Mountain of pastry becomes a crumble in Bake Off disaster
THEY spent four painstaking hours trying to construct delicate threetier towers of choux pastry.
But the task seemed beyond the remaining contestants on the Great British Bake Off with their unstable creations collapsing in front of the judges last night.
For the quarter-final, the remaining five contestants were asked to create a religieuse a l’ancienne – a freestanding tower made from choux pastry éclairs. Each layer had to be supported by shortcrust pastry discs.
But during a two-hour lunch break before the showstoppers were judged, the towers began to collapse. Student Flora Shedden, 19, had to present her centrepiece – flavoured with coconut creme patissiere and a lime and basil curd – in two pieces.
But it was prison governor Paul Jagger, 49, who had the biggest disaster as the bottom tier of his banana and vanilla creation collapsed. Earlier, as he assembled the tower, he said: ‘The bigger ones are starting to go soft. Soft is not good.’
Nadiya Begum’s incredibly unstable stack of bubblegum and peppermint flavoured éclairs managed to earn her the title of star baker. Mr Jagger was sent home after also facing problems in the technical challenge, in which he was unable to make a satisfactory Genoese sponge.
He said of baking: ‘You need great patience, and to be calm and measured, not too dissimilar to what I do at work where I also need a huge understanding.’