The semi-finalists congratulate themselves and each other as the icing sugar settles and the shoulders un-hunch. Do they all go to the pub now?
Tamal is openly delighted, Nadiya is so excited she could streak and Ian just nods like a man who knows he’s got it in the bag.
Who is going to win? I just can’t call it. I much prefer it when there’s no clear leader. Thanks so much for coming and chatting. I’ll dive down into the comments now and Heidi will be back here for semi-final fun next week.
Come and find me @jnraeside on Twitter.
Good evening!
You're out
And today’s loser and going home is lovely Paul. He takes it well and Flora says she dodged the bullet, using Paul as a human shield.
Star baker
Who is it? WHO? It’s Nadiya. Of course it is. Hooray for Nadiya. But now, someone has to go...
Ian’s effort is met with a wink of approval from Mary and he looks suitably smug as he grins back at her. Everyone agrees that the strong flour was the key here.
The judges juggle the order of the bakers and seem undecided about who should flog themselves with birch twigs and who needs to go and say a couple of hail marys.
Mary does not dig the bubblegum flavour but overall, Nadiya hasn’t disgraced herself.
And so, like a man bearing a funeral casket containing his favourite pet, Paul brings his pastry and cream erection to the front. They admit they can finally taste his banana but they know he cheated with flavouring.
Flora’s lime and basil are missing in action despite her efforts and it’s not a better story with the coconut. What happened?
Tamal aces it and his nun remains standing. Nadiya’s nun is drunk to the point of needing to go home for a sleep.
Tamal’s nun comes forward to confession as her judges remove bits of her delicious legs. I’ll read this back tomorrow and wonder if I was on mushrooms.
“I will be so glad when this stupid nun thing is done,” says Tamal in a candid moment as his pink and yellow confection steadily gains height.
With one minute to go, the final cream is piped in the knowledge that the wrecking ball of Paul’s opinion is about to come swinging in to destroy it anyway.
In a fiendish twist, they are all sent for a two-hour lunch before judging so that the staying power of their builds can also be judged. Oh you buggers.
The intermittent beeping of oven timers makes it sound like the high dependency ward of a hospital in there. If they were all rigged up to heart rate monitors too the noise would be deafening.
And so the nuns begin to rise from the worktops like sugary spectres. The bubbles in the spirits levels quaver in the midday sun and the concentration on every baker’s face is complete.
Paul’s banana determination extends to the use of banana essence but will he overcompensate? With two hours to go, the nuns remain, as yet, fragmented.
The eclairs are a uniform gold and most of the bakers are moving onto the pastry discs that will support the layers of the tower. Nadiya is dreading the construction but we can’t wait for the pastry Jenga to begin.
Flora’s fruit and herb (for a change) tower sounds delicate and aromatic and will, she hopes, turn out like some sort of botanical dalek which sounds perfect to me.
Paul’s got the chance to rectify his former banana mistake by really ramping up the flavour this time. And Nadiya is flavouring hers with bubble gum like the big eyebrow-waggling maverick that she is. Where does one procure essence of bubble gum? Did she creep around a playground at dusk, chipping away old used bits with a teaspoon, then boil them up?
Tamal’s going for mango and passionfruit, as is Ian who is calling this his Nun with Hidden Passions. Come on Sue, he’s juxtaposing sex with a nun. It’s like she’s got her hands tied behind her back when it comes to smut this series.
And so to the challenge - a religieuse à l’ancienne - or, of course, a shoe tower in the shape of a nun. I’ll type that again. A shoe tower in the shape of a nun.
In making these pastry nuns, they must consider the longevity of the build. This sister needs to stay upright for several hours as the centrepiece to a grand party. So no fudging the construction. Hard hats on for their grandest design yet.
Paul is last, Tamal is fourth, Flora third, Ian second and (ittle yay) Nadiya is first. She looks on the verge of tears but holds it together. In the after-analysis she is light as a feather.
Flora is worried for the show-stopper challenge and everyone tries to remain cheerful as the judges assess their potential as semi-finalists. Nadiya’s on top, they agree but the others are precarious and Flora’s name is mentioned again.
Flora’s piping is rogue. Rosettes, Flora. NOT shells. Rooky mistake number two. Could this be her last gasp?
Wow, I don’t know about the judges but I am seriously impressed. If they really don’t see a picture of the tech challenge beforehand then they’ve produced startlingly good facsimiles of the original.
Paul’s are decried as “quite flat” and his icing dribbles onto the plate like his self-respect. They go on. It’s raw. It’s like rubber. Good god, give him some dignity.
And so the piping. How do you pipe on nuts? These and so many more questions may never receive answers but that won’t stop us striving will it, ladies and gentlemen?
Flora, once again, is running to the freezer, blowing at her fringe and cursing the entire day as her worst yet in the competition.
Tamal is in good humour but he’s fallen behind, like a heroine in a horror movie who has twisted her ankle running through the woods. He’s done for if he stops now. Limp on, man. Limp on!
Why hasn’t Paul put his sponge back in the oven. WHY? Come on, Paul. Meanwhile, Tamal is “dipping them in the nuts” - his sponge squares that is. Where is Sue when you need her? One wasted opportunity after another this week. Overall, the least rude series we’ve had so far.
Paul’s slender sponge is, he says, raw. He is almost resigned and I don’t blame him. Such is the pressure, I’d have gone fully Baked-Alaska-in-the-bin by now and fled into the woods with the cooking brandy, smearing my face in butter and hooting at the squirrels. But that’s just me.
Flora removes and reintroduces her sponge to the oven several times, lightly tapping the surface, hoping for answers. What does she think will happen? A knocked reply from inside the cake like she’s having a seance?
“I’m just going to make a sponge,” says Paul dismissively, thinking he knows better than Berry. That’s what I thought when I was tackling lamingtons earlier. Oh, it’s just a sponge, I said. How wrong I was. My kitchen is currently encrusted with chocolate icing, desicated coconut and bits of broken sponge. Learn from this.
A mokatine looks like something Fanny Craddock would have knocked up with Johnny back in the day. Plenty of baroque piping, could just use a bit more blue food colouring and perhaps a mincemeat omelette side garnish. Seriously, if you’ve never seen Craddock’s Mincemeat omelette demonstration, youtube it after the show. Incredible.
Mel is never happier than when doing an accent so she’s having splendid fun in this French VT, pronouncing macaron with a rolled “R”.
Now to the technical challenge and it’s bound to be absolutely impossible. The bakers must make nine identical mokatines. Essentially square sponges decorated with two kinds of icing.
Hands up if you’ve ever seen or heard of a mokatine before today. Seriously now, where do they get these recipes? I think they make them up.
Ian, focus of much controversy, comes a-cropper when they say he’s put too much booze in his Black Forest filling. He started so well but he’s not shone in the last few episodes. Is this the beginning of his tragic fall?
Poor Flora, hands over her mouth to stem the silent screams of distress, watches as her filling dribbles from the bottom of her horns. She just says sorry and Mary offers her the kind of warm smile a doctor would give before amputating your leg.
Paul’s bananas aren’t strong enough and his coffee filling doesn’t reach the bottom so his horns disappoint.
Tamal’s puff succeeds but do his flavours work? “A good flavour,” says Mary, neither heaping him with praise or punching him full in the guts with criticism.
Nadiya’s rose concoctions are delicately hacked at and Paul brandishes an early “excellent” as he rolls the buttery pastry around his expert tongue.
Mary appreciates the flavour and Nadiya is safe for now.
Scenes of furious piping finish in a crescendo of heads in hands. Their time is up and the judges are approaching the herd, the first sniff of baker blood in their keen nostrils.
Sue allows herself one small horn gag with is pretty restrained considering the circumstances. She’d be well within her rights to just fire them off like a 21 horn salute but that’s the mark of a true pro, right there.
Ian sloshes in the kirsch, once again hoping to get Mary drunk because everyone knows this usually works. Flora’s got major horn leak which can’t have been the plan. That old standby of trying to use the freezer is always the last resort of the disorganised baker.
Nadiya admits she is panicking a little bit as her horns begin to puff-up. Paul’s aren’t perfect either and I’d say Ian’s have gone a little too brown but who am I? Just some mega-baker with a kitchen-full of incredible cakes.
Flora’s lip-chewing is causing me to worry because she’s only young and if she’s not careful she’ll have no lips left by the time she hits 30. I hope she’s got a plentiful supply of balm.
The tiny pastry Madonna bras are coming along well but Tamal says his bras go into the oven even but come out all differently sized and disappointing. Pray for him.
Nadiya (who is my favourite, I might as well admit this now. Those EYEBROWS) is quietly confident in an unthreatening way as usual and gives Paul the eyebrows of “don’t mess with me” but ever so politely. Excellent work.
Back to the horns. Ian is going with a Black Forest horn which I heartily approve of. It’s the 1970s swinger’s horn of choice and should go down well with the judges.
Paul’s trying to lull Paul back to childhood with banana custard horns. Stick some Angel Delight in there too and you’ve got my vote.
Flora is going fruity and herby as per and then butterscotch (Angel Delight again?). Sorry is she using cigars? Did I mishear?
I’ve completely forgotten the bingo haven’t I? If I go down to comment central now there may be a short pause. Bear with...
Today I have made fridge cake, Danish apple cake, banana loaf and lamingtons! So these guys have nothing on me today. I am the baking queen. I wouldn’t let Mary and Paul taste any of these cakes you understand. I’d be too scared. But I will be selling them for Macmillan tomorrow at a pub quiz in London. Check Twitter for details!
Paul admits a cream horn is actually quite hard to do. No, still nothing. Mary insists they fill their horns all the way to the bottom. Nothing worse than a dry horn.
And so to the first challenge. Aprons on, pensive lip-chewing and loosening of collars. Not to mention a lot of tough talk about “delivering” and “going hard or going home”.
As Sue points out, the double entendre potential of this week’s challenges is off the scale. It’s gone right past Carry On and shot off the top of the scale, in fact, so she doesn’t even attempt one with the cream horns. Please make up your own rude thoughts here.
I love Mel & Sue’s ingenuity with their intros. My favourite is still the sung one they did to the tune of English Country Garden. I want it as my ringtone.
First we relive Tamal’s star turn as star baker and his excellent comparison of Mary and Paul to big, predatory cats out to eat them all, one by one. Who will be the weak gazelle tonight? Who will fall behind the pack and be torn limb from limb in Paul’s drooling jaws?
Hello all! What’s this about a game of bingo? This sounds overly complicated but I’ll run with it. Someone please inform me how it works. You have 4 seconds...
With only three episodes to go before the winner lifts that big, kitchen-themed plastic thing in triumph, tonight the final five face down the horrors of Mary and Paul’s fiendish patisserie challenges.
Thrice must they overcome the nutmeggy fumes of fear to present delicious puddingy creations for the chomping jaws of their floury overlords.
Join me here at 8pm for every sugary second of it.
