Your pie and pleas special
THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF Channel 4, 8pm
IN advance of tonight’s episode, consider this a public service announcement – you may want to stock up on doughnuts and pies or face an hour of extreme food envy.
It’s pastry week and the remaining bubble of bakers must make batches of decorated choux pastry doughnuts – or chouxnuts.
Otherwise known, according to Lizzie, as “the devil’s doughnuts”.
She’s so stressed out she says her elbows are sweating.
For the technical challenge, judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith have asked for a large baklava with filo pastry.
“Oh man,” says George, while the other bakers variously hold their heads in their hands or gasp in despair.
The notoriously complicated baklava requires a traditional laminating technique, layered with a pistachio and walnut filling and cut into a star design.
“I really wish I’d spent more time in the kitchen with my Greek grandmother,” says Amanda.
Finally, it’s a savoury showstopper as the bakers must make an intricate terrine pie.
It must have an ornate pastry decoration on the outside and reveal a neat pattern when cut open.
Jurgen reenacts a lunch from his home town in Germany, while George creates a Christmas dinner in a pie. Amanda makes a pretty pate pie, Giuseppe gets busy with an owl theme, Crystelle makes a curry pie, Chigs makes a pork pie and Lizzie aims for a Neptune, sea-themed pie.
“It’s going to be unusual,” says Lizzie. “I want to be the Heston Blumenthal of the tent.”
But who will be upper crust and who will be pied off?