A nation mourns
Well there we go. Genuinely hard to predict, that one. Stacey wins star baker, and we lose the youngest, and one of the most talented bakers the show has ever had. Liam was always such a joy to watch.
Thanks to all reprobates below the line, for your ribaldry, puns and hair weave speculation. I hope you’ll all be back next week for the semi finals, and tell your friends.
Come and chat to me on twitter, facebook or Instagram. Or send a swarm of killer bees to sting the word ‘Hello’ onto my pelt. Or ‘Hi’, actually. ‘Hi’ would be much better.
Ciao!
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On the positive side, we still have Kate who is great entertainment, and the more Steven relaxes the more I like him. He’s definitely got a waspy tongue on him.
I think they do look at one weekend in isolation, jdsworld. It’s about survival consistency and timing, rather than cumulative achievement. Like a series of exams, with no coursework element.
People are very angry on social media. The thing is, baking paper left in a cake half way through the show’s run is survivable; collapsed decoration in a quarter final is not. It’s about timing.
But yeah. Devastating, still.
Me right now. Liam deserved another chance #GBBO pic.twitter.com/tuNBxCOBXF
— Claire Smith (@borobabe6) October 17, 2017
star baker is Stacey!
She survives her oven door farrago and claims the crown she wanted so badly.
But Noooo! Liam goes home. The internet explodes.
Sandi makes a good point, that all the contestants in trouble have shone and disappointed at different points, and there’s a lot of balancing of the equation to be done.
Let’s see what half of The Mighty Boosh thinks about it.
Katy, I’d rather Kate went too than Liam. I’d just rather rather have both of them.
Can’t help but feel terrified of Tom Hardy no matter what he’s selling.
“Your perfect new iPhone. Now put it in your pocket, so I can crush your skull in my hands.”
Actually Steven’s pretty but little cake is good, but no more than that. Kate’s liver building looks like a gifted child made it on the beach with a bucket, and it’s roughly as dry.
Are they gonna give this to Stacey, what do we think? Kate to go home?
Wait, HCollider did you say Sophie is wearing a weave? Is Sophie wearing a weave? I suddenly need to know this as a matter of urgency.
Meanwhile, Steven is killing it as usual.
Oh, Cream Diplomat! (I still don’t know what that is.)
Liam doesn’t quite pull off his sloppy tornado of a cake. Charlotte’s croquembouche fares much better. “Nice and high, spectacular to look at, with a magnificent chocolate top,” says Prue, who could be talking about Sophie herself.
Stacey seems to have won a few more fans amongst you lot tonight? What with dealing with her oven-strophe.
Judging time! “It’s very you.” If you ever hear these words, they are not complimentary. Still, the essence of Stacey’s Las Vegas residency of a cake is sound. Will it be enough?
That’s a great Nationwide advert, even though adverts are the debased work of Satan himself.
Do we think Liam’s going home? Say it ain’t so.
This carrot farmer is so defensive.
That golden syrup tart really is the colour of Paul Hollywood.
“Don’t drop it” is the exact calibre of advice I like to mete out. #unhelpful
His sugar work, finished so early, is now starting to dissolve. Oh mate.
Liam’s finished early and doesn’t want to tell teacher in case they set him more work. So he’s sort of fiddling with his sugar and glancing around. I SEE YOU LIAM.
Actually, I don’t. That’s weird.
Sandi mock-shaves Steven with a bowl of white cream. “That’s fat,” he objects. We all have one useless friend who can only make jokes and get in the way, right?
She’s confident she can decorate around it though.
Oh no! Kate’s killed her liver bird, which it’s hard not to interpret symbolically.
Stacey’s door has recovered (?) and she’s back on track, with some even and perfect looking macarons. But Steven is also looking good, and Sophie is in her wheelhouse at last.
Stacey is holding her oven door closed, as if wedging the broken door of a club toilet with her foot. Kate’s base has fractured and ripped, but she’s confident she can “decorate around it.”
Steven offers to let her share oven space – he’s relaxed a lot hasn’t he, and become very likeable.
Equally, love how un-arsed Kate was by the news.
Annnnd Stacey’s broken her oven. Or maybe it resigned.
It’s like every baking thing I’ve ever heard of happening at once. Madeleines, sugarwork, roses, piping, stencils, carriage clocks, Nazi memorabilia, secondhand decking, they’re chucking it all in.
Apologies for the lack of insightful commentary but I have no idea what is going on.
Did Liam...just go full Sid James?
Did Sophie say she was making a ‘cum diplomat?’ I understand equal amounts of nothing about any of these cakes.
“You don’t want a hot nut in your face.” When Steven promised to up his game for the quarter finals, he was apparently referring to his innuendo game. Can’t wait to see how he copes with a semi.
Liam’s doing spun spun sugar work! Go on, son. Sophie meanwhile is making a yuzu croquembouche which I can barely pronounce let alone understand. Also her shoes are pink and gold, which is very Sophie.
Kate’s recipe is using 60 eggs, nullifying the carbon footprint of every vegan I know.
Stacey is gilding her bi-flavour sponge with macarons, madeleines and jellies. She wants the crown. What’s Steven got in response? Something much simpler – though still with hand decorated fancies and chestnut puree. Stacey smells weakness.
HCollider I am praying to a selection of deities that Stacey pulls out a Savoy Cabbage at the end because she’s bad at maths or something.
So Savoy Cake is an inedible, sponge-architecture of colonial crowing? Yumsch.
Showstopper: Savoy Cake.
Sounds, to quote much-missed Julia, absolutely rank.
How can Liam and Sophie be in trouble? This is a topsy turvy world. Stacey has done well this week, and I feel like they may give her Star Baker just to inject some crazy into Steven’s neatly paved road to victory.
Stacey pleased at coming third in technical, despite the fact that’s also third from bottom. Liam understands he needs “to pull out some vintage Liam.” Sophie’s had a hard time, and I fully expect her to retire to her dormitory now to look at Pinterest and drink vodka.
Also, are the pork medallions from any specific company? Are they just advertising generic medallions?
They’re saying that Hammonds bedroom is designed just for me, but it looks like it was designed for Mariah Carey.
So the enormous, GM, anthropomorphised chicken...wants to be eaten? I do not understand that advert.
I’m trying not to be mean about Stacey, the net result being I’m saying NOTHING AT ALL.
Very worried for Liam though.
When a Cheesecake says "Serves 6".. #GBBO pic.twitter.com/huWaRDbGiQ
— Kip Hakes (@kiphakes) October 17, 2017
Liam and Sophie bring up the rear – whaa? – while Kate comes second. The only non-surprise in that ranking is Steven coming first.
Judging time! Liam has gone through soggy, and arrived at raw bottom. Which is a shame, as I suspect he’s going to get a spanking from the judges. Steven does better than expected, despite his tart looking like a plate of mince with a comb-over. Stacey does well, and Kate is also less of a let-down than anticipated, with her smooth, 1792 butter garnering praise from Prue, though not quite a full punch.
“I started this in 1792.” I love Kate so much.
Lattice pray for Liam.
Wow, I have never known so many undone by lattice.
Sarah Charlotte Sophie’s lattice looks like the first historical chessboard, on display at the British Museum.
Wait! Steven is going back to redo his lattice like everyone else’s? Bad day at the office for Ozymandias. I would totally have picked up the pretty concertina thing and just re-draped it, like I was settling a duvet. I guess that’s why he’s on-screen.
I don’t want to call this early, but I suspect her taxi is already outside. It’s been there two weeks, on the meter.
Steven’s lovely concertina lattice technique has Kate all of a pother.
“Well it’s obviously bad isn’t it.” Love Kate, though she is clearly going home.
I was with friends the other day who described her as ‘Sarah or Charlotte or something?” and never recalled her actual name, which I found funnier than I should.
Sophie weaving a pastry lattice like a medieval princess at a loom. Although they probably had no teeth and smelled quite fruity, so she’s actually a lot better.
Rum Nickey you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, Rum Nickey
“An alcoholic fruit tart with a lattice top: sounds like the perfect drag queen, if you ask me.” Oh Steven, come to me! That is the joke of the series.
STOP IT
“I came across this particular tart three years ago,” muses Hollywood, ill-advisedly. If we want to avoid a descent into innuendo-laden schoolboy humour, we’re all gonna have to pull together, guys.
Technical Challenge: Rum Nicky.
A large, sweet tart from Cumberland. She sounds great.
The advice Paul gives before a technical is always meaningless, isn’t it? “This is all about precision.” “Take care with your filling.” “It relies on a perfect bake.” They might as well consult a magic 8-ball.
Noel’s shirt dress. What do we think? I think I’d prefer it if it was an actual dress.
Stacey – who led us to believe she was about to face a firing squad with her leaky pipes – in fact pulls off a very impressive camembert and blueberry tube, earning a handshake for her trouble. Steven looks on almost comically aghast, like a man on the top deck of a bus watching his lover walk into an unfamiliar house.
Sophie’s robust, dry pie lets her down. Despite Paul yanking it from its paper sheath with real brutality, Steven’s huge and collapsed clanger gets the job done.
Also, Paul mock-feeding Sandi then taking it away at the last second is so quintessentially Paul.
Judging time! Kate’s floor pie doesn’t impress, while the flavours of Liam’s garlic-bread-looking pasties get the judges going. Prue is so pleased she actually hits him, which is how they express affection in South Africa.
Wonder if bakers will look forward to a ‘Prue Punch’ quite as much as a Hollywood Handshake?
The blindness of those glacé cherry eyes on the sentient Dr Oetker cake haunt my dreams.
What the hell is celebrity cruises? Do they lock Jared Leto on a QE2 and he runs around it for a fortnight, avoiding the advances of sun-seeking septuagenarians? Because they should film that.
Only the first quarter, and we’ve already had spray tan jibes, stressy Stacey and Kate being adorable whilst making a horrendous foul up. This is accelerated Bake Off.
YUP. Kate’s literally dropped a clanger. Did she engineer that for the pun? If so, give her the series crown now.
Yeah, I said plimsolls. That’s what they are. If you are Liam’s age, you might refer to them as crepes, which given the context is confusing.
Ah that’s nice, Steven helping Kate with her temperature. More importantly, have you seen Kate’s leopard tipped plimsolls? Want.
Steven has a huge clanger, he reveals. But is it browned all over, Steven, eh? Some of us don’t need to shout about these things.
I feel like I’ve watched Stacey being stressed this week for more minutes than the show has been on.
Someone recently described the Noel and Sandi show as ‘a woman trying to connect with her goth grandson’ and now I can’t stop thinking about it.
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Kate’s running out of time, so all is comfortingly familiar. The look she gave Sandi on the half-hour mark was one you would give a stranger who’d picked your drink up and drained it.
Suet is the raw hard fat found around the loins and kidney of a cow. Is anyone else really getting in the mood?
These clangers sound quite good, you know. Am I still allowed to eat one if I don’t work on a farm?
Sophie’s hair really looks like the finely plaited fetlocks of a show pony. It’s rather wonderful and classy. Though as others here have noted, she can probably drink the table under the table.
Char siu and banana praline? I hope to God Sophie knows what she’s doing, because that sounds like an explosion in the Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans factory.
Mmm, cinnamon custard though.
Stacey’s had issues with a leaky clanger. If you find something amusing in that, why don’t you share it with the rest of the class?
(‘Scuse me while I anxiously fetch some dipping sauce in an attempt to cling to the tatters of youth.)
The ‘dipping sauces with pizza’ debate Liam has stirred up seems to be another generational divide. Guessing Prue doesn’t eat Dominos or anything like it.
It’s a bit like a pasty, except it’s long and thin and sausage-shaped.” It sounds a lot more like something else, but fine, let’s go with pasty.
Signature challenge: Bedfordshire clangers
Who hasn’t dropped a clanger on the way to Bedfordshire?
“Just bang out three good bakes and see what happens, innit.” Liam’s approach could not be more different.
“Quarter finals – the competition is on now.” The competition has been on since the first day, Steven. If he’s only just deciding to show up, the others are totally screwed.
Can’t wait for Stacey to break that oven. It’s like a movie trailer where they show you all the best explosions.
Aratan, those are genius, let’s go with yours!
Ah, here we go...
That weatherman does have such an anvil-shaped head.
What gives TV higher stakes, whilst encouraging reckless drinking? Bingo!
- Noel hammering jokes about Paul’s tangerine-tinted skin, to the point of a fight.
- Prue daring someone to ask about her necklace.
- Liam squawking like a confused chicken.
- Steven looking disappointed at what passes for a challenge these days.
- Kate devising a conceptually audacious cake, but then dropping it through a colander.
Mmm, malted milk biscuits. They are my cow-y kryptonite. Bring me some, figrat!
SnailyWhaley you’re like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, but a more glam-rock version. Your squamous, sequinned body is stuck that way in perpetuity. Could be worse.
Also there’s nothing wrong with being a tart!
How are we all, my lovelies? Pyjama’d to the hilt? Any interesting snacking going on?
I’ve got some Thai chicken, which I realise is not on theme, but it is dinnertime. No one ever talk about the fact it is dinnertime.
Kumano I agree, “forgotten bakes” is not a phrase to set the mouth a-waterin’.
Would you like these weevilcakes salvaged from the table of the Marie Celeste? No I’m good, thanks.
Week eight on the Great British Bake Off, and we’re turning the corner on the final furlong – our remaining horses must find an extra gear. At the front of the pack: thoroughbreds Steven and Sophie, followed by coltish crowd-pleasers Liam and Kate and whinnying nag Stacey, who I’m trying to be nicer to.
This week’s theme, ‘Forgotten Bakes’, will be a dive into culinary obscurity, a concept to chill the blood of these apron-clad hopefuls. Difficult to know what to expect, but we know one of them is going home.
Please join me here for the start of the show, when I’ll be following the action, and making jokes at tense moments. It’s a psychological defence mechanism! See you at 8pm.
