The Millennial Domes: It’s Dessert Week On The Great British Bake Off

You’ve got some nerve, Bake Off, showing your face round here after last week.

Last week, when you took one of the few sources of joy and delight we have in a world full of daily trashfires and turned it into yet another example of gross injustice. I’m not speaking to you, actually, Bake Off. Not until somebody rules that it was unlawful for Paul and Prue to prorogue Helena and reinstates her immediately. I will not compromise my values. I… what’s that? Oh. Fine, if it means that much to you, I suppose I’ll come out of my room. But only because there’s pudding.

Yes, the savoury-toothed among us who are holding out for some kind of vast Victorian beef pie will be disappointed again – it’s dessert week. After last week’s custard-and-cake-heavy affair, the powers that be have decided that what we really need is an episode heavy on jelly and cream.

With Helena here to make meringue in the shape of a succubus and Michelle to carve Shirley Bassey’s head out of jelly, this could have been a laugh riot, but as it stands there’s a lot of pressure on the remaining bakers to deliver entertainment. Are the Lovely Boys up to the job? Can Alice unleash her dark side? Will Priya’s famously shonky timekeeping get so out of hand that she ends up having to pipe buttercream directly into Paul’s open mouth?

'I am not a dessert person,' says David, who has 'the cheeseboard and a peppermint tea, please' written all over him. Rosie isn’t a dessert person either. I can’t help but feel this is the kind of thing that should get weeded out in the audition stages. Imagine if I went on Match of the Day and said I hated it when they kick the ball in the goal.

Am I right, or a meringue?

This week’s signature challenge is a layered meringue cake, which is essentially a pavlova with notions. 'The danger is, because it’s simple, they will want to overcomplicate it,' says Prue, who will definitely kick off if they don’t overcomplicate it.

Most of the bakers are jazzing up their meringues with nuts, but only now do we learn Rosie has a severe nut allergy. I’ve always wondered what happens with allergens on Bake Off. Should we not have outlawed nuts entirely to be on the safe side? Surely it would be all too easy for a rogue pistachio or a glob of batter to go flying across the tent? We can presume vet Rosie knows her way around an EpiPen, but this really isn’t the high risk TV any of us are here for.

Layering up their creations is a typically tense endeavour, because meringue is more fragile than Paul’s masculinity. Miraculously every baker finishes on time, with no breakages, droppages or disasters – but when the judges return, it’s not all (egg) white on the night. Alice’s black forest flavours lack punch, Steph has too many nuts, Rosie’s chocolate ‘doesn’t go’. David has undone his reputation as Tasteful Spice by overloading his meringue with cloves, a flavour last enjoyed back when it was the only dentistry alternative to tying one’s gammy tooth to the door and then slamming it. But at least his cake looks exquisite.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say so does Priya’s, despite Prue calling her blueberry buttercream 'a particularly nasty version of mauve'. You have no appreciation of muted tones, Prue. I can see it on a Farrow and Ball colour chart before the year is out.

Eagle-eyed viewers will notice Henry is wearing Helena’s cobweb brooch! This could be a nice tribute, or a horcrux through which Helena intends to make him do her bidding.

And no sooner do the judges clap eyes on Michael’s spiky nuts than he’s slagging off his own bake. 'There’s too much chocolate on the outside,' he tells them, which is the Bake Off equivalent of texting your date on your way to the bar to warn them your hair looks shit.

To be fair, he’s not wrong. His meringue has been 'sweating' beneath its heavy brown coat, much like me on the Central line for all of September.

It’s ok, Michael. We must all make sacrifices for style.

Glass half full

The technical challenge is a ‘verrine’ – layers of blancmange and jelly in a little glass, very much the kind of recipe your Nan would have used to impress the rotary club in 1973. Prue, who has been saving the containers from her Gü pots all year for this, is verry excited.

Each verrine must contain mango compote, coconut panna cotta, raspberry jelly, coconut and lime streusel and a sablé biscuit. In case your appetite perked up at the end there, please know that ‘sablé’ means ‘sand’.

'Wasn’t one of the children in the Sound of Music called Streusel?' asks Michael, which is an understandable mistake. You’re thinking of Reverend Sister Biscuity Crumbs, mate.

Every stage of the process requires chilling, which means the bakers can all take it in turns to make the same joke. Alice wins for 'I’d quite like to chill in a water bath.' Meanwhile Henry, still shilling proudly for the British Tie Association, has taken to cussing and calling his biscuits ‘darling’. It’s fun but it isn’t doing a lot to edge out what can only be described as his Extremely Mark Corrigan energy. Just say 'whoops-a-daisy', Henry. We can’t all be Super Hans.

There’s a frisson of tension when the bakers realise that their sablés are supposed to fit perfectly on the rim of the glass like a little edible lid, but disappointingly they all do. Then comes the hilarious slow-mo walk to the gingham altar, looking like a parental egg and spoon race. Sadly no verrine careens off and no sand biscuit bites the dust. In fact, they all look pretty great.

A delighted Alice is in first place with pristine verrines, David is second and Steph third. But Priya, our cat with nine lives, appears to have used up about four of them on her runny jelly. She’s in last place, followed closely by Michael, whose wobbly layers are a little too Captain Von Crapp.

'I feel like perhaps dessert week just isn’t for me,' he says. NONE OF THAT, THANK YOU MICHAEL.

Spheres of influence

Our showstopper challenge this week is a celebratory bombe, which sounds like the worst gift in the White House Secret Santa but is actually just a big round pudding.

The bakers’ bombes must feature one baked element and two other dessert elements, which means the return of an ingredient you curiously never hear a peep about the rest of the year: bavarois! How’ve you been pal? Taking some time off? At a yoga retreat with feuilletine and rough puff? Fair dos.

There’s another crucial element in this challenge, and that is jeopardy. Each flobbery layer has to be chilled or frozen separately, neatly plopped into a sponge cake casing and set again, leaving enough time to decorate the bombe beautifully at the end.

Rosie is making her parents a ruby wedding anniversary bombe, because it is less effort than finding something classy on Not On The High Street. Michael is paying homage to the Terry’s Chocolate Orange, and Alice is making a tiramisu bombe because she drinks a lot of coffee. Which… makes sense.

Two bakers are going maverick; Steph is boldly skipping the sponge shell in favour of pouring chocolate mirror glaze straight onto a dome of mousse, while at the other end of the genius spectrum, Henry has frozen all of his elements at the same time and must now perform a kind of keyhole surgery to extract three pieces of cardboard.

After a lot of thumb-twiddling and nervous mould-jiggling, it’s the moment of truth for the bombe squad.

Straight out the gate, Steph makes history by being crowned star baker for the third week in a row. Her mirror glaze is shiny, her bavarois rich and her mousse firm. 'It’s like you’ve been doing this for years,' says Paul. Only on Millennial Bake Off, where nobody is old enough to remember Opal Fruits, could this be legitimate praise.

Alice is right behind her, with a triumphant tiramisu bombe, but poor David’s chance of star baker is scuppered – again – by rubbery jelly. And while Henry has learned to stop worrying and love the bombe, his sponge is stodgy and his flavours bland. Though Prue doesn’t find any cardboard in her teeth so I suppose we have to be thankful for small mercies.

He’s not the only one in danger. Rosie’s ruby cake is 'clumsy', the birthday boy’s flavours are bombastic but his look is tack-tastic, and Priya has done virtually nothing wrong with her summer fruit bombe… but she’s not quite done enough right either.

And in the end, though she’s put up one of the most determined fights the tent has seen since Paul hung on to his professional integrity, it’s time to say see-ya to Priya. It's a tearful goodbye, with a sincere message for anyone who has ever felt a little bit stuck or lost in life. “If you just start with the things you really enjoy, you can’t go wrong,” she says.

Let's hope Helena and Michelle take her out raving.

Next week: something savoury, for the love of God.