I have never seen anyone this desperate to leave a competition in my life. And I’ve watched Game Of Wool.

What’s the square root of a carrot anyway?

After School Special

In order to decide the final 3, the remaining four celebrities were having to create a dish inspired by someone special to them. And with this being Alfie Boe’s last chance to save himself from the conniption fit that was steaming towards him like a freight train if he made the final, he’d decided he was going to bake not one but TWO cakes! Really all he was doing was stacking parkin atop a type of jaconde sponge known as a Misérables Cake, making what I call a Miserable Parkin

and as you can guess, slightly too warm sponge and most definitely not thick enough coffee buttercream are not the most stable of building blocks as one of Alfie’s miserable parkins became an even more miserable parkin

and he treated this mild inconvenience like the end of the world because he’s Alfie Boe and he needs a propranolol NOW

between him and Alun Wyn cutting open his lamb to reveal it was still raw, there was some fantastic faces of devastation going on

Alun Wyn did manage to get it cooked by flash frying it in the pan in the last few moments of the challenge but it did mean the fat was still unrendered

that is the most carrot-y looking carrot I’ve ever seen, which should be expected because it is a sort of Carrot² having been cooking in carrot juice. Which I think means John Torode and Grace Dent have x-ray vision now? Or at least means John turns into Bugs Bunny every full moon

Ginger was also going for a hearty roast meal, making roasted salmon Christmas dinner inspired by her dad (which was everyone’s dedicant except Dawn’s. As in their dads, not everyone was celebrating Ginger’s dad, BUT THEY SHOULD BE)

maybe it’s just because I’m not that big a roast dinner person but this dish does leave me a little bit cold? I’m also just not convinced about the meeting point of salmon, pomegranate and a yorkshire pudding? I feel like it’s an afterschool detention for buffet bits. BUT! Those roast potatoes do look like they could win Ginger an award (✨foreshadowing✨).

Lastly we have Dawn who was creating a monolith of meat dedicated to Chris O’Dowd

but before you think he should be too flattered, it was a reference to the fact he’d asked her out in a kebab shop wherein they also drank champagne out of a blue bag

you do NOT get extra points for the individual piccolo bottles of champagne, Dawn

but she didn’t really need them because the kebab was apparently good enough for John to lose all dignity on national television

not that the man has all that much left…

A Loved One Inspired Dish Ranking:
1. Shish! Kaboom! Kebab!
2. Ginger’s Buffet Christmas
3. Alun’s Lamb and Werecarrot
4. Alfie Boe’s Last Ditch Effort To Leave

Having finally got their money’s worth out of Alfie Boe they did open the cage door and allow him to skedaddle off into the distance like one of those rehabilitated owls on Animal Rescue

and from there the final three went on to cater the Chef’s Table Challenge which… I think we’re all ok with me tapping out and not recapping? NOTHING of any note really happens during it. It’s mostly an exercise in talking about how clever Liam Dillon is for an insane two thirds of an episode! I think that’s my biggest issue with this particular series of Celebrity MasterChef, it’s felt like A LOT of cooking other people’s recipes. The vibes were already noticeably weird because this is obviously the first series they filmed after The Greggening and I think they were trying to give Grace a very gentle introduction to the full on judging process and their solution to that was an increase of assigned recipes and mitigating chaos.

And so, it’s on to the final with Ginger Johnson, Alun Wyn Jones and Dawn O’Porter!