Having said goodbye to Phil last week, the average age in the tent has now fallen to just 30. I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to feel the absence of a kooky gran figure in this year’s Bake Off. We need a Karen, or a Val. A no-nonsense Janet in a pair of bouncy trainers, handing out sweets and tutting when anybody gets too emotional. It’s a strange thing to know that in the world of Bake Off 2019, I would now be considered a tent elder. People would ask me to tell stories about the olden and fetch me a cushion to support my back.
Speaking of great depressions, this week is 1920s week. Fun! Especially since we’ve only got three months left before ‘the twenties’ means right now, and ‘twenties-style food’ means bartering for tins of Spam on the post-Brexit black market, and growing our own cress in the airing cupboard.
In keeping with the jazz age spirit, this week promises to be a proper saucepot, full of people saying things like 'I like a shallow tart' and 'just putting the suckers on my tentacles!'
Some like it not
The first challenge is custard pies. We all know a true custard pie is made from shaving cream, but instead these are required to use shortcrust pastry and a silky-smooth filling, lavishly decorated in homage to the era. Our bakers are hoping to 'wow the judges with their impressive domes', which funnily enough was a whole category in my wardrobe circa 2008.
While the others give us the old razzle-dazzle with fresh flowers and neatly cut fruit, Helena is crafting a chocolate sea monster to emerge from the frothy fathoms of her lavender meringue pies. 'Is this remotely 1920s, do you think?' asks Prue. 'Yep.' replies Helena, with what I believe in future we will refer to as Extremely Helena Energy. Or Extreme Helenergy. ‘Eh’ for short.
She has goth competition in the unlikely form of Rosie, who is using horse syringes to inject food colouring into her jelly hemispheres. This is the week Rosie’s profession really comes into its own. We learn about crab chlamydia, ambitextrous rectalling and that rabbits 'just want to die'. Give her another week or two and she’ll be outside performing vital surgery on that squirrel with the huge scrotum.
David is a classy guy, and he is not here for your nonsense; his ‘fancy custard’ tarts are plain vanilla. David buys only unscented shower gel. He turns all his books round so the pages face outwards. David’s favourite crisps are ready salted and his favourite drink is water, no ice.
Henry, meanwhile, has been drinking Kool-Aid. This explains so much! Quick, Henry, blink once for ‘I’ve been indoctrinated into a cult’ and twice for ‘I just really like ties’.
True to the decade, people are flapping. Michael’s in a melee with his gelée, and in a sequence of beautifully unchoreographed slaptick, Rosie has dropped an entire pie on the floor. Her crestfallen face and sad little 'oh' is pure silent movie heroine.
'I don’t think there’s the possibility of anything in my life going any worse right now,' she says, which is just an invitation for someone’s bunny to snuff it in her lap on Monday.
The judges’ verdicts on their custard tarts range from the beautiful (Michael) to the damned (Priya). Henry has a thick base, Rosie a damp one, Alice needs to remember that oranges are not the only fruit and Helena’s lavender custard tastes too much of your nan’s handkerchief drawer.
But reigning star baker Steph has turned out near-perfect pies. And David’s taste might be vanilla, but his tarts are practically rouging their knees and rolling their stockings down. His 'exquisite' flapper girl decoration and silky filling earn him sweaty clasp from Paul. Although you do worry that in the 1920s, a ‘Hollywood Handshake’ might have meant something else entirely.
Fat Jams Grand Slam
From Hollywood to New Orleans, this week’s technical challenge is beignet soufflés. They’re choux pastry doughnut balls, deep-fried, filled with jam and served with sabayon – which from what I can tell is a kind of posh advocaat – for dunking.
Almost immediately, Lovely Michael is having a mare. His choux batter is too runny, and while the other bakers are watching their balls float up, he’s ballsing his up instead. David’s beignet are coming out looking like tater tots, so both start their pastry again from scratch – and immediately have the exact same problems. 'I don’t think I can do this,' sniffs Michael over yet another failed attempt, as Noel tries to send him outside for a walk. It’s unclear whether this is to help him calm down, or to put a minimum required distance between the weeping man and the deep fat fryer.
By the end everyone else’s beignets look, and I mean this only as the highest compliment, exactly like the Christmas snowball doughballs at Pizza Express. 'Better than David’s, that’s for sure! They look like Scotch eggs!' chirps Helena, Helenergetically. She’s not wrong.
When Bonnie and Snide come back for the judging, it’s virtually a rerun of last week – too much concern about small round beige things nobody’s heard of, not enough clutching of Michael. He’s second to last, just above David, who doesn’t seem to mind too much because he’s still protected by Paul’s touch like an invisible forcefield.
And Helena is first! The bakers are happier than if they’d won it themselves.
'I need to get the hashtag #realmencry trending this year,' says Michael. '#mantears'.
At home, Phil throws his gnome at the wall.
Mob mentality
Going into the final day, things are harder to read than Ulysses. Priya’s under pressure, David’s slipping, Rosie’s looking rocky, Alice is coasting, Michael’s crying for no real reason and Michelle can’t be well – she hasn’t mentioned Wales once. It feels distinctly like there’s a double elimination brewing, but that could just be because we’re downwind of the ingredients trolley.
Inspired by prohibition, for their showstopper our bakers have four hours to make a tiered celebration cake, flavoured like a bootleg cocktail and decorated using all the art deco inspiration they’ve been savouring since they googled ‘art deco cake’ four days ago. Sadly they’re not required to brew the liquor themselves in a bathtub first, although I bet Helena has form.
Originality isn’t running high. Alice, Priya, Michelle and Steph are all making pina colada cakes, and Rosie and Henry have a twofer on white Russians. 'This is the strongest coffee I could find in the world,' declares Henry. 'Well, in Waitrose.'
I can show you the world, dear boy, and it’s the middle aisle in Aldi.
While their booze-soaked sponges are simple enough, it’s the decoration that’s really in danger of sending things ‘a bit East Egg’. Rosie’s chocolate ganache looks more like Marmite, while Michelle is attempting something called a 'geode-effect faultline' around the middle of her top tier. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the 1920s so blithely misrepresented, and I say that as someone who watched the Downton Abbey movie last weekend.
As the final minutes tick by, things get frantic as ever. Steph has to step into help Henry, who is having 'triangular misbehaviour' issues. 'There’s a place reserved in heaven for you,' he tells her. Don’t take his pamphlets, Steph.
When Harpo and Groucho start the judging, Rosie, Henry, Alice and David all hit high notes with their flavours but lose points for finesse. Michael’s bramble cake is missing a fruity kick and poor Helena’s dreams of star baker are dashed by her Dracula cake, which looks pretty but lacks… bite.
While they like her pina colada, poor Michelle has 'overthought' her My Little Pony fever dream decoration and made her sponge too flaky. Michelle, my belle. Those aren’t cakes that go together well. 'I felt like I was being told off by teachers from school,' she sniffs.
And finally, in an act of injustice so great we may need Lady Hale and her spider brooch to swoop in and sort it out, Helena’s bloodthirsty Dracula cake is deemed ‘bland’ – and apparently she’s bitten the dust.
So, with the ruthlessness of two sugar-addled Al Capones, the judges send both of them packing – and with it, the average age of the tent plummeting to about 12. Helena, our princess of darkness. I hope you come back to haunt Paul something rotten. And farewell, Michelle. Hope it’s not too long a journey back to… Woking, was it? I’ve forgotten
NEXT WEEK: It’s dessert week! Puddin’ on the fritz! Michael instigates a sharing circle and Rosie brings out the horse tranquiliser