I worried about Lee...his ganache looked like slurry
OH for the wings, the wings of a dove… wait. What exactly is that mass of whipped meringue drifting across the screen? Why, it is Mary Berry’s splendiferous new hairstyle, of course.
For it is part of the Great British Bake Off tradition that the queen Mary gets ever more glamorous with the launch of each new series, while fellow judge Paul Hollywood remains looking, as always, like a bulldog in a pair of dad jeans.
He’s wearing a dastardly black shirt this year, as if to underline the fact that he is a bad hat who will take no nonsense from cookies that crumble or duff muffins. You have been warmed, or should that be warned?
Six years ago, Mary started off in the baking tent looking like a country mouse parson’s wife. Now with her great, white pompadour and jaunty sprigged blazers, she’s as grand as Marie Antoinette! Speaking of which, shall we eat cake?
The seventh series of GBBO kicked off with Cake Week and found 12 new amateur bakers gathered tentside in a state of nerves verging from the hysterical to the terrorstruck. ‘The last time I felt this nervous,’ said nurse Kate from Norfolk, ‘was when I was just about to give birth.’
The exception was cool dude Selasi, who once ate a dozen doughnuts in 13 minutes and now wants to do interesting things to his bakes with cardamom pods.
Other contestants included PE teacher Candice, resplendent in damson lipstick and high heels, and Louise from Wales – whose football-shaped orange cannonball cake failed to score.
Val the retired headmistress who uses marge instead of butter, went all gung-ho with her ‘four fruit frosting’ and checks if her bakes are done by listening to them.
There was also 67-year-old pastor Lee, this year’s oldest contestant. I worried about Lee from the start. ‘My butter is too firm,’ he worried. Where is God when you need Him?
Paul Hollywood revealed that after a few years of increasingly complicated bakes, the popular show had decided on simpler recipes. ‘We want to take it back to basics a little bit,’ he said, adding that while the bakes might be simpler, the judging would be tougher.
‘There is nowhere to hide,’ he said, and that was true. At one point, nearly everyone threw their flop Genoise sponges in the bin and started again.
Bakers had to attempt three teatime classics; a drizzle cake in the signature bake section, a tray of Jaffa cakes in the technical challenge and a mirror-glazed cake in the showstopper round.
What did Mary and Paul want? Bigger flavours with greater penetration of syrup and, in a way, don’t we all? We also want the comfort of the familiar, those classic GBBO scenes, with bakers rushing around in a panic trying to speed-freeze their calamitous cakes while someone (last night it was teaching assistant Benjamina) cries quietly into their bowls.
Early dramas involved Val unable to get the lid off a tin and Lee’s cake batter ‘clumping’, while his ganache looked like slurry. I worried about Lee.
Innuendo? All present and correct, of course. ‘I’m going to poke it in, Mary,’ said Candice, when asked how she was going to insert her custard into her bundt cake.
TruE to his word, the judging was indeed strict. Mary hated a cake flavoured with matcha tea (‘it tastes like grass’), Paul was brutal about a gin and tonic drizzle (‘the alcohol kills it’) and a batch of accidentally upside down Jaffa cakes were shown no mercy.
In the end it was Lee who had to go. His ganache was too dry, his flair wasn’t there, he had taken simplicity too far. ‘I do baking demonstrations at church,’ he said. ‘You should be proud of yourself,’ said Paul.
A bad week for poor Lee, but a triumphant return for GBBO. Beautifully edited, winningly constructed, it remains a cinnamonscented, familiar old friend which has lost none of its charm or flair.