Oh, to be a fly on the wall of the Bake Off production meetings. What I wouldn’t give for a peek at the list of rejected episode themes. Imagine all the debates – squabbling over ‘Seed Week’ vs ‘Nutella Week’; ‘Bake Everything In A Toaster Week’; ‘Scone Week’ vs ‘Scone Week’. Had things gone differently we might have seen ‘1980s Week’, where every bake had to be done in a Breville, or ‘1300s Week’, inspired by the baking trends of the Black Death plague pits.
But for now, in a move we can only presume was designed entirely to placate the four furious middle-Englanders who wrote in to complain about last year’s dabble in veganism, it’s Dairy Week.
Not Dairy Milk Week, though that would be lovely – nor Dairylea Week, though we won’t see many laughing cows either. No, all the challenges will centre heavily around milk, yoghurt and cultured dairy, with people slipping phrases like 'microbial benefits' into sentences as though this is normal. I strongly suspect we could be witnessing the Milk Marketing Board’s biggest stunt since the invention of the ploughman’s lunch.
Just don’t ask for Oatly.
Wholly cow
The first challenge sounds deceptively simple: a cake made with cultured dairy, such as yoghurt or buttermilk. 'It’s old milk, so the acid in there helps it do things,' explains Henry, helpfully. I don’t know about you, but this is the least hungry I have ever been watching Bake Off.
Henry, still persevering in his campaign to bring back casual tie-wearing, is paying homage to the surprise guest star of many a breakfast buffet, spiced apple streusel cake. It’s funny, isn’t it, how Germany can eat cake for breakfast and call it a delightful cultural tradition but when I eat cake for breakfast it’s ‘not practising self-care’?
Rosie and David are both loading their yoghurt cakes with limoncello, Priya’s gone bananas and Michelle’s is a rhubarb and custard affair, topped with half of Whole Foods. 'I want to introduce cute things,' says Helena, our Princess of Darkness, piping an uncharacteristically pretty buttercream rose. To go on a cake shaped like a ghost. Baby steps.
Most of the bakers are taking advantage of the extra fermented boost from their dairy by making a bundt cake. I like big bundts, and I cannot lie – but the elaborately moulded tins also present challenges. Mostly getting the cakes out. Michelle manages to smash her stand in the process, and Michael is flirting with disaster by piping a raspberry cheesecake swirl through the middle of his sour cream cake. 'It can tear at the weak spot,' he explains. 'Hopefully won’t!'
Ah, ‘hopefully won’t’, the bugle call for certain disaster. Cut to Michael scraping chunks of sponge and cheesecake out of the bottom of his bundt tin, and attempting to graft them back on with icing. 'If I was at home I’d put it in the bin,' he sighs.
I don’t know if anyone has tried to Kickstarter a food waste app specifically for divvying out the Bake Off failures, but I am here and ready to invest.
The judges find a few faults with anyone else – just Michelle’s claggy bake, Alice’s bland texture and Phil’s sloppy decoration – but poor Michael is in tears, despite his broken mess of a cake still tasting great. 'It’s just a cake,' he sniffs. 'I know it’s just a cake.'
It’s ok Mike, love. It’s never just a cake. If it were, we’d have stopped watching years ago.
Twelve maids a-milking
The technical challenge is ‘Maids of Honour’ – truly a Bake Off classic, in that they’re historic, nobody’s heard of them and they sound vaguely horrible. Henry VIII was reportedly a big fan, though you have to wonder whether he’d simply confused the name for a bulk-buy on mail order brides.
The recipe involves rough-puff pastry cases filled with lemon curd and cheese curd, a substance made famous by Miss Muffet but rarely seen since everyone’s Mum stopped eating it on Ryvita in the 90s. But the pastry is proving just as tricksy as the mysterious filling. Helena’s forgotten to add water to her dough, leaving her with a falling-apart shortcrust on which she’s attempting another Tudor homage: the reformation.
Once they’ve blind-baked their cases and filled them with curds, the bakers must cut out stencils for the maids’ decoration: a Tudor rose in icing sugar. 'What the heck does an English rose look like? I’m Welsh!' shrugs Michelle, which is funny because nobody said ‘English’.
Meanwhile, poor Priya is having a shocker. She’s taken so long stirring her curd that she’s now half an hour behind schedule. And despite Priya having helped many desperate tentmates finish their bakes in previous weeks, nobody comes to her aid. She manages to serve five out of 12 maids of honour – including one, as is traditional by 10pm at every wedding, doing a messy faceplant.
But, like her pastry, she’s still chill. 'How aren’t you crying?' demands Michael. This is exactly the kind of sweet, supportive camaraderie that makes Bake Off a beacon of light in the murky slurry pit of our modern world.
Priya’s maids are the worst, but even the best – Steph’s – are still bad. Helena is 9th with her crumbling tarts, and Alice in 8th, which is surprising because I think Alice would make a terrific maid of honour. The type who would single-handedly organise an incredibly convoluted hen weekend, then discreetly have a stroke during the Mr & Mrs quiz.
Sweet creams are made of this
Day two, and the only milk anyone wants now is milk of magnesia. But no! The showstopper is a display of mishti, a beautiful Bengali milk sweet served at special celebrations.
Mishti are shaped from khoa, a kind of tasty edible plasticine which is made by simmering milk for several hours. But because ‘simmering milk for several hours’ is content that really belongs in a specialist corner of YouTube, not on Channel 4 prime time, Paul and Prue have decided to speed things along by letting the bakers use powdered milk for one of their three varieties of mishti.
While most of the bakers are taking inspiration from the Indian subcontinent – cardamom, saffron, pistachio, rosewater, extract of pandan leaf – Helena is using far more challenging flavours: Parma violets and Bounty bars. Phil is reminding us that he’s salt of the earth by serving chocolate soil, and Alice is making ‘a British afternoon tea’. With a twist! It tastes of coffee.
In yet another blow for Team Lovely Boys, Henry’s in a kerfuffle because his kulfi won’t set. Hen, mate, I’m not a thermophysicist, but opening the freezer door every two minutes to check if they’re freezing probably isn’t the best way to help them freeze. Like how someone telling you to 'calm down' only makes you want to slam their head in your organ lid? Just like that.
When the judges return, everything looks spectacular. Rosie, Alice, Helena and Michelle have all done well, and even Henry’s ball of melted gop on a cracker isn’t a complete failure. 'You’d eat it if you were given it,' says Prue. 'As a prisoner, maybe,' adds Henry.
The Lovely Boys both live to bake another day, as Michael brings himself back from the brink with perfectly cushti mishti. And Steph! Steph’s milk sweets bring Paul and Prue to the yard, and they’re like: '...it’s better than yours.' Our fringe queen is overjoyed to be named star baker, and David misses out by a hair.
And then to the dregs: Priya’s mishti look a little underwhelming, but they’re trumped by Phil’s overbearing flavours. And in the end, to everyone's surprise but the viewers, not even Norman the gnome can prevent him trucking off home. Somebody alert the pigeons.
Poor Phil. But look on the bright side, mate – at least you won’t be here for Spirulina Week.
Next week: Henry wears breeches, Helena bakes leeches, Paul does a speech about how foie gras is actually fine.