This is how I write the recaps.

We call this fashionably late.

A Wedgewood Issue

Kicking off Finals Week was a challenge for the celebrities to cater an afternoon tea celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Wedgewood Pottery. The 5 guests being a selection of potters like Florian Gadsby and then this 7 times great nepo baby

and leading the celebrities in this endeavour was Cherish Finden and her extremely sensitive set of scales and love of a decimal point

but while most of the celebs got on perfectly fine with the measuring and precision, Alfie Boe was being personally bullied by the concept of millimeters

and up until this point Cherish had very much been leaning into the bossy and demanding pastry chef persona

But as soon as Alfie started crying into his tuile moulds, she switched gears in the blink of an eye instead of calling him an idiot sandwich

and to Alfie’s credit, he did manage to pull himself out of this downward spiral and served up his fancy prawn sandwiches, granted they are just glorified sliders and almost certainly the easiest of all the dishes – both to cook and plate up

I know the baking of the bread is a very exacting science but when you’ve got a bag of mysterious bread dough improver, how hard can it truly be?

where was Alun Wyn Jones’s Semolina Sphere Improver!?

Alun Wyn’s was the only other savoury morsel, being a Coronation Chicken mixture piped into the delicate semolina sphere and then topped with a spiral of potato making the whole thing look like a pokemon

the diners loved it, especially the least relevant Wedgewood who was very proud of himself for eating the whole single mouthful of food

he just wants you to know that he deserves to get dessert now. Which consisted of Dawn having to force a pavlova to adhere to the toxic beauty standards of women (I hope she at least got to snort the line of meringue shavings)

my favourite part of this was the insistence that everyone had to call the sheet of jelly “a mirror” for… absolutely no reason other than that it sounds more of a statement <3

Jamie and Ginger had by far the most fiddly dishes to get through with Jamie having to bedazzle a lemon drizzle cake with pieces of dried fruit so tiny I doubt you’d ever know they were there

and Ginger was having to make about 40% of a chocolate teapot (the body and spout had been made for her) and she probably could’ve done with Grace as her teapot model for a little longer considering the placement of the handle (I’m guessing Ginger had made the handles too big so they improvised and didn’t show it)

it certainly adds a new dimension to the old “as useful as a chocolate teapot” adage.

A Real Song and Dance

The second half of this episode is the challenge I look forward to the most every year because you’re guaranteed someone losing their mind during the Theatrical Plate of Food challenge. And as much I initially thought that that person was Jamie Lomas dyeing 2 litres of sour cream blue for the sake of his Treasure Island diorama

I do have to concede that it was Dawn touching true divine heights of insanity as John and Grace tried not to talk about a threesome in her tableau of a Woman Named Orange dealing with her ex-lover Green and her new boy-toy, White

personally a huge fan of this deranged “This Is How You Lose the Time War” erotic AU fanfic, Dawn.
It was also quite an ambitious dish with a whole 6 different chapters/dishes – starting with the staid domestic bliss of ratatouille trapped within a pastry cage of societal expectations

the narrative of Orange and her two colourful lovers really being heightened by the fact Dawn was wearing orange and Grace and John had shown up in Green and White respectively

so from her mundane domestic bliss, we lead into an egg yolk ravioli and Orange bursting forth from Green

wherein she runs into her new man, White who is represented through entirely unseasoned white rice and I cannot imagine the sex with him is nearly as exciting as the carnal fondue that followed implies it is

from there the gribiche-ing threesome happens, leading to Orange snapping, deciding that that’s enough of that and choosing herself. And a cat

hence the cover review

truly top notch stuff from Dawn – just someone having the most fun concocting absolute nonsense. And then you have Alfie Boe who thinks operatically foghorning is enough to sell his dish

I honestly would’ve eliminated Alfie this round – both as a mercy killing and because at least Jamie embraced whimsy, even if he spent more time sketching starfish onto tomatoes than he did cooking

Jamie, I love you and your pantomime seascape

sure, were the popcorn shrimp that he’d painted gold the only real piece of cooking he’d done in this excessive use of sour cream? Yes. But he looked so pleased with himself!

Jamie wasn’t the only one that had got into the dressing up box as Alun Wyn Jones showed up as Alan Car sneaking through the corridors of the Traitors Castle

he was actually meant to be one of the Knights of the Round Table but we know they all wore silver lamé

and his dish was inspired by the search for Merlin – I don’t quite know why it was then just a Black Forest Gateau?

As far as I’m aware it never crops up in the legend? I know Merlin was imprisoned within the enchanted forest, Brocéliande. Which if anything is strongly supposed to be the Great Wood of Caledon in Scotland? I know he just needed something to be forest-y and the last thing anyone needs in the year of our Lord 2025 is someone being persnickety over the accuracies of The Legend of King Arthur but what am I if not a pedant?

Lastly we have Ginger who was catering an alcoholic five year old’s birthday party – as in the food all had copious amounts of alcohol in it. The drag queen was NOT encouraging 5 year olds to start drinking – just to get ahead of that before your weird uncle on Facebook does

I was worried for Ginger because we’ve had people whose desserts are largely just a cake get criticised for baking rather than ~cooking~. However, John and Grace were both all for this Kir Royale Cake, which I thought looked a bit questionably baked…

the lack of any substantial critique of the cake and a rather overzealous praising of the tequila lollipop and pineapple rum jelly did make me realise that Ginger had a good amount of plot armour coming into this final week. This wig is basically lacquered to strength of steel after all

cooking in full glam is honestly the worst – I imagine doing it in full bloody drag feels like the countertop after Ginger spilled orange juice everywhere and was NEVER acknowledged

in the gif version that I do not have the time to make, you can see John reaching out to switch the blender off <3

A Theatrical Dish Ranking:
1. Dawn’s Colourful Saga
2. Merin’s Brief German Gap Year
3. Ginger Johnson’s Drinking Party
4. Jamie Lomas Hand Dyeing Sour Cream
5. Alfie Boe’s (Operatic) Cry For Help

Try as he might to get himself forcible removed from the MasterChef kitchen, Alfie Boe remains trapped in his own personal nightmare as it was Jamie Lomas leaving the kitchen. And looking almost as happy as I think Alfie would’ve

*Alfie Boe pounding against the door screaming “IT SHOULD’VE BEEN ME!”*