Ruby, the Bake Off babe who’s a tougher cookie than she seems
THE time has come. The kettle is on. The date and hemp tea l oaf is sliced, buttered and ready. Most importantly, the knives are out and the oven gloves are finally off, off, off! There can be no further delay, my little peachy bun chums and fellow fruity tarts. We need to talk about Ruby.
Yes, that Ruby. Ruby Tandoh, the Great British Bake Off contestant who has split the nation right down the middle — like a giant eclair piped full of sour cream, sprinkled with bitter chocolate flakes and paved with a ganache of gnashing teeth.
Since the fourth series of BBC2’s wildly popular baking contest began back in August, 21-year-old Ruby has been the one to watch. Never mind her plum jam roly-poly during pastry week, or her exotic trifle during desserts week. It is her sea green eyes, stowaway hair, winsome demismiles and chronic ( ahem) l ack of confidence (ahem, ahem) that have proved to be such important ingredients in the success of this series.
Millions of male viewers are enslaved by Ruby, a former model who is now studying philosophy and history of art at University College, London.
For her legions of fans, ravishing Rubes can do no wrong. In episode seven, she even revealed her twisted Swedish kanelbullar to the world, but nothing could slake their lust. If anything, one glance at her passion fruit pastries made them love her even more.
But there’s a problem. Not everyone is enraptured with Ruby’s tendency to portray herself as a hapless Cinderella of the stove, a half-baked ninny who doesn’t know one end of a spatula from the other.
Like chocolate being prepared for a Black Forest topping, her false modesty is really beginning to grate. ‘I’m just winging it,’ she says every week, while turning out perfectly executed bakes and zesty, winning ideas, time after time.
It is totally success by stealth. She is like one of those wily girls in t he si xth f orm who breezily proclaim they haven’t done any revision and expect to fail all their exams, lulling classmates into a false sense of security.
Then they secretly swot night after night after night — and always get straight As. OOOH, see Ruby tremble with fear when she uses a whisk for the first time. Watch with growing horror as she tentatively sneaks up on a bowl of cake batter as if it were quicksand. Gasp as our Rubes whips herself into a souffle of shaking insensibility when she has to ice two biscuits consecutively.
For Ruby likes to pretend she can’t do anything properly, from lining a cake tin to turning on the bloomin’ oven. Poor ickle wickle me, she cries, as a glass mixing bowl falls apart in her hands.
Every week her baking is accompanied by her lavish claims of her uselessness. The eight million people who tune in now know the Ruby script off by heart.
‘I am so hopeless. What is wrong with me?’ she wails, in her oddly dreary little voice.
‘I am such an idiot! I have never even used a wooden spoon before. What is this bag of white powder before me? Flour? Oh I am pathetic. The butter thingy. Stupid, stupid me. You mean, you want me to make a cake? All by myself? No way! Blub!’
And on it goes. Each week, crafty Rubes makes out that she is as helpless as a jelly on a spinning plate balancing on a helicopter blade in a high wind. She bites her lower lip and looks like a puppy that has done e something unspeakable on the top p tier of a wedding cake.
She makes all around feel sorry y for her. Poor, feeble little thing, in n her hipster shoes and heartbreaker er ankles and denim bib dress.
And when everyone in the Bake e Off tent is suffused to boiling point nt with worry and sympathy about her er plight, she goes in for the kill; steamming towards cake-based triumph like a dreadnought on a mission, n, trampling all-comers in her path.
‘Me first again? I am astounded,’ ,’ she simpers, as she steals the e glittering prizes and all the trophies s from under everyone’s nose. She e has been star baker three times — and is piping hot favourite to win.
Even j udge Paul Hollywood appears to be dazzled. Is it my imagination, or is Ruby always singled out for special praise from the e normally brutish despot of dough? ?
Take her mango and nigella seed d spelt cob, produced in this week’s s signature bake. She was congratulated for her effort, even though Hollywood admitted it was under-proved.
What? Under-proved but still praised? Who else gets away with that? Absolutely no one. Oh Ruby, don’t take your loaf to town. Paul wants to gobble it all up himself.
I’m joking, of course! As if Hollywood would ever be so unprofessional as to run off with someone he met on a cookery show . . .
Of course, we have all met Rubys before. On the surface they are hopeless, Bridget Jones-alikes who can’t walk across a room without laddering their tights. When the three- minute nuclear warning sounds, Ruby is the kind of woman who would scream prettily, then trip over her strappy sandals as everyone sprinted for the l ast places in the underground bunker.
She’d lie there, crying about being so hopeless: ‘Trust me! I’m such an idiot! Now I am going to be nuked.’
And when you stopped to help, when you offered her a sisterly hand, she would rush ahead and steal the last place. She might even give you a floury wave as the door to safety slammed in your face.
All I am saying is watch out fellowbakers! Risible Ruby uses a carapace of incompetence to cloak her sharp elbows and searing skills. Her route to the 2013 Bake Off crown seems unstoppable.
But you know what? Despite all this, I really, really want her to win.
For a start, you cannot deny her prowess. Lemon shortbread, white chocolate seashells, blackberry and chocolate layer cake? She does all this and more. This week, she baked a cake to l ook l i ke an allotment and even built a garden shed out of chocolate.
If she was pandering to the male vote, it worked. Hollywood was full of praise, even though the shed l looked as though it had been hit by a hurricane. ‘Silly me,’ she cried, as she popped a chocolate roof on — n not a euphemism.
We were into the quarter-finals this week, the first all-female finale for a few years.
Yes, that meant five crazy ladies s sitting on the floor, staring with mounting horror into their respective oven doors. And with Ruby wailing every time she picked up a bowl, the tension ratcheted up.
Judge Mary Berry was still telling contestants that their efforts were ‘really scrummy’, but Paul Hollywood had clearly eaten a slice of nasty and downed a big cup of shut-the-heck-up. HE started the show brimming with attitude, his eyes blue beams of bile, his gelled hair sticking up like a greying, fraying coxcomb, his dad shirt over his dad trousers. He made everyone cry.
Christine and her seed loaf were among the first to feel his wrath.
‘It’s a mess around the side,’ he told her. We could say the same thing about you, darling!
He only mellowed when he saw Ruby’s lovely buns — as always. Apologies for all the baking innuendos, but I blame hosts Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc.
They are the heart and soul of Bake Off, still valiantly resisting the blandishments of the wardrobe department. Instead of looking like groomed hosts, they look like two stable girls who got soaked at the bus stop.
That’s not a criticism, of course. It’s just one of the things, like dear hapless Ruby, her crafty winning strategy and her excellent cakes, that make Bake Off such a joy.