So that’s it for Week 1! I’m exhausted. Seems like a good bunch of bakers this year, should be a fun series. I’ll be back next Wednesday for Biscuit Week, and don’t forget to put Saturday 3rd September in your diary for the Strictly Launch Night liveblog.
In the meantime I’m off to watch The Chronicles of Nadiya - you’ll find me on Twitter @heidistephens, so come and say hello if you’re passing. Have a great week! Hx
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So who will win this week’s Star Baker, and who is going home? Star Baker is...JANE! And going home this week is...LEE. It’s the right decision, he didn’t have a great weekend. Bye Lee, your stay in the tent of dreams was fleeting, but that’s the way the Bake Off cookie crumbles.
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Andrew’s cake looks stunning, and his genoise is perfect. Candice cries a bit more, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Paul’s Paddington stare deployed so often.
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Benjamina’s white chocolate has a lovely shine, and her genoise is lovely. YAY BENJAMINA! Candice’s glaze is lovely on the top, but the sides are a bit lacking. The genoise is underbaked, however - Paul describes it as “awful”. She has a little cry.
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Paul loves how Jane’s cake looks - less is definitely more. It’s a massive Jaffa Cake, and Mary loves it. Rav’s is too dry, and Tom’s needed more Kirsch. Kate’s blue cake looks a bit of mess, and her swallows look like squashed penguins. Selasi’s cake lacks shine, but looks amazing inside and Paul loves the flavour. Val’s chocolate cake has a weird texture, and Lee’s is too simple, with no decorations. Louise’s cake has no mirror glaze at all, but is delicious.
Goodness, that was tense. Time for some judging.
Everyone’s having a massive meltdown apart from Selasi, who might as well have a cigar and a smoking jacket.
Benjamin’s buttercream has turned into scrambled egg, so she’s starting again. Cakes are being iced and decorated, and everything seems to be melting. Nobody looks very happy, glazes aren’t setting and everyone needs a freezer. Benjamina starts to cry, but lovely Sue comes to the rescue. Stick with it, Benjamina.
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Jane prefers an adult-only filling, the saucy minx. Meanwhile Kate is putting swallows on her cake, and also has swallows on her dress and on her earrings. She LOVES swallows.
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Tom’s cake has a ton of Kirsch in it. His signature bake was 80% gin, so clearly Tom likes his booze. It’s the way to Mary’s heart, anyway.
Candice’s genoise is rubbery, so she’s using it as a frisbee and starting again. Val didn’t put the right amount of sugar in, so is also starting again. Basically half the tent is starting again, because their sponges are rubbish. It’s not a great start, is it?
I’ve never made a genoise, it looks like a right faff. Selasi is chilling out, any minute now he’ll get his phone out and start hunting Pokemon.
Andrew’s cake has salted hazlenuts in it, and Rav’s has coffee. Michael’s genoise has matcha tea in it, which smells like dried grass and sounds horrible.
Louise’s bake is based on a white chocolate trifle, with a raspberry creme pat. Benjamina is doing a white chocolate mirror glaze too, whilst Selasi’s glaze will be raspberry. He’s forgotten to put the vanilla in his vanilla sponge, but gives no hoots about this. No wonder the global economy is in such a mess.
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This week they have to make a mirror-glazed cake, with a genoise sponge. The glaze needs to be shiny, with a polished gloss finish. Mary wants perfection, and Paul recommends they go small. I bet they all go huge. They always go huge.
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My fingertips have pretty much worn away, but it’s time for the Showstopper!
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Judging time! Benjamina’s are a bit of a mess, but taste good. Louise’s chocolate is dull, and uniformly bad. Michael’s don’t have enough jelly, some of Jane’s are upside down, Lee’s chocolate is a shambles. All of Andrew’s are upside down, and Val’s seem to have stuck in the tin (DRINK). Selasi’s are amazing, however - he’s totally teacher’s pet this week.
Michael comes third, Tom gets second and Selasi is in first. It’s all about the boys this week, at least when it comes to making cakey biscuits.
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These mostly look terrible, like a dog ate a whole box of jaffa cakes and then pooed them out.
Val doesn’t know whether to put the jelly disc on the (wider) top or the (narrow) bottom of her sponge. Obviously it goes on top, on the bottom looks like an Incan sponge temple.
Andrew (who has clearly never eaten a Jaffa cake, and thus had a terrible childhood) decides to copy Jane, who’s doing it wrong. He then realises she’s changed her mind, but it’s too late for Andrew. Andrew is learning important life lessons here.
Candice has gone off piste by adding orange juice to the jelly. I’m warming to Candice, she’s a rebel in purple lipstick.
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Instructions for Jaffa cakes: make orange jelly, then make a sponge, then put chocolate on everything. How hard can it be? Mary’s instructions are a bit woolly, so the bakers are confused. How much cake mix do I put in each hole, wonders Lee. I don’t know, how about DIVIDING IT BY THE 12 HOLES IN THE TIN?
Crikey this is moving fast. It’s time for the technical challenge! Mary wants the contestants to make 12 Jaffa Cakes - another entry on the “why the hell would you make those? They’re 90p in Lidl” list.
This also draws a line under the famous Jaffa Cake debate – if they were truly a biscuit, they’d be featured next week instead (and subject to VAT). Don’t get all legal on Bake Off’s ass.
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Judging time! Benjamina’s drizzle cake has great flavour and texture - Lee’s has good flavour too, but the texture is awful. Michael has made a lovely ginger cake, but it’s not moist enough. Paul can’t taste Kate’s blackberries (DRINK), and Tom’s G&T cake only tastes of gin. Candice’s cake is more of a steamed pudding, but it’s delicious. Rav’s cake doesn’t taste of either lime or lemon, and Andrew’s doesn’t have enough lemon. Mary wants more orange in Louise’s, and Paul could wring it out with a flannel. Val’s cake is a bit dry and a bit of a mess. Selasi’s cake is a success, he even gets a wink from Candice.
Jane’s poppy seed lemon drizzle has great drizzle penetration, which is not a phrase I say every day.
In summary, most of it needed more drizzle.
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Cakes are being drizzled and drenched, and it’s all making me feel a bit queasy. Val has dropped her sugar primroses, but it’s OK.
25-year-old Andrew is a straight-A student who went to Cambridge and now designs jet engines for Rolls Royce. I feel like Andrew hasn’t experienced much disappointment in his life, and needs a few baking disasters to show him that the real world is actually a giant bin full of melted baked Alaska, iced in shit.
That said, he’s also kind of adorable and I want to mother him, but not in a weird way.
Cakes are now out, so everyone is making their drizzle. Rav is making his drizzle from something called a “Yuzu” (sp?), which is a cross between a lemon and a lime. If you say so, Rav.
Talking of fifty shades, Jane’s cakes are out of the oven and they are essentially massive cake boobs. You can tell that Sue is desperate to honk them, but just manages to hold back in the interests of kitchen hygiene.
Timing is critical here – if the sponge is underbaked, the drizzle won’t penetrate. Overcooked, and it will taste like a camel’s undercarriage. Val listens to her cakes – apparently they sing to her and tell her they’re not done. Val is clearly fifty shades of crackers.
Andrew’s cake has gone “really domey”, which he doesn’t seem very happy about. Selasi has forgotten to put the cinnamon in, but he’s going to put it in the syrup instead because he’s totally cool with this baking business. If Selasi was any more laid back he’d be baking from a hammock.
Tom is making G&T drizzle cake, which immediately makes him my favourite.
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Benjamina’s drizzle cake is lemon and pistachio, which sounds yummy. Jane is making lemon and poppy seed drizzle cake, but she forgot to put the ground almonds in so is starting again. She’s also cut her thumb. DON’T PANIC JANE.
Kate is making apple and vanilla, with blackberry drizzle. Candice is making rhubarb and lime - she’s a PE teacher, entirely gorgeous and can also bake, which essentially describes my boyfriend’s perfect woman. For this alone I’m struggling to warm to Candice.
Michael is this year’s youngest contestants - he’s only 19, and is making ginger and lime drizzle, because it reminds him of home, or possibly Christmas.
Meanwhile Selasi works in the city, and is making citrus drizzle with cardamom. He’s super-chilled about the whole business.
Lee’s drizzle has clumped into cement - he’s also making orange and lemon drizzle. Is anyone breaking out of the citrus safety zone?
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Val is making orange and lemon drizzle cake - it will be tangy, and uses margarine. She likes to dance in her kitchen while she bakes. Andrew is also making lemon drizzle, but Louise is putting orange liqueur and lemonade in hers. Paul is already interrogating the consistency of her drizzle.
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Paul is now sporting a full Schofe salt-and-pepper hairdo. I know it’s wrong, but I still would.
So, back in Berkshire with 12 new contestants, and it’s Cake Week! Everyone looks a bit scared - the first task is drizzle cake, and it needs to be MOIST. Drizzle is Paul’s favourite thing, apparently. Hmm.
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They’ve repainted the Bake Off kitchen cabinets in turquoise and UKIP purple, which I do not like one bit. Bring back the duck egg blue, this is no longer an aspirational kitchen.
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And we’re off! The innuendos are coming thick and fast, as it were. We’ve barely started and Sue has already dropped a thinly-veiled dildo reference, tick that one off your Dirty Bake Off Bingo Card.
Bit of housekeeping before we start – the lovely people at Guardian Witness are looking for pics of readers’ baking successes and failures, so if you’d like to contribute then just click on the big blue button at the top of the article. I might include a few in the blog in the coming weeks, so get stuck in.
It’s also time for the first Bake Off Bingo of the season…pop in a sponge ladyfinger for any occurrence of the following:
- Mary in a M&S floral bomber jacket
- Homemade bakeware
- Superfluous ingredients that Paul can’t taste
- Non-stick failure
Evening all, and welcome back for this year’s Great British Bake Off liveblog! Following a brief Olympic interlude, our favourite recipe for TV happiness is back for a seventh series, with another 12 amateur bakers looking to impress Paul and Mary with their pastry prowess and meringue mastery. Add a dash of Mel and Sue and a big tent festooned with bunting in the English countryside, and that’s Wednesday nights sorted until October. Hooray!
Tonight we’ll kick off the new series with Cake Week – who will rise like Nadiya’s soufflé, and who will crumble like a Lidl hobnob? I’ve had a brief glance at this year’s batch of bakers, and they all seem delightful – there’s a vicar this year, but not a hipster hat in sight.
For those new to this liveblogging lark, it goes like this: I type frantically up here, ideally trying to capture the Bake Off action in an amusing fashion, and you all provide a buttercream filling of wit and wisdom in the comment box below. Lurkers and newbies are welcome – this is a sunshine-and-rainbows troll-free space, so feel free to join in.
I’ll be here from 8pm to keep an eye on every sunken sponge and gloopy gateau; in the meantime feel free to introduce yourself down below, and give us your early tip for the win. I’m putting my macarons on banker Selasi, I quite like the cut of his jib. See you in a bit!
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