Radical deployment of a Clickbait Face Thumbnail!

I pronounce is “Recaap”.

A Frangipane In The Neck

Kicking off the second half of the competition was Pastry Week’s Signature Challenge in which the bakers had to create a dozen Frangipane Tarts. The baseline neutral state of which is of course the Bakewell Tart, which Georgie was choosing to recreate with the only difference being that instead of an inch of fondant icing, she was going for ~finesse~ with some chantilly cream

and they were so boring that the critique was literally 5 seconds long and the only thing Paul said was “Good job” before they swiftly moved on. Georgie won Star Baker last week and decided she’d skate by like a pastry making Zamboni and I kind of have to applaud her for that.

While Georgie may have opted for tried and tested, Christiaan was being Christiaan and dabbling in a series of flavour combinations that simply leave you pondering “But… why?” granted Cashew, Sesame and Apricot aren’t the most out there flavours but his tarts did look a bit like someone at Planet Organic had tried to make a dessert out of health foods

as someone who went through a grim relationship with food in the mid 2010s, I am traumatised by anything that even looks tangentially like a Chia Seed Pudding

Truly a WILD time in the history of food programming – the Hemsley Sisters need to stand trial in The Hague. Evidence File 1.A is just a vat of bone broth.

Despite Christiaan going for the unique and unusual, neither Paul nor Prue were quite convinced of the flavours with the sesame and cashew not bringing much more than an unsightly shade of grey to the proceedings. And because of that, they never really critiqued his actual pastry. Why would they? It’s not like it’s Pastry Week or anything…

Dylan was also taking an unusual approach to the challenge with his Coffee and Chocolate Tarts being a bit of an outlier in their lack of fruit

this did prove a little bit detrimental as chocolate and coffee are both quite overpowering flavours meaning that Paul and Prue weren’t really able to pick out the frangipane in his tarts.
He hadn’t had the easiest time in the tent with this challenge as he’d had to start his pastry all over again because he hadn’t blind baked it correctly

slightly unbelievable that we’re 15 series deep into this franchise and baking beans are still a mystery to some bakers. But hey, we’re 6 weeks deep into this year’s Strictly which is roughly equivalent to 15 years of Bake Off and Jamie Borthwick is still a mystery to me

who is this man and which BBC competition did he win to get there?

Dylan wasn’t the only baker who had to perform an emergency repastrying as Illiyin found herself trapped in a Scooby Doo episode with Dylan having to warn her that her collapsing pastry tarts were right behind her

but with so many other elements to make and time rapidly ticking down she hadn’t managed to get her second batch of tart cases into the oven quick enough so they were incredibly underbaked and anaemic

and on top of her not-great-pastry, Paul thought she should have done either Mango or Passionfruit, not both. Which seems a decidedly weird critique after years of Mango and Passionfruit being a staple of this show. We went through two whole series where you couldn’t breathe for Mango, Passionfruit and Coconut combinations! And with Illiyin making a Coconut Frangipane it made perfect sense.
She wasn’t the only one going for a Coconut Frangipane either, with Sumayah doing it too and combining it with a raspberry gel and Meringue

Paul and Prue were more taken with her flavours but she had somewhat overbaked her pastry.

Gill took Pastry Week as her opportunity to be a little more delicate with her bakes before the judges began to use her Northern Portions retort as a stick to beat her with

they were exceptionally dainty and well made Blueberry Frangipane Tarts. I was really thrilled for Gill this episode, I’m glad she got a week to be acknowledged for being a genuinely good baker before, as I assume will happen, they decide to completely lose interest in her because she’s not Dylan, Georgie or International Woman of Mystery, Nelly

I adore the fact her son dressed her to look French for Pastry Week but I did think this was a case of the Sisterhood of the Travelling Beret but that would require Dylan to be mouse-sized but as Leah noted in the comments of the previous recap, he does look like Fievel so… maybe Dylan is mouse-sized and a lot of this series is shot with Lord of the Rings forced perspective.

Were Nelly’s frangipane tarts French themed? No. Not even slightly, they were just Blood Orange and topped with decidedly unfrench Italian Meringue

they were a little messy and her pastry was much thicker than you’d want from a miniature tart but she’d managed to pack them with a real punch of Blood Orange flavour that Paul was very taken with.

Lastly we have Andy, who was taking a cowboy builder approach to Pastry Week

and in this series’s continuing chaotic evil approach to the use of citrus, his Frangipane Tarts were taking inspiration from his favourite sweet: Chocolate Limes

he had once again failed to hear his timer going off so his pastry was a little overbaked and when he realised that the entire challenge went a bit off the rails for him and his presentation suffered a little bit

I personally think the haphazardly applied lines only add to the effect of them looking like a boiled sweet that’s languished away in the Royal Dansk biscuit tin at your nan’s house for upwards of 5 years.

A Spanakopita in the Works

For their Pastry Week Technical, which would be the second pastry-themed technical in a row because I cannot emphasise enough how bad Caramel Week is as a theme, the bakers were making Spanakopitas. This did require them to go through the needlessly gruelling process of making their own Filo Pastry

a lost artform according to the extremely traumatised Dylan because even the most ardent of professional chefs will tell you to take the easy route like Gandalf trying to buy you time from the Balrog

the only bakers that really struggled with their filo pastry making though were Gill and Andy who did end up coming last and second last respectively. But the Technical Challenge means NOTHING so don’t worry Gill, you’re still on to a winning week!

Dylan continued to be the miracle child, managing to just pip Christiaan to first place with a decently sized but slightly soggy Spanakopita

all of the bakers struggled with the moisture levels because as you can imagine, in order to fill a metre-long pastry snake with spinach, it requires roughly 3 football pitches worth of spinach

the only way any of them were going to get enough moisture out of their spinach was to take a grape stomping approach. Bake Off however knows better than to give WikiFeet such easy content – Strictly however, not so much

for all the Vito’s Toes stans out there – I KNOW YOU EXIST YOU DIRTY LITTLE FREAKS.
So instead of serving Paul and Prue a Podalic Spanakopita, most of the bakers just took the tried and tested method of setting the ovens as high as possible in the hope it would evaporate the moisture

it did not work but I have never felt better represented by a piece of media in all my life.

If The Choux Fits

Having gone through Shortcrust and Filo with any other pastry likely being kept for Pie Week, the only remaining nominee for the Pastry Week Showstopper was of course Choux. The form of this Choux challenge being to create a Paris-Brest sitting atop a completely edible stand. “How are they going to make an edible stand out of pastry?” was my first question and then I realised that I was foolish for thinking the theme of the week counted for anything so, arguably the more accomplished and difficult part of the challenge was more of a biscuit-based challenge… Or if you’re Andy, you’re absolutely hellbent on standing up for the justification of Caramel Week by making his stand out of toffee

other than the obvious fact that toffee isn’t the greatest building material known to man, the dead give away that this was going to go *very* badly was the moment Andy mentioned he was using toffee, the Tuba Parps of Doom began following him around at all times like an accident prone Looney Tunes character

I did particularly enjoy the moment he tried to see if he could replace the flat top of his stand with a second curved piece

the things I would have given to see him trying to carry a precariously teetering Paris-Brest across the tent, because you know, for some reason the Bakers were having to carry their creations up for judging despite that being the opposite of what a centrepiece is intended for BUT WHEN HAVE WORDS EVER HAD MEANING ON THIS SHOW? Instead Andy gave up and served his Paris-Brest alongside his obelisk of toffee which did look a bit like its gravestone

his stand may have been a dud, however his choux pastry was actually really well made which you would think might count for something in Pastry Week but I guess Andy forgot to read the smallprint where it specified it’s Pastry ^{and Others} Week.

Andy wasn’t the only one to turn up to the judges relatively standless as Illiyin stood at the back of the tent doing more of the stand’s job than the stand

she was at least saved from a lack of standability by the fact her Paris-Brest looked like something you’d see in the pages of a Country Living Magazine which was specifically designed to appeal to Prue Leith

little did Prue know the whole thing was actually a deepcut Game of Thrones joke based on Illiyin using a lot of nuts and Daenerys going Full Lady Hitler a bit Nutty

I suppose it’s not really a deepcut but honestly, with the way Game of Thrones plummeted out of the cultural Zeitgeist everything about it feels like a deepcut at this point.

Everybody else actually managed to create fully operational stands – which was quite the miracle in the case of Dylan whose stand looked like a side table that hadn’t survived a tavern brawl

but somehow Paul managed to actually cut Dylan’s Paris-Brest while it sat on the stand.

There were however some issues with Dylan’s Paris-Brest with his choux deflating once he’d taken it out of the oven

but much like myself during the frustrating days of only being on 10mg of estradiol, if you pad your brest enough, nobody will notice

Narrator’s Voice: everybody will notice.

it’s ok Dylan, I for one fully respect the padded bra and overcompensatory rice filled socks approach. Paul was less pleased because this overcompensatory rice filled sock was flavoured with Matcha which of course Paul pulled a face over

to which Dylan promptly schooled Paul on how matcha tea has different grades and judging by the fear in Paul’s eyes, despite his entire culinary travelogue in Japan, I don’t think he knew that

GET HIM JADE.
In the end Paul did like the ceremonial grade matcha mousseline, which I am sure can only be better than the worst use of matcha to have ever been ushered into existence: The Starbucks Matcha Lattes of 2016. VILE, EVIL DRINKS. One of the Four Horsemen of the Novelty Seasonal Snack Apocalypse. The others being Sainsbury’s Pina Colada Mince Pies, the Tesco Christmas Dinner Sushi and Cinnamon-flavoured Coke. All of them a unique and unpleasant assault on every single one of your senses and the very morality of our species.

In a rare instance of normality, Christiaan was going for a very simple Orange and Pecan Paris-Brest

instead he was concentrating on trying to propel himself to extremely lofty heights of Gay Twitter memes

the thing with Nigella though was the fact NOBODY pronounces Microwave that way, Christiaan was just pronouncing “pecan” with a slight American accent. He was also completely eclipsed by Andy constantly threatening to full his choux pastry with Mussolini

if this year’s Bake Off has taught me one thing, it’s that Christiaan can never have anything nice. Dylan took his title of Flavour King and The Gays’ Favourite and now Andy takes mispronunciations. Quick Christiaan, just really lean into being the eccentric one with a continental accent!

FUCK! It’s not too late, you can still be the young one with a dry sense of humour that cuts the presenters’ efforts to banter with them short!

DOUBLE FUCK! I wouldn’t wish Matt Lucas upon anyone, but I do think that if he’d gone within 5 feet of Sumayah with a poo joke she’d have turned him to ashes with the sheer weight of a deadpanned, vocal fry riddled “right…”. I love her so much and her Tree of Life themed centrepiece was rather spectacular with the stained glass effect and that it was made out of actual pastry, hers being Krokan

much like her tarts, it was all slightly overbaked but on the plus side, that afforded the entire structure that much more rigidity so it was a Bob Ross certified Happy Little Accident. Nelly however had the opposite issue with her choux pastry being a little underbaked, but she had made by far the most choux pastry having made her entire stand out of choux pastry LIKE YOU ALL SHOULD HAVE CONSIDERING IT’S PASTRY WEEK

Paul did think it was a little bit short and didn’t quite reach the lofty heights of a centrepiece. However, Nelly Can Do No Wrong so… deal with it?

it was 100% pastry and that had to count for something.

Georgie and Gill both had very good showings in the challenge. Gill was the clear winner, with Georgie’s Paris-Brest being a bit leaky

and nobody wants a leaky brest. But both Paul and Prue were particularly taken with her baroque inspired stand

but Gill’s Lemon Meringue Paris-Brest was by far and away the judges’ favourite with how clean and precise the whole thing looked

and she was treated the Hollywood Clap (I am assured that there’s a pill for that)

leaving Georgie to sit pondering in contemplative silence as to how that correlates with her Hollywood Pat in the Paul Hollywood Congratulatory Economy

I am one more Hollywood Handshake away from writing a dissertation about Paul Hollywood as the personification of Capitalism and what that means for Bake Off.

You’re a Star Ba(ker)by

Gill was a wildly swinging pendulum of baking chaos this week having pretty noticeably done the best in both the Signature and the Showstopper Challenges and then coming dead last in the Technical. Which is the second time just this series that that episode track record earns Star Baker, the first being Dylan’s Bread Week

this group of bakers is very All Or Nothing.

Up for elimination was… well, mostly just Andy. Illiyin may not have managed a successful base for her Paris-Brest but the Paris-Breast was up near the top in terms of how positively the judges responded to it, meaning that Andy was kind of the only eliminatable option given his Paris-Brest’s flavours had fallen short

I was hot and cold on Andy but I think in the end, I will miss this Netflix Live Action Reboot of Bob the Builder.

and so 7 bakers get to trial Foreign Country Minefield Week’s less loaded replacement, Autumn Week!