It’s burnt! Frazzled Flora’s pie disaster
IT’S not only Bake Off fans who think Paul Hollywood is turning up the heat on his famously blunt put-downs.
When teenage contestant Flora Shedden burnt the crust on her game pie she expected to be ‘hung, drawn and quartered’ – and dissolved in a flood of tears.
But even though she failed to impress the curt judge, she was thrown a lifeline by Mary Berry – who praised her offering as ‘tender and crisp’.
Not all those on last night’s episode of The Great British Bake Off escaped a tongue-lashing from the show’s toughest judge, however.
Hollywood told this week’s loser Mat Riley that one of his cakes looked like it was from ‘Hades’ – Hell in Greek mythology – and dismantled a pie from show favourite Ian Cumming.
Fans have been riled in recent weeks by Hollywood’s increasingly aggressive judging style, branding him ‘nasty’, ‘mean’, ‘rude’ and ‘arrogant’ on Twitter. And the blunt criticism continued in the latest episode of the BBC show, in which contestants were asked to create bakes from the Victorian era – including a tennis cake and a Charlotte Russe.
He told 19-year-old Miss Shedden, the youngest contestant on this year’s series, she had ‘ ruined’ her Charlotte with her flavour choices.
And when the teenager tackled a game pie she was left with head in hands and pacing nervously around the kitchen when she struggled to get the dish hot enough in the centre.
With just 30 seconds to spare, she managed to get the pie cooked but burnt the crust after hiking up the oven temperature.
Hollywood was unimpressed, but Miss Berry’s praise prompted the university student to burst into tears of relief. Miss Shedden said: ‘I was expected to be hung, drawn and
‘Hung, drawn and quartered’
quartered in that judging and I wasn’t, which is a blooming miracle’.
The seventh baker to be sent home was fireman Mat Riley – who was named star baker last week. His attempt to decorate a fruit cake to look like a tennis court – complete with net and racquets – failed to impress. His icing turned yellow rather than green and he undercooked the cake so it sank in the middle.
He said: ‘I knew I was out of my depth in Victorian week with the techniques and the bakes involved. Some of the recipes we were given in advance but I never practised because I didn’t ever expect to get to week seven.’ Trainee anaesthetist Tamal Ray was named star baker.
Among his most memorable putdowns over the sixth series, Hollywood told Ian Cumming his sponge was ‘like chewing wallpaper’ and called Paul Jagger’s vol-au-vents ‘hideous’. Miss Shedden’s frangipane tart was last week described as ‘burnt and bitter’ – prompting host Sue Perkins to brand the judge bitter himself.
Sharpen the palette knives: Christopher Stevens – Page 65