“Good luck everybody!” said the four remaining bakers to each other, as the ninth episode of this year’s Bake Off commenced. This was an outward display of camaraderie in a high-pressure situation, but in truth the semi-finalists were now locked in mortal combat. Their weapons: piping bags full of crème pâtissière. Things were gonna get messy.
The signature bake
As the tension continued to build, the bakers were tasked with producing 24 savoury palmiers, with “clearly defined layers” and “perfectly cooked pastry”. Selasi sprang from the starting blocks with his typical Ghanaian confidence. “I’ve never made them before,” he said. “Should be alright.”
From the look of Candice’s rather corpulent red onion and cambozola constructions and Andrew’s herby treble clefs, the boat was evidently being pushed out. But Andrew was the first to come a cropper, as he gazed forlornly at a rather miserable looking slab of puff pastry. “I’m losing confidence by the second,” he said. After an hour, he could gaze forlornly no longer; he slung it in the bin and started again. As the final bake commenced and trays were shunted into ovens, we’d not seen four people this nervous since Zayn left One Direction. “Are you about to cry?” asked Mel of Selasi. “Nah,” said Selasi. “We’ll leave that to Andrew.”
The technical challenge
The technical challenge involved producing a savarin, a yeasted sponge cake soaked through with syrup. “Unknown territory,” said Andrew – who we swear appears to be getting younger with every successive bake – but all four bakers found the going tough in an exceedingly warm tent that almost seemed designed to sabotage their decorative cream toppings. Jane was distraught to meet her nemesis, caramel – but despite crystallising the stuff several times over, she somehow managed to emerge the victor. Selasi, trailing last, was now in real trouble. Could he hang on for a place in the final?
The showstopper
The end of the showstopper saw possibly the most disorderly scenes ever seen in Bake Off, as the plucky contestants flung fondant to and fro in order to coat their sponges evenly. “The first two are fun,” said Andrew, “the remaining 34 are an exercise in endurance.”
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