Bakers build a big feast of silliness
Good week, bad week By Roxanne Sorooshian
It’s been a good week for ... cake
HUNDREDS of amateur and professional bakers from across Scotland have recreated the country’s top 100 buildings in cake.
Cake Fest Scotland rolled into Stirling to display Scotland’s first giant edible map of the most famous buildings and landmarks. Skara Brae, Eilean Donan Castle, the Falkirk Wheel, Glasgow School Of Art, The Lighthouse and Dumbarton Rock were but a few landmarks immortalised in sponge, jam and butter icing to mark the Year Of Innovation, Architecture and Design.
Undoubtedly, this was quite a challenge and a feast for the eyes. But bricks, mortar and large chunks of landscape rendered in baked form is maybe not the most appetising of concepts.
A slice of Dumbarton Rock cake, anyone?
Crumbs!
It’s a bad week for ... cake
When it came down to the soggybottomline, it was dough that swung it for that most wholesome of shows, The Great British Bake Off.
I confess to never having watched the programme. If I have a spare hour or so, I’d rather bake a fruit loaf or two than watch the telly as others wield their spatulas.
But I gather Bake Off is rather popular. So much so that the BBC reportedly offered Love Productions, which makes the series, £15 million per year to keep the show. But the company wouldn’t accept offers below £25m. So Auntie has lost the rights to the programme, which will now be shown on Channel 4.
So as wars rage and humanitarian disasters unfold on television screens, media reaction to the Bake Off news has been somewhat over-egged.
Even such great British edifices as David Dimbleby and Prince William have seen fit to comment on these currant bun affairs.
The opening show of the present series, the seventh, was watched by an average of 10.4 million viewers. Sure, that’s a lot of people to disappoint, so perhaps the backlash isn’t surprising.
For the Great British Broadcasting Corporation to lose the show must stick in the throat. But forking out the extra public cash to retain it would doubtless have attracted equal outrage.
Will the show thrive in its new home? The proof of the pudding will, as ever, be in the eating.