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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Michael Chakraverty and Scott Bryan

The Great Celebrity Bake Off 2021: episode one – as it happened

Daisy Ridley and Matt Lucas on The Great Celebrity Bake Off.
Daisy Ridley and Matt Lucas on The Great Celebrity Bake Off. Photograph: Mark Bourdillon/Channel 4

We’ll see you next week for more bumbling bakes as Anne Marie, James McAvoy, David Baddiel and Kelly Holmes take on the tent!

Look after yourselves, you lovely lot. x

What a lovely evening after what has been a week (and it’s only Tuesday). Alexandra did a cracking job, though I think Tom was the star of that episode for me!

Just a wee reminder that all the celebrities are taking part in Bake Off to raise money for SU2C, more info here: channel4.com/su2c

The winner is... Alexandra Burke!

The elephant in the room... is that Alexandra Burke was always going to win.

Now. This is an idea.

Never forget. This would have been right at home in a SU2C special, to be fair.

Have we been watching different shows... ?

Love Daisy’s outlook through all this. ‘I’ve done shit but it’s for charity so…’

Alexandra seems to have smashed this challenge. Oh wait, Prue appears to be gagging on her headboard. Hopefully that will be overlooked.

Tom has been an absolute hoot this episode. After an initial barrage of criticisms, Paul then follows it up with: “That is delicious.” Tom: “Well … well I know.”

I love how Tom judges the judges. It’s a thoroughly pleasing role reversal. Though his bake is… abstract, at best.

Daisy’s mini Jaffa (the Hutt) cakes were cute! (Sorry).

Next, Daisy’s toilet. Paul: “Can you explain how you made the sponge?” Daisy: “I put it in a bowl and I whisked it.” Paul: “For how long?” Daisy: “Some … few … moments...”

Rob has made a version of the government’s endless coronavirus infographics, complete with misdirections and u-turns.

On to the judging...

... gulp.

Updated

Feeling a little attacked by this one...

Save us 15 minutes Channel 4. We know Alexandra Burke has won.

Daisy’s looks a bit like an albino sphinx. If you squint.

Updated

“It doesn’t look like a car” ponders Tom, as his brutalist pile of sponge gently weeps jam onto the counter.

I’ve never agreed with something more. PARTICULARLY during a pandemic.

Genius.

*swoons at Mr Hollywood’s feet*

I definitely leave the toilet seat up. I’m sorry Daisy.

Hey Siri, show me an example of why British television is the best in the world. Bake Off narrator: “Daisy Ridley is baking a giant toilet”

Updated

Hey Siri, show me what Britain is like. Bake Off narrator: “Rob Beckett will be designing the motorway signage he dreads”

My bug-bear is people putting artificial colouring into cakes. Looking at you, Rob.

Guardian readers, what are your bug-bears? Please don’t say Michael and I because we will pretend to laugh but it would actually hurt us deeply.

Going to put Paul saying “Hi babes” into the pile of things I find mildly arousing. Let’s brush quickly past Tom’s horn, shall we?

“Nobody thinks I’m competition, which puts me in a great spot”. Can relate, Daisy. From experience, if nobody thinks you’re competition, it tends to put you in sixth place.

If it was me I’d make a brown grizzly with antennae. Har har.

IT’S THE SHOWSTOPPER! The bakers have to bake a 3D cake representing their biggest bug-bear.

My bug-bear is sending a text to myself with a reminder or something, hearing my phone excitedly ping, only to then realise that it was the text that I had just sent to myself. Hard to depict that in cake form.

If you know, you know.

If you don’t know, look here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccthIuJOi5A

Updated

Presented without comment.

This could be any of Prue’s jewellery, to be honest.

Just a reminder that all the celebrities are taking part in Bake Off to raise money for SU2C, more info here: channel4.com/su2c

What a heartbreaking and brave story from Ella and her family.

Technical Challenge standings: Fourth is Rob Beckett (“mould it into a patty”). Third: Daisy Ridley (“raw!”), Tom Allen (“rubbery!”) and first: Alexandra Burke (“delicious!’)

Just saying what I see, Scott.

I enjoy Tom showing off to the judges, excluding the fact that he’s bragging with nonsense. You can’t temper a ganache, but it was a nice try.

Michael, you’re writing for the Guardian.

This judging has been generally rather scathing. Alexandra has a lovely crack though, so there’s always that.

‘Thin and over-worked.’ Like most of my exes by the time we break up.

It's the technical judging.

I feel like Paul Hollywood will need a saw to cut through Rob’s ganache.

Update on Rob Beckett: “Mine looks like a cowpat.”

Update on Tom Allen: “God, I am so embarrassed I could die.”

Oh bless, Daisy has a soggy bottom. Happens to the best of us. Preparation is key.

Some suspect tossing of a whisk there from Daisy. Of course I noticed it. Elsewhere, Rob is musing that he “could be wrong” not to reheat his gay-nache. To confirm, he both *could be* and *is*.

Someone did this in one of my Bake Off auditions and spent the remainder of the time allotted woefully picking rice out of her pie grain by grain. I would’ve helped but I was busy charming the socks off the producers.

To be honest, once I attempted to blind bake a bakewell tart without realising that you are supposed to put a protective layer in between the ceramic balls and the pastry...

Across the tent, Rob announces that he is “putting the little ceramic balls on his cake”. It’s a tart, Rob – concentrate.

Tom also just called it a ‘gay-nache.’ That is how it is pronounced now. I don’t make the rules.

Ganache is basically what you have inside a plain truffle. It’s like a softer chocolate.

Not a runny chocolate soup, like Tom’s making by missing out more than half of the chocolate in the recipe (!!).

I love that everyone is laughing at Rob not knowing what a ganache is … I also do not know what a ganache is.

I missed this but it is BRILLIANT and VERY RELATABLE content.

I really like that they’re doing vegan baking. I’d love to see a contestant on a future season who interprets all the challenges in a vegan way. Perhaps in a year without a Dairy week though.

Rob Beckett not realising that there are actual instructions in a technical challenge. Did he have brain fog or have they not watched Bake Off before?

The technical is... four individual vegan chocolate and raspberry tarts.

I’m still recovering from Prue’s aggressively gay jumper tbh. Or is it aggressively NHS? Or should we not get into that again?

The only reaction that matters was when Alan Carr was told that his bake was edible.

*HANDSHAKE KLAXON!* I don’t like it when Paul gives out handshakes after criticising a bake. It cheapens it. And yes, this is personal.

Just stumbled across this and felt it was the right time to reshare x

“A gentle slit” for Daisy there. How I long for one of those.

Hell hath no fury like a Prue Leith burn. While approaching Alexandra Burke’s table, she says: “Tell us ... what were you aiming at?”

Can confirm that the celebs often do not write their recipes, so generally do not know what it is that they’ve made. I have previously helped celebs create their recipes, but they did such an appalling job they’ll remain unnamed for both our sakes.

IT’S THE SIGNATURE JUDGING.

“Nice crack,” says Paul Hollywood as he cuts Tom’s Signature in two. “Thank you but what do you think about the shortbread?”

It certainly feels like we’ve got all the celebs that are normally too busy...

Daisy is having an epiphany. “I’m the person! I’m the person that everyone laughs at!,” she says.

I’m not going to lie. Her signature looks like she dipped flypaper in chocolate.

We are being joined by ROYALTY this evening!

Not quite on the same level, but still not ideal, is Daisy’s effort: her chocolate is both frozen and liquid. Delicious, impossible chaos.

Or when Nick Hewer (of Countdown) accidentally made crispy profiterole pancakes, crumbling with quietly furious ineptitude.

Tom Allen has accidentally frozen his bake into the freezer. This is bad, but not as bad as the time Jonathan Ross accidentally put his oven on the GRILL SETTING.

I fear I shall never stop screaming, Scott.

Elsewhere, Rob’s nobbily balls (stop it) appear to be a VERY GOOD way around the timing issue. Hats off to him and his wife. I like his (/my) glasses.

Michael, would you please be able to make an involuntary scream in the liveblog when a celebrity makes a massive baking mistake please? I’ll keep an eye on mangoes.

Fine, I’ll arrange a dinner party. I’ll invite Norman, too, so he can talk about pesto.

Why is Tom using a comedy sized whisk for his caramel and not a spoon? While we’re at it, how do we feel about artificially-coloured foods? I’ll start: I’m against.

Tom Allen is wearing a dapper tie and suit. I can only imagine that Allen, 2020 Bake Off contestant Rowan (and his elaborate waistcoats) and 2019 Bake Off contestant Henry (and his elaborate ties) would get on like a house on fire.

Like Alexandra, I used rum on Bake Off. It was in week seven – in the same episode that I went home. I don’t want to say it’s a cursed tipple, but I’m also not not saying that ...

I preferred Russell Brand’s winning biscuit tableau depicting his birth (in the same episode). “So you’ve got this great big vagina”, said Prue.

I know that we all feel rather starstruck to be here with Daisy Ridley but never forget when the iconic John Lithgow was a contestant in 2019. He baked a scene from The Crown in gingerbread with himself as a gingerbread Winston Churchill.

For the signature, the contestants have to bake 12 portions of millionaire’s shortbread.

OK so I’ll be honest, I think that the time given here is a bit tight. You’ve got to bake and cool a biscuit, make and cool a caramel as well as melt and cool chocolate, all while talking to cameras. I do NOT miss baking between those canvas walls.

Alexandra Burke is “so gassed” to be here, apparently. Don’t think I’ve heard that phrase since 2003. Which, incidentally, was the last time I heard an Alexandra Burke song.

I would like to immediately clarify that that comment was a joke. Her 2009 album Overcome is iconic and underappreciated. Anyway, back to baking.

Let’s just all agree that if they don’t make Girls Aloud singer Nadine Coyle recreate her iconic quote “loves baking and stuff, working with flour” we riot.

According to the show’s opener, highlights from this celebrity series include: Anneka Rice being asked whether she likes a challenge (spoiler: she didn’t), KSI presenting some ingredients in a can and psychotherapist Philippa Perry piping the word “HELP” on her bake, which feels like a metaphor.

Dear reader, I couldn’t possibly comment.

You should have done Nicola *Cough*lan. I’ve seen your photos together.

Clang. Let’s not make it a famous friend name-dropping competition cause I’ll win. *cough* Jonathan Van Ness *cough*.

In this episode I’m going to be backing Daisy Ridley. Can’t think why.

Perhaps the show’s greatest moment, however, was when James Acaster, after presenting the world’s sloppiest cherry bakewell flapjack, summed up the experience to Paul and Prue with the immortal words “started making it, had a breakdown … bon appetit.”

Celebrity Bake Off has seen so many iconic moments over the years, and has - at times - been even more enjoyable to watch than the main show. Who could forget Alison Hammond thinking that her oven doors had gone missing, when in fact they had just retracted back into the oven? Or the time Lee Mack didn’t know how to turn his electric whisk off, so just left it on, whirring on the floor? Or when Alan Carr – when commenting on previous attempts of his bake – said: “I have had no complaints, because they all died.”

First up, we have Tom Allen, Rob Beckett, Daisy Ridley and Alexandra Burke. This week, I’ll be mostly up top while Scott digs around BTL with you lovely lot.

Do our contestants claim to have even a modicum of baking know-how? No. Does that mean Scott and I will be lowering our expectations? Also no.

We’re back! It’s been three months since our last Bake Off liveblog and a month since Junior Bake Off came to an end. And, lest we go more than a month without seeing cake crises on the telly, we’re ready for some more. Over the next five weeks, we’ll see a host of celebrities facing the tent’s famous peaks all in the name of charidee – raising money for Stand Up To Cancer (we’ll be donating part of our liveblog fee and if you would also like to support the cause click here).

Updated

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