This year’s ‘Bake Off ’ has left me with a bad taste
Do you remember the first time you were made to feel like a proper grown-up? When a mother on the bus said to her child, “let the lady go first” and you realised that lady was you. Or perhaps when you tuned into the new series of the Great British Bake Off this week and heard 20-yearold contestant Jamie say that his favourite flavour from childhood was salted caramel.
Sorry? Salted caramel? I’m certain that wasn’t a thing until about five minutes ago. My favourite flavour from childhood was e-numbers.
Jamie, who looks like he’s just got off the coach back from Reading Festival, is part of the youngest batch of bakers to ever grace Bake Off, as the show enters its 10th series. “Does your mum know you’re here?” asked Paul Hollywood, probably not for the first time.
It wasn’t long ago that the young ’uns – Ruby Tandoh, Martha, Liam – were the tokens in the tent. This year, 56-yearold lorry driver Phil is the most senior contestant, with 40-yearold Helena the next oldest. The average age of the bakers is 31. Most of us have cookbooks older.
What’s going on? One theory is that Channel 4, which bought the format in 2016, is trying to reflect its audience: 6.8 million 16- to 34-year-olds tuned in to Bake Off last year and it was the most-watched programme among young people.
Maybe they are after the Love Island demographic – the ITV2 reality show that has, in just four years, become cult summertime viewing.
How else to explain the fact that many of the young bakers are already established on social media, regularly Instagramming pictures of their show-stopping
cakes – one of which is a perfect iced replica of a Mcdonald’s meal. I fear Bake Off is in danger of becoming a Love Island ripoff – Kitchen Island, if you will. Will the temperature in the tent be cranked up so the bakers have no choice but to strip down to their swimwear? Will there be illicit kisses on meringue pillows? More stiff peaks than we’d bargained for? I hope not.
Perhaps the most telling moment in this week’s episode was when the bakers were asked to make a fruitcake. Most of the twentysomethings were using recipes handed down to them by their grandmothers. Very sweet, but for viewers, it would have been nice to see some actual grandmothers baking their own fruitcakes.
The Bake Off bosses just don’t seem to get it – young people aren’t so narcissistic that we need to see reflections of ourselves on TV in order to watch and engage with it. It’s so patronising.
Yes, it’s good news that so many Gen Z-ers and millennials have been inspired to take up baking by the show. Many of this year’s contestants will have grown up with the programme, which started life on the BBC in 2010. But the wonderful thing about Bake Off was that it always seemed to go against the idea that you had to look or be a certain way to enjoy whipping up a génoise sponge.
By and large, the tent was a good place to be an older woman or man on TV.
The bakers we really took to our hearts year after year were those old enough to claim their bus passes. There was 66-yearold Val, who said her cakes sang to her. Dependable Howard, dubbed the “Alan Bennett of baking”. Norman, Flo and 69-year-old Diana Beard, who became the 2014’s unexpected villain after removing another baker’s ice cream from the freezer.
They were the beating heart of the show. Experienced. Often unintentionally funny. Liberal with the brandy. The innuendoes (“Stand away from your hot baps!”) always worked so well precisely because of the mix of generations involved – like watching something slightly saucy with your nan; cue embarrassed titters all round.
That’s what I want from Bake Off. Is it really too much to ask?
I’m not alone. Many of my peers have voiced similar on social media, lamenting the lack of seasoned bakers, pointing out that they enjoy the show with their parents and grandparents and want to see everyone represented.
That’s another potential misstep for Channel 4. Bake Off is one of the only programmes that I consider appointmentto-watch TV, not for streaming but for savouring at 8pm every Tuesday.
I can’t help but wonder whether the ratings will drop faster than a soufflé, as the generational spread that bound Bake Off viewers together crumbles. Actually, the first episode already disappointed, with an average audience of 5.7 million – the lowest since 2013.
Ouch. Channel 4 needs to remember that, when it comes to the Great British Bake Off, youth was never the secret ingredient.