Shifting Titans
Wowzer. That episode was quite tough watching at times. My loyalties feel as slippery as an unbaked steam pudding. In the end, a fair result: Sophie’s military precision earns her a trip up ze Treifel Tower, while James…I don’t think they’re ready for his jelly.
Stephen’s been slipping, hasn’t he. Would we now rank Sophie higher? She’s consistent, a quality sine qua non in bake off champions.
Thanks for all your robust ribaldry below the line, and I hope I’ll see you all next week? In the meantime come say hello on twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Or perform identity theft, and use those accounts to say hello to myself. That’d learn me.
Please don’t! Ciao.
I love those Portugese pasteis de nata. Next episode, pastry week, looks buff. And Liam will still be with us! I hope you will too.
Star baker is Sophie!
Hurrah!
But we lose...James, as suspected. Julia sobbing. ‘My time has come’ says James, like something out of A Tale of Two Cities. He’s only getting a tube home.
Right, having lost 80% of our gang to Dr Foster, what do we think will happen here? Kate sounds safe, and Liam did tremendously well in technical...
He will be a sad loss. What a lovely man. Or do we think someone else is for the chop?
Oh man, they all need counselling. Sophie should take the honours, because Stacey’s trifle looks like someone stepped on it. But it’s honestly too close to call who’s going home. I suspect James.
Yet Liam’s emotional pain, I find absolutely wrenching. No justice in a subjective response, eh? His brownie is tough, his jelly is the opposite. He’s in bad trouble, but the technical should save him?
Oh god, I can’t bear the emotional nose-breathing of Steven, who’s furious with himself. He’s absolutely going to go home and self-flagellate like that albino monk from the Da Vinci Code, isn’t he.
Bejeesus. That is sheer artistry. Steven’s stars in a jelly flag dumbfound the room, but his textures are disappointing. “I don’t like rubber,” says Paul. Which is strange because he looks like a man who loves it.
Kate doesn’t let herself down, which is a good way to go out if she is going out. James and Julia underwhelm, but that table is basically a podium for Steven’s trifle now, isn’t it.
Stacey, sorry. (Guilty fingers ain’t got no rhythm.)
* Careless Wispa reference.
Yan once again has an extraordinary design but a textural experience that doesn’t quite match it, while Stacy unexpectedly nails it with her weirdly pink chilli wobbler, like Mr Blobby got minced up and turned into a sun hat.
Judging time! “It’s wonderful that you got your pink sausage in the middle,” says Prue of Sophie’s elegant effort, unless she’s describing Paul’s love life.
Bloody Natwest. I hate when banks/cars/perfumes make emotional adverts.
Imagine not being totally in love with Liam.
Are we at the technological stage where Alexa/Cortana/Siri/Carol Vorderman hears me talking about Noel’s jumper and orders me one before the end of the show? If not, hurry up
Steven is operating with the self-contained unruffled poise of Roger Federer.
Meanwhile James is hoping to ‘come out firm’ and Liam’s terrine is dribbling.
“It’s called heart of a hero. That’s my dad’s heart. He’s a hero.” Somehow Yan is channelling equal parts The Railway Children, Lenny from Of Mice and Men and a Bond villain.
Oh no, she forgot to put sugar in her biscuits. In the bin they go.
Stacey is sounding worryingly calm. She seems to have something big up her sleeve.
What a fascinatingly off-topic, Jane Austen-y bit with Sandi and Theresa Kate discussing her dismal marriage prospects.
Kate’s classic trifle sounds so boring. But I reckon Prue will love it. Canny thinking, maybe?
Updated
Ahahaha! Anti-snob Paul showcasing his “gap yah” voice, laying into Liam and his student mates’ chai lattes is maybe the best moment of the series so far, especially when it’s revealed both he and Noel went to art school themselves. “We invented the chai latte.”
dmr95 were you baptised as such? (here you go)
Stacey’s pinkery could be ground chicken nuggets?
Really hope someone adds beef to their trifle. #GBBO pic.twitter.com/VP1vFI8ssp
— Kelly Alyse (@KellyAlyse) September 26, 2017
Oh god, James is breaking my heart. Trudging his way through this task like an abandoned dog with a broken leg finding his way back to the house his owners have already moved from.
James’ Union Jack meanwhile is a tragic short story poured into a loaf tin. Then Prue tells him his design is bobbins anyway before he’s even started making it, and once more, his dreams turn to ash.
And rockabye, sweet baby James.
GET OUT. Steven is making a cross-section of the American flag, with buttercream stars within the jelly? If he pulls that off, all is forgiven. Extraordinary ambition.
How is jelly the hardest bit? Jelly is a piece of piss, plus gelatin leaf. At least the way I make it.
Showstopper: trifle terrine
As the old song goes, it don’t mean thing if it ain’t got that baked element, a custard or mousse layer, plus jelly.
What does Selasi have to say about all this?
Best dressed award goes to....Parents always surprising me with old school pictures. Black shirt, black jumper, white tie #DAMN 🔥 pic.twitter.com/SLIoswO8wp
— Selasi Gbormittah (@selasigb) September 23, 2017
I don’t think he’s watching, actually
It’s as if in some time-travelling paradox, she read the comment on this very page about her resembling a young Theresa May, and has given up the will to bake, or live.
It’s not the end of the world, it’s a pudding”
is exactly why I don’t want to lose Kate. Can’t just have Bakemobile Steven and his will to power, algorithmically running the numbers to completion.
Judging time! Kate comes last, because there wasn’t a lower rung of the ladder to occupy. James and Yan are (not that) close behind. Julia, Liam and Sophie take the top spots, and very well deserved. At ease, soldier. Very good.
“Little in the middle but you got much crack.”
That’s a Sir Mix-a-Lot reference, which seems fitting
(They’re saying she has cracks and air holes.)
Hockey bully Stacey trying to get good girl Sophie to spy on what the teachers are saying because she sits nearest. This is so Grange Hill it’s not true.
Oh, not much.
Oh man alive, that was brutal. They looked like stormtrooper helmets, but harder. What has “secretly confident” James got? What’s he been building?
“Enjoy,” says Noel, presenting Kate’s cracked and overdone 35-minute suicide notes. “I don’t think we will,” replies Prue. Imagine what she’s like at Christmas.
Yan is a pure soul and she has served her lava cakes in the shape of, you guessed it, a cock and balls, to disguise the inconvenient truth that she hasn’t actually baked them. Take thy gooey nuts to a nunnery.
Judging time! Prue and Paul sat facing away from everyone, in the naughty corner. Julia’s not done badly, but Sophie’s done spectacularly well. Can James or Steven top that oooooze factor?
Whenever Stacey says something I have to fight the urge to punch my tv #GBBO pic.twitter.com/y0rSmUqE9k
— amb clayton (@esthxim) September 26, 2017
I don’t really know the army.
Get it ship shape, private! Keep your privates ship shaped! Keep our ships private, and shoot safe! I want those puddings so risen we could moor a suspension bridge from them!
It’’s vaguely miraculous how contestants are still forgetting to turn their ovens on. You’d think it would come more naturally than putting on trousers. The army would not have tolerated this level of faff, Sophie.
Oh no! Kate do NOT bake them for 35 minutes when the correct answer is 10. No one wants you going home.
Stacey is in a terrible dilemma about the degree of frothing required and I hope she calls it absolutely, 100% wrong, and ends up with some peanuts somehow back in the shell, in a puddle of spilt milk.
So are they gonna judge them live, while the others are still baking in the room? This is very odd.
Sophie sounds like she’s got this. Steven professes to have no idea, which means he’ll probably ace it.
Also adore Liam’s trove of unusual faces and walks. He’s essentially a character from The Beano.
I know she’s freaking out, but Julia is wonderful to watch baking on her own. She’s talking to herself like a character that’s wandered out of a Chekhov short story and into a Beckett late play.
Technical challenge: molten peanut butter puddings.
All I’m saying is yes yes yes. Intravenous please.
WHAT IS HAPPENING. A staggered technical? They’re so far off-piste they’re into Serbia. Julia’s up first, and she knows this means she is doomed, in the depths of her Siberian soul. They’re a dramatic people, you know.
Poor ‘steampunk glasses’ Kate; although a steam pudding challenge should have played right into her mechanical copper hands.
Updated
She’s hard to love, isn’t she.
Tarnation! Stressy Stacey gets a handshake too. Her bakewell is baked even better, but I can’t let myself be happy for her.
He’s overmixed it, and ‘powerful’ gluten has dragged him down. So intolerant and bothersome, that bloody gluten. He’s offered a “Fielding fondle” as recompense, but it means nothing.
Yan’s mangoes get the digits too! Nice one. Now it’s time for The Boy. Come on Liam. I can’t stop laughing at “Liam’s cherries and lemons that are baked well.” A comedy gift.
That’s not a custard, that’s a mistake,” says Prue of Kate’s ruined sauce. Oof.
Steven nails it with his vet’s visit of a pudding, earning a Hollywood handshake.
Emergency sweepstake: how many times will Prue say “Not the lightest sponge” or variations thereon in the next two minutes?
We’re back at the battle of the bakewells! Judging time.
James does alright! Go on, James. You’re probably going home anyway, but we like you. I don’t want to say jolly, but he is, isn’t he?
Wow. Just had a peek into the hellish ether that is social media, and there is NOT a lot of love for Stacey.
Lovely Julia trying to help lovely Kate with her unlovely custard, but there doesn’t seem to be anything she can do. Quelle disaster, Katarine!
Just giving my mango a shave,” Yan, obviously.
Updated
The smirk on Liam! Virtually a dab. I hope that’s aimed at the other bakewell in the room.
Stacey is so pleased with her pudding. I’ve taken against her. She’s one of those annoying kids at school that took up all your mental space complaining about how they didn’t revise the right topics and lost their pencil case, then walk out with an A, while you need to take beta blockers to get back to an even keel.
Our own Chicken Little is basically repeating the mantra that if you’ve effed it, you’ve effed it, no going back. “I feel so sick,” she says. I’d like to think the other bakers are looking stressed not because they’ve got a pudding in the oven, but a Stacey in the room.
I feel like the producers are just trying to find anything for her to do. She’s not bedded in as fully as Noel, yet. Who would’ve thought it.
Sorry Sandi, but that pregnant butter brick is rank.
Ah, those filthy rich Cambridge scholars of yore, buying up all the sugar. But why is Sandi making a Cambridge pudding? There are eight of its descendant cousins on the go in the tent that I’m more interested in.
They’re bang all over these historical interludes now, having pretended they’d done away with them. Classic rope a dope. Just when you thought you were safe from 18th-century video about spelt cakes and lead poisoning.
This could be a bingo all of its own. Noel probably pronounces it orlmund.
Ah, the age old #GBBO debate - is it “All-mond”, “Al-mond” or “Ah-mond”? 🤔 @BritishBakeOff
— Kirsty Boyle (@kirsty_boyle) September 26, 2017
I’m not sure I know what steam pudding is. It makes me think of something drooling colonels would eat in the mess before sending teenagers off to die in a war. But that’s quite a negative association.
I didn’t catch that. Is Steven artificially inseminating a pudding? Every week I worry more for him.
I’m quite aroused by the uniformity of the orange slice James just produced. He must have a tasty blade.
emilyscatnaps, talk of my stray grave has chilled me to the marrow. Apologies anyway.
“The most important thing is that my bakewell is light and fluffy.” – Stacey. I’d argue the most important thing is to divert the cartoon-stress steam that starts whistling out of your ears every week, to be frank.
19-year old Liam is making a cherry bakewell pudding to recreate the flavours of his youth, WHICH IS STILL IN PROGRESS. So that should be a head start.
Her choice of Al Fonzo mangoes get two thumbs up from me, though. Eyyyy!
Yan is replacing the flour in her recipe with breadcrumbs. Pancake day must be fun at hers.
Lol at Sandi attempting to sniff a single tonka bean rather than the full jar offered her.
Signature challenge: steam pudding
Magical yet inefficient precursor to the diesel pudding
Are those Paul’s real children or some indentured Serbian baking elves?
Also has Kate … gone steampunk this week?
Fairly surreal intro given that yesterday we were plunged into the depths of winter. I guess today was nice though, and it’s a good excuse for a “never mind the frolics” pun anyway.
Ooh here we go! I need the toilet. Too late!
Updated
Tinyismynewt it’s impossible to drop my Wispa in the coconut, as the latter is one of those aberrantly upmarket M&S ones with a ring-pull opening. I’m really pudding on the Ritz tonight.
Shall we bingo, my baking bredren?
- Yan’s bake looking like it belongs in a gallery, tasting like it too.
- Julia sending the Russians coded hand messages, a là first season Homeland.
- Sophie dropping out to pursue a career as Pippa Middleton.
- Steven baking a fully operational Death Star.
- James chuckling away, while his dreams lay smashed as eggs.
Scubar: heavens to betsy just eat both, the show lasts about five hours these days. And please don’t leave us, we’ll tiramis-u too much!
Heyerette I’m sorry, that sounds awful. We’re with you. Get into the jim-jams, and let’s regress.
I have a coconut water and a Wispa which I refuse to share, and some puddingy innuendo which I will.
Week five in the GBBO tent. Tensions are running high, and all from Stacey. Everyone else seems to have hit their stride. Thoroughbreds Steven and Sophie, so quick out of the blocks last month, have now been caught by Kate and Julia, and even youngster Liam is showing flashes of greatness. Can they overtake? The proof is in the pudding, which is handy.
Pudding week is not one where contestants can easily hide. I’m anticipating curdled custards, bungalow mille-feuille and volcano cakes you could crack a toe on. (Krakato- oh, it doesn’t matter.)
As usual I’ll be posting low-insight thoughts, baseless rumours and relentless innuendo while the show airs, and I’d love for you to pitch in too. Join us at 8pm! Pyjamas and something stiff recommended.
