Trouble in paradise.

There was a brief second where I almost published this as Camel Week.

The Whole Biscuit and Kaboodle

Kicking off Caramel Week and proving that perhaps Caramel isn’t a strong enough concept to stand on its own two sticky legs was the challenge to make a batch of 12 Caramel Biscuits in Biscuit Signature 2: Caramel Boogaloo. They did specify that they could take inspiration from classic caramel biscuits like Millionaire’s Shortbread but… I don’t know how strongly I consider Millionaire’s Shortbreads a biscuit? It’s like the supermarket taxonomy of Kitkats – 2 fingers? A biscuit. 4 fingers or chunky? That’s what I call a good time a chocolate bar. Shortbread is an undeniable biscuit. However, once you’ve layered it with a 1:1 ratio of caramel and chocolate I feel as though it has become something else entirely and much like the wikipedia page for Flapjacks, I will go to great lengths just to not use the word “biscuit” when talking about them

Mike and Gill had both shown up with Millionaire’s Shortbreads though – each inspired by a parental favourite. Gill highlighting the menopausally feminine urge to shove your face with Brazil nuts

they were very well received with the addition of fruit and nuts taking them from being a Millionaire to a Billionaire

like a sort of Reverse Musk biscuit.

Mike’s Millionaire Shortbreads fared less well with his biscuits very much looking like they overpaid for a social media website that they don’t know how to run and now their ribcage it trying to make a slow and excruciating escape from their bodies

Paul and Prue did at least like the orange flavour – I don’t quite know about that mix of flavours, something about the combination of orange and caramel makes my head swim like I’ve walked into a particularly lethally potpourri’d bathroom. He wasn’t the only baker going for a fruity caramel, with Dylan stepping into the tent looking like one of the Dutch Masters and armed with artisanal pineapple juice

but at least Dylan leaned into the weirdness of this as a concept by presenting his biscuits like it was a classic car show for little ant-sized aliens

it does make them look slightly more like high concept canapés from a series of Great British Menu themed around the 350th birthday of the Royal Observatory than a biscuit but there were a few bakers pushing the limits of what constitutes a biscuit. I think we would have to legally classify Illiyin’s Florentines as chocolates before biscuits

can we all, at the very least, agree that a biscuit has to be wider than it is high? Aside from Illiyin’s questionable girth ratio, both Paul and Prue really loved the originality of her spiced shortbread and florentine towers. The most unique and intriguing flavour in the tent however was definitely Sumayah making her Hibiscus Tea Caramel

which in my head just sounds like you’re making artisanal Starbursts. Unfortunately for Sumayah, it was her first real misstep in the competition with her caramel not setting enough and being more like a jam

however, the judges still liked the intent behind the hibiscus, sesame and mango flavours in the biscuits.

As is to be expected from Bake Off, there were a couple of bakers taking inspiration from chocolate bar staples. Did a trapdoor open beneath Andy and Georgie the moment they said “I’m making a chocolate bar.” in a biscuit-centric signature challenge? Sadly not, the Death Tent Twist appears to have been scrapped until further notice. Andy’s however were at least more biscuity with his Legally Distinct Twixes coming in single fingers which according to the Supermarket Taxonomy of Biscuits, makes them a biscuit and not a chocolate bar

however, Georgie has a harder time of ever convincing me that her Legally Distinct Snickers are anything but a chocolate bar

despite the questionable biological ranking of her… Not Biscuits, Paul was on the verge of giving her a handshake, the only thing stopping this being the fact she broke some of her Legally Distinct Snickers when unmoulding them and you know, not that they were actually chocolate bars. I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL.

Back in the land of Now That’s What I Call A Biscuit, Christiaan had made a phenomenal batch of Stroopwafels

I went to Amsterdam earlier this year and one of my absolute favourite moments was during a canal tour. The extremely good tour guide pointed out the Van Wonderen Stroopwafel shop that was going viral on TikTok and called it “an inauthentic overpriced tourist trap” and said you were better off buying supermarket stroopwafels for half the price. Which an American girl took EXTREMELY personally because she had apparently just filmed a TikTok in the shop. She spent the rest of the boat ride grumpily eating cubes of complimentary Edam cheese and sparkling water in her Shein sponsored outfit that was definitely not keeping her warm. Definitely a strong contender for the Top 10 Accidental Hostage Situations of All Time.

Lastly we have Nelly who was somehow the only person whipping out the classic Salted Caramel to top her chocolate biscuits

they remind me a lot of the fork biscuits you got to occasionally make in nursery school because they consist of three ingredients and take like 25 minutes to make. Which does make them seem slightly unambitious for a two and a half hour challenge which is probably why the judges were a little lukewarm on them. That and the fact they were quite stodgy and threatened to ruin the petrified sea creature that Prue Leith calls a necklace with every mouthful

you don’t really want to be able to describe a biscuit as being “a bit drippy”

Tarte Attack

For their Caramel Technical, the bakers had three hours to make a Pear Tarte Tatin. And some ice cream because they had the foresight to predict that one of the bakers would probably be able to predict that the Technical Challenge would be a tarte tatin

Bake Off is actually just one long game of 4D Chess and if Georgie isn’t careful she’s going to have to go through the Hans Niemann investigative procedure because she also predicted Miniature Battenburgs in Cake Week

I’ll assume she’s just The Oracle of Breadelphi before proven vibratingly guilty. But her Magic Baking 8 Ball did pay off for her as she took the top spot with a very good, if slightly caught, Tarte Tatin

Christiaan managed a very respectable second place, just beating Sumayah who managed to get back a few points with a strong third placed Tarte Tatin

the judges are very inconsistent about how much the Technical Challenge matters – it only ever seems to factor in for an elimination and never Star Baker. It’s sort of the Drag Race runway of Bake Off except none of the bakers are spending luxury car amounts of money on rhinestones and Joshuan Aponté’s time and patience.

There were no real baking disasters in the tent, nobody seemed to excessively struggle – Andy and Gill both managed to burn their tarte tatins ending up in 9th and 8th place respectively

the latter of the two somehow powering through the ever increasing doubt that pouring thick toffee over her tarte tatin might be the wrong thing to do

90% of Bake Off is just having the confidence to commit to something and for that I really applaud Gill – Nelly took one look at her slightly lumpy caramel and restarted it immediately. Gill would have shrugged and told Paul that gritty caramel was authentically northern because that’s how the miners liked it.

Nelly was not out of the woods yet though as her leftover caramel intended to drizzle over her tarte tatin was lost in a Pastry Ball incident

I don’t think anything feels more Bake Off than one of the hosts ruining something a baker has made – Sue Perkin’s elbowing muffins

a second Mel Geidroyc hitting the biscuit tower

and now Noel Fielding having to hoover up his caramel sins like he’s practicing for a production of Queen’s I Want To Break Free

Nelly however was looking on the brightside

however, 6th place wasn’t enough to put her in danger and the chance of getting a lift home in Noel Fielding’s “posh car”. I can only picture him driving a barely functioning subaru from the 70s that he insistently keeps alive “for the vibe” despite the car begging to be put out of its misery if it drives for more than 2km. I also just realised the subtitlers got what N elly said wron g because not even they believe Noel Fielding has a posh car

Cutting Mousse

With the concept of Caramel Week fast coming undone at the seams, seeing us out was the challenge to make a Mousse Cake with a mandated minimum of 2 caramel elements and some sort of sugar-work decoration. The particular challenge of this being for the bakers to try to cool their caramel enough in order to be able to add it to a mousse without splitting it. Most of the bakers achieved this, however Illiyin and Mike both ended up with splitting headaches

Illiyin managed to get back on track with her second batch after having Alison threaten to dance with her

someone has definitely seen Alison’s American Smooth

however, Mike wasn’t so lucky with his second batch splitting and not leaving him enough time to make a third batch. However, neither Paul nor Prue brought up anything about his split mousse

this might have been because, you know, YOU’D PUT BARELY ANY MOUSSE INTO YOUR MOUSSE CAKE

I almost have to admire the galaxy-brained audacity. Prue and Paul however did not as they complained that everything was too sweet which I feel is a little bit like welcoming in the consequences of your own actions when it comes to having a specific week dedicated to caramel

how dare this cake, that we specifically asked to include two different caramels in, be too sweet?

Illiyin managed to at least scrape by with a perfectly fine cake – the pistachio flavour got a little lost amongst the mandated double caramel but it was the jammed in tiara that raised the most questions for the judges

heavy is the head that wears the isomalt crown.

Gill of course also got the “it’s a bit sweet” critique because she had a made a Sticky Toffee Mousse Cake which in the end looked rather amazing

I enjoy it when a baker makes something really well that looks a little bit like I could potentially make it at home. I enjoy a relatable bake, it’s why something like Andy’s Sycamore Gap Life Preserver leaves me quite cold

it doesn’t help that it’s banoffee pie which is categorically the worst pie, a debate I shall not be taking to the marketplace of ideas, you just have to accept it as a fact of life. However, it was the candyfloss that caused the most consternation as Paul liked it and Prue took one taste of it and saw her entire life flash before her eyes

she saw herself being replaced by Lucy Beaumont dressed as Fanny Cradock

In the nicest way, I think she would be the perfect Fanny Cradock and if any TV execs wants to buy that mini-series, I have written the pilot episode. I have been asked to stop bringing up Fanny Cradock in my group therapy sessions – she’s my current hyperfixation. I can’t help it, she has very strong “could a depressed person make THIS?” energy

more recipes should come with suggestions that you ask your butcher if they’ve got animal appendages lying around.

Sumayah was also going for a Banoffee Pie and also choosing to bizarrely cover it in a green mirror glaze which just breaks my brain a little bit

Banana is a flavour you have to be adequately prepared for and thus all banana flavoured products should be pale yellow. There is nothing worse than a mouthful of surprise banana. The colour theory wasn’t the only problem with Sumayah’s glaze which looked a bit like a mid-2000s CBBC gunge pool the moment you tried to cut a slice

texturely, it was indeed a nightmare, with no part of the cake feeling the way it should. However, I did really like her sugar-work inspired by Dale Chihuly

whose work you have probably seen even without knowing it – I think he’s probably most famous for the Bellagio ceiling

I believe it’s still holds the record for being the largest glass installation? However,the Bake Off’s biggest sugar glass installation was undoubtedly Christiaan’s slightly ridiculous isomalt wave that for some reason they only ever filmed from above?

he was going for a tropical Coconut and Lime mousse cake. The coconut I get, but… am I being really silly for thinking any sort of citrus and caramel combo is weird? “Lime and Caramel”, “Orange and Caramel” & “Lemon and Caramel” just make my brain stop to scream like a distressed university campus printer having to print off the 5th dissertation in an hour.
However, it was the thick immovable object that was Christiaan’s layer of caramel that was the judges’ cause for concern

that’s what we call a Tooth Killer.

Dylan was also on this citrusy streak (I was very relieved to find out it wasn’t spelled “citrussy” – I’m too online for it) with his Lemon Caramel Mousse Cake

it looks amazing, he was disappointed with the slight crack in the back of it (we call it the citrussy)

but Paul and Prue were just about literally bowled over by how strong and vibrant the lemon flavour was and for his handling of the lemon and caramel flavours, Dylan has been dubbed this year’s Flavour King

which feels like a usurping of the exact title Christiaan has been angling for since day 1 when he whipped out Apples and Miso. DON’T PIT MY BOYS AGAINST EACH LIKE THIS. (it’s me, I’m pitting MY BOYS against each other like this)

Georgie was going for very very ambitious decorations with both making a rose out of isomalt and covering her salted caramel mousse cake in a red mirror glaze

the rose looked absolutely phenomenal, I wish we’d got to see more of her actually making it. The mirror glaze… it’s red and I think that’s its greatest sin. It kind of just makes the whole thing look like a wheel of gouda (not necessarily a bad thing) but I wish it was a colour that contrasted the rose just a little better. There were a few issues with her ratios and some textures and honestly, at this point it just began to sound like Paul and Prue just don’t like mousse cakes

like me pitching a prosthetics heavy sitcom at university, getting the project greenlit and then realising nobody knew how to do prosthetics nor was there a prosthetics course at the university to collaborate with. Our dracula? Stunning. The Wolfman? Distressing and moulting with every movement. Our Frankenstein? A narrowly avoided blackface controversy – the green face paint oxidised, I swear!

Lastly we have Nelly who I think in the end had by far and away the best cake of the bunch

as Paul pointed out, it just looks incredibly polished and professional – if only her biscuits hadn’t been a bit of a dud, she’d have had a leisurely walk to Star Baker becuse she didn’t do too badly in the Technical and it’s hard to say how much of her critique in that was because she’d had to start her caramel much later than everyone else.

You’re a Star Ba(ker)by

With Georgie topping the Tarte Tatin leaderboard and managing to trick Paul and Prue into thinking she’d made biscuits using some sort of Jedi mind trick, she was very deservedly Star Baker

and finding themselves in the firing line were Mike, Sumayah and maybe Andy? They seemed to let him skate by this week, imaginably because they knew the pastry mousetrap lurked around the corner. In the end, Sumayah got to stay which is probably fair considering she has the better track record and she’d actually made a mousse cake whereas Mike’s was just a cake

I for one will miss the Tales of the Farm.

and so we reach the halfway point of the competition!