the whitsons’ Kitchen

This week’s Bake Off took me back more decades than I care to acknowledge, to my boarding school days, when Sunday lunch pudding was more often than not, stooge pud.

Steamed pudding smothered with hot Lyle’s Golden Syrup, and if you were the little squirt at the foot of the table you got just the scrapings at the bottom of the jug.

I related to James, who was making the steamed pudding of his boyhood dreams, reminiscent of his schooldays. Stacey had practised her Bakewell tart steamed school pudding 17 times.

Despite some pretty damning remarks from the judges – not the lightest sponge, bit of a failure (as if the poor sap didn’t know), that’s not custard, that’s a big mistake – Paul still managed to dish out three Hollywood Handshakes. “A personal best” was Noel’s verbal handshake.

More than half the bakers had never heard of the Technical Challenge of six molten chocolate puddings filled with peanut butter but with true Bake Off grit they got mixing. And, would you believe it, Sophie forgot to put on her oven but still won the challenge and came out Star Baker too.

Steven came a real cropper in the Showstopper. Everyone clapped when his ornamental trifle terrine was cut open but it bombed when Paul dismissed it as “disappointing, I don’t like rubber”.

You see the whole gamut of emotions on Bake Off. It all ends with hugs all round, floods of tears and you would wonder why they put themselves through the whole emotional ordeal.