We’re back! And Mel and Sue are already on the whiskey. Honestly ladies, what are you like? Save the stiff drinks for when Paul Hollywood wanders into the marquee at least, for goodness sake.
Oh! Here are the bakers. Staring awkwardly at the tent, wearing crisp white aprons. They look like they’re about the shit themselves. ‘My goodness it’s real!’ a lady called Val says incredulously about the tent, her questionable hold on reality already allowing her to make bold strides in the race to be crowned competition ‘kook’. Although,TBF, following closely behind her is hairdresser Louise, who says she has dreams about cakes chasing her. Candice, a PE teacher from Bedford seems to be on the wrong show entirely, she wants to ask Mary Berry to be her nan. Sorry love, you want Surprise Surprise.
Mel and Sue are right on it with their famous puns. Within the first few minutes they hilariously mix up the words ‘Kate’ and ‘Cake’ – easily done, I too tried to nibble on Kate Garraway when she was standing in front of me in the queue at M&S.
The first challenge for the bakers is to make a drizzle cake. This is Paul’s favourite cake by which I take to mean that Paul has an entire drizzle cake room in his house which he likes to lock himself in after a hard day at work and perform an interpretative dance to shelves of drizzle cakes that don't know where to look.
Louise, is making an orange liqueur and lemonade drizzle cake and Paul comes dangerously close to snapping when Louise doesn’t know the difference between icing and drizzle. That’s one to work out in the room Paul. University worker Rav has already cut himself, is he bleeding in his batter? No word. Wonder where blood goes on Paul’s icing to drizzle scale.
Selasi proves himself early on as the maverick of the group. He works in banking. He’s handsome. And he’s gone rogue with some cardamom. He also is far too cool to show any emotion. His attitude towards his baking is precisely the same as his reaction to Sue when she brings up the ‘global financial collapse’. Selasi's reaction is, reassuringly, a resounding ‘meh’.
Candice has made her cake gluten free. And she plans to fill it with custard. ‘How are you going to get the custard in?’ Mary asks incredulously. ‘I’m going to poke it in’ Candice says proudly. Duh. Garden designer Jane has had a ‘mare, she’s left out her ground almonds and is starting again. Tom, a keen climber from Rochdale has hit on a great plan to get Mary drunk and is putting no less than three shots of gin in his cake. Paul is not impressed. He knows Mary can sink far more than three shots of gin and still be able to recite the alphabet backwards.
Val, meanwhile, says that her cakes sing to her. I had a cake sing to me once Val, except it was a brownie, and I was in Amsterdam and some guy with ginger dreadlocks and a hemp-esque smell gave it to me. Oh god. She’s dropped her cake on the floor. Maybe she should have sung back.
Next up, is Mary’s challenge. And they’re making Jaffa cakes! Which is definitely the best cake. Lee the pastor from Bolton can’t remember what they look like. ‘You never take much notice of one when you’re eating one do you?’ he says, proving that he clearly doesn’t have the same intimate, loving and respectful relationship with Jaffa cakes as us. Neither does Paul apparently. He dips his Jaffa cake in his chuffing tea. Like an uncultured swine. Mary is horrified.
Selasi remains cool as a cucumber throughout the whole thing whilst engineer Andrew dabbles with trimming a bit off his over inflated sponge. There’s drama amongst the gang over which side of the sponge to add the chocolate and jelly to, and, to speak candidly, the end results are, quite frankly shocking. Half Moon/Full Moon lady would be seriously narked off with these Jaffas. Andrew’s prove to be the worst but even Selasi’s winners bear more than a passing resemblance to the poo emoji.
Now, on to the showstopper round. The gang are instructed to make a mirror glaze cake for Paul. Everyone seems VERY FREAKED OUT except of course, for Selasi, who looks like he’s eaten some of my aforementioned brownie. Michael, a student, is showing off how young and trendy his is by doing a matcha tea sponge. Candice is having an existential crisis, David Byrne style muttering things like ‘How did I get here? This is not my beautiful house! Where is that large automobile?’ To celebrate losing it, she chucks her cake Frisbee style against the window of the marquee where it makes a satisfying thud. Candice shouldn't feel bad though, there’s a veritable epidemic of start-overs from lots of the other bakers who also aren’t happy with their sponges. There’s 90 minutes left. This is sort of like starting your dissertation a week before the hand in date. It’s do-able, but it’s not going to be pretty.
Tom’s learned his lesson from gin-gate. He’s still using booze, but this time he’s gone for a more grown-up offering; ‘kirsch’ which everyone knows is the kind of booze you only find in the back of your parents’ booze cupboard to the left of the Limoncello and to the right of the grenadine.
For someone that sings with her cakes, Val isn’t getting nearly enough airtime. In fact, head over to my new GoFundMe page to buy the BBC and give Val her own show. Val for leader of the Labour Party. Val for president.
As the promise of the post-challenge return of Paul The Tyrant weighs heavy on the marquee, bakers begin to fall apart at the seams. Teaching assistant Benjamina chucks her icing in the bin, Tom drops his cake on the floor, Lee’s ganache has lost the plot and Candice’s jelly isn’t setting. Oh. And according to Val, her cake looks like a concertina, which is Dick Van Dyke’s instrument of choice in Mary Poppins. Step in Time Val, step in time. Benjamina finally loses it over her runny icing and Sue swoops in with a snippet of advice I think we could all do with hearing; ‘Every second spent crying is a second less to show how good you are’.
In the end, everyone has a sort-of cake to offer to the judges. Jane’s is kind of lopsided, but the judges are dead impressed with how it tastes. Rav’s cake is a bit ‘dry’, Tom’s ‘doesn’t have any real flavour’, Paul says he needed more booze, (bloody hell Paul you can’t have it both ways). Michael’s matcha cake does not go down well. Mary says it’s ‘grassy’. Clearly Mary is way too smart to shell out a fiver for a matcha latte at one of London’s premiere wanky coffee shops. Kate’s cake looks like a disaster although it tastes ok. Selasi’s is obviously great although he doesn’t have a mirror in his glaze. Val’s looks great! Except she’s used cream cheese in it. Oh Val. Lee’s is the most boring and it’s not all that to taste either.
So, in the end it’s Lee the pastor that’s sent back off on the North Eastern Virgin trainline to Bolton. Land of the brave, home of the Gods. Godspeed Lee. Head Back to the world of Ian McKellen, Peter Kay and erm, my dad.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.