathan and Kevin had really gone all out on theirs which looked unabashedly like something the Lyle’s Golden Syrup factory would have erected outside the entrance
and their miniature tarts were equally as polished when you got up close to them
and they had gone for some unusual flavours, using a grapefruit insert and charcoal to give their pastry a dark finish that contrasted beautifully with their chantilly cream topping. They’re not flavours that appeal to me – I am of the opinion that we should be actively encouraging the extinction of grapefruit, but the judges loved them!
And of course Nathan was harangued about not smiling enough – which is already beginning to feel uncomfortable, just let the man have a resting bitch face
this is RBF solidarity.
In order to solve the conundrum of the treacle tart, David and Cydrick were using the same approach that brought them so much success in the previous round: make it as French as possible, which did mostly come in the form of a champagne mousse – sparkling wine mousse just wouldn’t have the same ring to it.
Having prematurely used up their Eiffel Tower card though, they were having to slightly move away from their French theme, I imagine they’re saving the Chocolate Arc de Triomphe for an emergency get out of jail free card. Instead the theme for their structure was The Circus, almost exclusively because David wanted to show off his juggling skills
I’m mostly impressed that with someone making a circus themed structure, there was not a single mention of The Greatest Showman – have we finally let it die? Will I never have to hear the strains of This Is Me or Never enough ever again? IT COULDN’T HAVE COME SOON ENOUGH.
In order to represent their circus, David and Cydrick were stacking a bear atop a pink elephant which was in turn precariously balanced upon a chocolate ball. And then much like the Barnum & Bailey Circus in 2017, the whole thing went under
luckily, they were able to rebuild it, they had the technology
however the rebuilding process did seem to have majorly traumatised their pink elephant who was never going to be quite the same ever again
but the judges were very complimentary of the way they worked together to get the showpiece back to its full height. Unfortunately they weren’t quite so complimentary of their butterfly topped treacle tarts
they mostly thought they had taken them too far away from being treacle tarts with the champagne mousse bringing a little too much sophistication to a dessert that was originally 90% breadcrumbs and syrup. But they did like the presentation, which I personally thought looked a little bit dated.
David and Cydrick were not the only ones to have a bit of a collapse, as Emanuele and Mariola were put through the ringer this round. In order to claw back some points and pull off something spectacular they had chosen to make their structure entirely out of sugar – and the cracks were already showing when Emanuele was demoulding one of his disc and… quite literally the cracks were showing
which they just gamely ignored and ploughed on regardless, very pleased with how everything was going
and it was really looking like everything was working in their favour, with their structure looking really quite stunning and reminded me a lot of the Hawa Mahal in Jaipur
and then, with 5 minutes left on the clock Emanuele placed one of their tarts onto the structure just a little bit too forcefully and the whole thing shattered before their very eyes
HOW DARE GOD FORSAKE THEM A SECOND TIME? MARIOLA HAD PRAYED AND EVERYTHING!
but unlike the chocolate pieces there was absolutely no way to salvage the carnage of their shattered sugar showpiece
so all they could do was excavate what few tarts could be found within the sugary rubble and put them onto a dinner plate
the judges were very kind about the whole thing, complimenting on their ambition and just how good it looked seconds prior to being turned into a pile of boiled sweets. They also weren’t too harsh on their treacle tarts, which weren’t very treacle tart-y and I did get the distinct impression they didn’t really like them very much, but they didn’t want to make Emanuele or Mariola cry again.
And lastly we have Krisztian and Boglarka’s woodland showpiece that Boglarka did keep saying was inspired by “magic mushrooms”. Their Showpiece centered around the pretty predictable tree trunk centerpiece, but in order to spice it up a bit they had topped it with a fairy bearing massive tits, extremely prominent nipples and not a single limbs to its name
you could take someone’s eyes out with those things!
But even with their busty limbless fairy their showpiece was still a little bit lacking
the door on the side that could open and close was really neat but it would have looked so much better if they had been able to get around to painting it and giving the tree trunk a little more light and shadow to give it some depth. But their tarts were pretty cute
they were however lacking in the flavour department – but there’s certainly a potentially very good idea in this whole piece.
An Official Treacle Tart Showpiece Ranking
- The Lyle’s Golden Syrup Monument
- The Platinum Jubilee Dress Rehearsal
- Parlez Vous Fran-circus?
- The Fairy Wonder(bra)land
- Treacle Tart Flavoured Interior Decor
- Emanuele and Mariola Having a Thoroughly Awful Time
The elimination for this episode wasn’t all too surprising as Emanuele and Mariola just never managed to find safe footing within the Bake Off Kitchen and so they were the first team to be sent packing
but long shall they be immortalised in one Hell of a reaction Jpeg
that face is etched into my brain forever.
And so, we’re 1 team down!
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