Land of the rising bun
WE’RE over halfway through the baking competition now and things are getting serious, with little to separate the remaining bakers when it comes to all things floury.
Someone, in their infinite wisdom, decided they needed make things more niche and more complicated, so they’ve introduced the idea of Japanese Week.
Now, we’ll ignore the fact that Japan really isn’t famous for its baked goods, that a lot of Japanese people in fact don’t even have ovens in their homes, and that two of the challenges most definitely don’t involve anything being baked...
Yeah, OK, turns out we couldn’t really ignore it because it’s actually pretty irritating – especially if it could mean one of our favourites gets sent home because of their lack of Far
Mark in the
Eastern mastery.
Bake Off tent
At least it’s not as annoying as when they made people make pitta breads and hummus over an open fire and a pile of rocks in the final.
Anyway, I digress. For their Signature Challenge, the remaining seven bakers will
be whipping up steamed buns. An opportunity for glorious innuendo that quite frankly gets missed, I’m afraid. But there is some excellent snarky competitiveness between Lottie and Irish Mark, when they realise they’re making the exact same thing. The Technical is one of those weird ones, where we don’t even want to eat what they’re making, and not just because it’s bright green. As for the Showstopper, they’re making cakes inspired by kawaii – the Japanese love of all things cute and adorable. Matt Lucas should win that.