We begin today on a sombre note. Today marks the 7th-to-last episode of Bake Off that Mel and Sue will helm. It’s a disaster. It’s bigger than Brexit. It’s the end of the world as we know it. And, almost as if they knew ahead of time what a state of we’d be in, Mel and Sue open this week’s episode with a song about 'bush', slyly challenging the viewer to imagine Ant and/or Dec or Mark Wright from TOWIE being able to pull that one off with the same class and finesse.
This week it’s Batter Week which is a totally new Bake Off concept. Batter Week sadly has less to do with what we’d like to do to the head of Love Productions though and more to do with deep frying stuff, pancakes and Yorkshire puds. Candice has gone for the other use of the word and is looking to actually get battered which is coincidentally exactly what we're going to be doing in six week’s time after this season’s finale when Mel and Sue ride off into the sunset and British Culture finally comes to a crushing end (sob).
First up, the bakers are making Yorkshire puds. Their main instruction is that all their puds need to look the same which seems unfair because even Aunt Bessie hasn’t mastered this skill yet and she’s been the biggest purveyor of Yorkshire puds for like 100 years.
Apparently everyone’s got a different recipe they like to use, Tom uses 8 eggs, Val, 5. Andrew reckons the not-to-be-messed-with ‘Yorkshire pudding community’ are still in fierce debate over what the right ingredients are, an altercation that seems like it has the possibility to turn into an all-out war if we know the Yorkshire Pudding Community the way we think we know the Yorkshire Pudding Community.
Val is from Yorkshire, so she’s got no chance of messing this up. Always a wild card though, Yorkshire Val has decided to fill her puds with the decidedly un-Yorkshire-esque filling of Mexican Chilli. Will Val’s experiment pay off? Will Mexico extend a humbled sombrero to Val and her attempts at cultural collaboration? Probably.
Andrew says he likes Yorkshire puddings so much he wants to take them on holiday; steady on Andrew. Selasi is filling his with pork scratchings meaning he forwent other pub snacks like Nobby’s Nuts and Scampi Fries. Also, he lets slip that he has a girlfriend, further devastating a nation already struggling with the Great Mel And Sue Departure.
All the bakers glue their terrified faces to their ovens like they’re showing the last episode of Stranger Things as they watch their Yorkshires bake. Tom, last week’s star baker, ends up with flat blinis rather than Yorkshires and he actually sheds a tear. Rav hovers awkwardly in the background offering sympathetic facial expressions that say less ‘I’m here for you buddy’ and more ‘thank fuck that isn’t me’.
During judging Paul makes a bid for Mel and Sues’ jobs by dropping his own filthy innuendos. ‘I like the way you’ve toasted your nuts.’ He says throatily to Andrew in a way that echoes awkwardly around the room. ‘They could be a bit wetter’ he grins at Candice and her admittedly fanny-shaped beef Yorkshires. It’s like listening to your nan talk about Babestation, it’s like hearing your boss talk about threesomes. It’s making your vagina contract in a way that means nothing will be able to enter it again.
Next, the technical challenge, and the gang are told to make 12 heart shaped lace pancakes which is a fancy way of telling them to make 12 doilies out of eggs-and-milk-and-flour. No word if Paul plans to use the leftover ones do decorate his Great Aunt Muriel’s living room.
The challenge reveals that a shockingly small amount of bakers actually know how to make pancake batter and even less know how to draw a heart. Selasi sketches something that looks like a bum whilst Candice muses over the fact that she doesn’t own any lace knickers which seems like a problem she could address out of the tent unless she’s planning on tackling Mary Berry to the ground to pinch hers.
As the bakers finish up their dodgy looking pancakes, Mel walks around making excellent wanking innuendos, further hammering it home to Channel 4 what they’re going to be missing. ‘Tosser’ she shouts at Candice. ‘Flick of the wrist’ she grins at Andrew. It’s things like that Mel that make you, and not Cheryl Cole, a national treasure.
For the showstopper round, the bakers are to make churros which, in this country come in fancy Latin American and Spanish desserts like they’re some kind of delicacy but in America are served for what they really are which is basically just battered dough covered in sugar from dirty street food vans. They’re a food so unhealthy that only America could make them into a snack, they’re basically what would happen if you made chips but replaced the potato with sugar.
Tom’s putting fennel in his ‘snake in the grass’ churros which disappointingly turns out to be a reference to an ACTUAL snake and not a trousersnake. Rav’s gone rogue and is making matcha churros which is brave considering how much Mary pointed out she hated matcha in episode one. Candice is filling hers with booze – the staple move of any baker feeling insecure about what they’re doing.
Churros batter has to be hella thick and the bakers struggle to mix their doughy creations sufficiently. Andrew’s made his batter so thick he’s struggling to pipe it out and is making a face so red and sweaty that he looks like he’s on day nine of an Imodium overdose.
Once shaped, the bakers drop their churros into a deep fat fryer which is finally a piece cooking equipment that we’re familiar with thanks to that really deep conversation with Sam at the kebab shop about the ins and outs of cooking the perfect chips. Something we’re sure he very much appreciated at 4am on a Saturday morning, just before close.
Kate’s behind. She’s deep fat frying and boiling her bunny shaped churros like Norfolk’s answer to Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction whilst the rest of the gang have already moved on to making their dipping sauces. Kate’s dangerously red in the face and looking as flustered as I feel when it’s two minutes to closing time at the half price Itsu sale and I can’t choose between the veggie club maki rolls or the mixed sashimi.
TBF, the churros are one of the more delicious looking offerings the bakers have made this season and, as they’re arranged for the judges perusal, we find ourselves Googling ‘running jobs on Great British Bake Off no TV experience necessary’. Those lucky little buggers must eat so well.
Jane wins fantastic, she’s got star baker for sure. Annoyingly though it’s Paul’s praise that makes her burst into ecstatic tears rather than Mary’s despite the fact that we’d much rather get approval from Mary than Paul ‘stabby fingers’ Hollywood.
At the other end, Tom’s churros end up looking less like a snake in the grass and more like a spilled box of cocktail sausages at a picnic. Selasi’s are still raw inside. Ravs churros look like a poo the day after eating seven packets of kale and, according to Paul and Mary, taste like rubbish too. Kate gets told her churros have been ‘impregnated’ with oil which sounds like a medieval torture technique too horrible to imagine.
In the end it’s Kate that’s sent home, her bunny boiling not up to scratch. Next time Kate, take your Fatal Attraction attempts full single white female and go the whole hog.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.