It’s week five and all odds and eyes are on Ian, who by being crowned star baker three weeks in a row has somehow gone from Mr Nice Pie to the Marquee’s resident Machiavelli. Overnight he’s acquired both status and a swagger, like the girl in year 10 whose name nobody knew until she dry humped a former Pop Idol contestant on a Young Enterprise away day and was subsequently voted Most Likely To Succeed.
‘All the other bakers want to break my fingers, but that’s something I’ve just go to live with!’ he chuckles.
Where did this COME from, Ian? We thought you were a gentle, homespun house husband with a well-tended herb garden, not an Apprentice contestant crossed with a walking smirk.
While Ian’s tooting his own piping bag, the others are plotting his downfall. Nadiya (super power: faces) wants to ‘knock him off the top’ and Alvin (super power: pathos) hopes to destroy him through nervous laughter alone. Meanwhile Tamal (super power: aesthetics) has had a haircut, so we must pause while the lustier portion of the nation’s viewers take stock, evaluate and confirm that they definitely still would.
Then he uses ‘pants’ as an adjective and we’re forced to go through the whole process again.
Sugar? Nahh, honey honey
Can you hear that? That’s the sound of overpriced organic shops across the land dusting off their bags of unbleached sprout flour. It’s the episode they’ve all been waiting for: free-from week!
This means sugar-free, gluten-free and dairy-free; catering for food allergies, intolerances and anyone who still believes enough coconut oil will turn them into a Hemsley sister.
Endearingly, Paul and Mary’s grasp on the free-from world is about on par with when your gran listens patiently to your speech about veganism then serves you up a ham sandwich. For the signature bake, a simple cake challenge, sugar is out – but honey, agave nectar, molasses and fruit syrup are in. So that’s fine, then! A rose by any other name still tastes as much like diabetes, as I believe Shakespeare once said.
Mat and Paul are making sugar-free carrot cake (or, salad?) while Ian’s hoping Paul Hollywood enjoys a lovely pear as much as reputation suggests. Preferring glutes to gluten, Ugne is unsurprisingly pretty au fait with the world of alternative ingredients – but Mary’s face on hearing about quinoa flour is the same one you imagine she might pull if they brought in rationing on colourful blazers. Nobody tell her about Paleo.
Hurrah, Tamal’s been cadging more syringes from work! It’s fine, it’s not like the NHS is in trouble or anything. He’s injecting his polenta cake with fruit syrup, and demonstrating that while he’s definitely great at anaesthetising, he’s maybe less good at sums. ‘It’s 50% grapefruit juice, 50% blood orange juice and some honey, too,’ he says. ‘So… it’s not 50% of the others. Arrgh, maths.’
You can imagine groggily forgiving him after coming round halfway through an appendectomy, can’t you? ‘It was meant to be one part etomidate to two parts methohexital, but I used a glug of vanilla extract instead. Arrgh, maths!’
Meanwhile, Alvin has finished his single-layer pineapple upside-down cake a clear 30 minutes ahead of schedule. ‘I’m worried that it might be too simple,’ he says, looking nervously on like the ghost at the feast.
We’re all worried it might be too simple, Alvin. Normal Norman from last year is at home, worrying it’s too simple.
Onto judging, and it’s happened! Ian is DOWN! Or at least, his cake is bland and everyone else is doing a really good job of hiding their glee. Guess you WEREN’T sweet enough already, eh Ian? Ugne’s collapsed chocolate mountain is another free-from fail, and not even a spring of flowers can save it.
Nadiya’s naked cake looks beautiful but her sponge is too dry, Flora’s looks gorgeous but her cake is too wet, and Mat’s looks a mess but tastes good enough to warrant the lesser-spotted Hollywood backpeddle.
But it’s Alvin who shocks everyone, not least himself, when it turns out his super-simple bake has actually earned him some agave nectar points. ‘That is superb,’ says Paul. ‘You’ve made a cracking cake,’ agrees Mary. Are we witnessing the Bake Off finally catching onto normcore?
For pitta’s sake
Time for the technical, and it’s another basic bake: gluten-free pitta bread.
Considering this is bread that’s a) meant to be flat; and b) used mainly just as a vehicle for hummus, you’d think it wouldn’t be that difficult. But you would be WRONG, obviously, because our bakers are in a right flap trying to get their flaps right.
The gluten-free dough is sticky and difficult to knead, nobody knows how long to prove it for, and there’s a whole lot of confusion around the shaping and baking too. All of it, in fact – it’s ALL hard. A group of people haven’t looked this nervy on stools since Westlife’s farewell tour.
Flora and Ian’s pittas are long and thin, Tamal’s are round and fat; you get the sense that the posh contestants are at a disadvantage for having less recently patronised a kebab shop.
Alvin has only eaten pitta bread once, and reckons it looked ‘like a triangle’. Think those were probably Doritos, mate.
After a tense montage of our intrepid contestants repeatedly burning their fingers (‘hot pitta is hot’, put it on a fridge magnet), the judges are greeted by a table of anemic moccasins! Sorry, gluten-free pitta bread. This has the distinction of being probably the least appetising technical challenge in Bake Off memory, including series four’s weird pudding that looked like a brain.
Top of the flops is a triumphant Nadiya, with Flora and Paul the only other bakers who’ve managed to create proper open pockets. ‘Gosh, there’s room for all sorts of things in there!’ cries Mary, prising open a doughy crevice while Mel and Sou-vlaki bite their tongues.
Meanwhile Tamal, Ugne and Ian are pita panned, and it’s poor Alvin who comes in bottom. Maybe you should have followed your heart and made them triangular, Al. It would have given you an edge.
Rolly, rolly good
Someone must have tipped off the judges that the only way to make something popular in 2015 is to put the words ‘You know you’re a ’90s child if you remember…’ in front of it, because for this week’s showstopper Paul and Mary have reached far, far back into the chest freezer of time and pulled out a classic: the Arctic roll.
Except for some incomprehensible reason (copyright? Fear of offending the polar bears?) they’re calling them ‘ice cream rolls’ instead. Mmm, used to love a nice bit of ice cream roll! While playing with my Pickamoon cards and listening to The Splice Gals.
The Arctic component has to be dairy-free, and so most bakers are using coconut milk as the base of their ice cream. This has lead to a slew of tropical-themed puds, particularly from Ian and Paul who have both simultaneously realised you can use the word ‘desert’ to make a pun on – wait for it – dessert! I’m a week ahead of you there, boys, but nobody’s keeping score.
All sympathy with Ugne now, because Hollywood’s up to his old tricks again. Last week, he claimed he’d never tried pomegranate molasses. This week, he’s pretending that peanut butter and grape jelly is an outré flavour combo. REALLY, Paul? Have you never watched an American kids’ TV show? Or was your Stateside stint in 2013 so traumatic that you’ve blocked all memory of anything eaten west of Cornwall?
Then Prison Paul suddenly becomes Pervy Paul, as we have to watch him lovingly crafting a pair of pink fondant breasts. They’re attached to a pink fondant lady who’s going to be sunbathing on top of his pudding, but still – you can almost hear Disgusted of Norfolk writing into Points Of View.
I, on the other hand, am choosing to see Paul’s bikini sculpture as a powerful statement, designed to piss Protein World right off.
‘Are you soft, squishy and made entirely from sugar? Congrats, you’re beach-body ready!’
Freezer: jolly good fellow
Time to wrap this challenge up with a little rolling news coverage… Tamal’s cracked his sponge, Alvin’s cake is too small for his ice cream and Flora’s employing the time-old philosophy: if in doubt, whack a bit of gold leaf on top.
Ugne’s broken with convention (NEVER BREAK WITH CONVENTION, UGNE) and is wrestling with a log of slop. 'It’s got jam inside the ice cream? Might that stop it setting?' asks Sue, stopping just short of doing a Harry Hill side-eye to the camera. Sue, the words you were looking for are: ‘I don’t think it’s ready for this jelly.’ Come on, love, you’re phoning it in.
Poor Mat has got the wrong end of the stick and made a shonkily-striped Swiss roll, which looks so sad that he’s assembling it on the floor out of embarrassment. He’s Fireman Sham.
Time for Mary and Paul’s icy blues to cast judgement. It’s success all round for the topical trio, and there’s good news from Underdog Central, too – Alvin’s buko pandan ice cream is more like buko pandaaaang (in the good sense) and Nadiya’s henna-inspired rolls are a hit.
But Ugne’s PB&J needs the AA, because it’s ended up looking like a road accident. Flora’s mighty bûche has fallen flat, and Mat’s accidentally squeezed all his ice cream out. ‘The idea was to just roll it once, to keep the ice cream in,’ explains Paul, with the labored air of the foreman at the leaning tower of Pisa.
‘Yeah,’ says Mat. ‘That makes sense now.’
In the end though, it’s poor Ugne who gets the cold shoulder – she went big, and now she has to go home. We’ll miss your maverick ways, Ugne! But don’t dwell on your failures. In the immortal words of someone who had better luck with freezing stuff: let it go.
Let it go.
Next week: Ahhh, flake out! Le pastry week, c’est chic.
Like this? Then you might also be interested in:
Arlette’s Call The Whole Thing Off: The Great British Bake Off Episode Two
Are You Bready For Love?: The Great British Bake Off Episode Three
Gone With The Windtorte: The Great British Bake Off Episode Four
Follow Lauren on Twitter @LaurenBravo
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.