Now this is the kind of (very light) drama that we tune in to this show for. (Do you tune in to Netflix or do you just kind of find your way there through a series of subliminal motivations and calls on Siri to play something soothing?) The dramatic music swells as the bakers tap their puddings out of their molds — will they stand upright or will they wobble into a puddle like me whenever I scroll through Sandro’s Instagram stories? That is it. That is the only struggle. We don’t need crazy challenges or silly themed weeks. Just let us find out whether the bakers that we have come to love succeed or fail.
After the disaster of Mexican Week, which fans hated, Dessert Week is a bit of a triumph. The challenges are easy to understand but complicated enough that you aren’t sure who will be able to pull them off. Well, we all know that Janusz and Maxy will, but some of these other bakers should have been sent home last week. Just cull all the filler contestants. Turn it into something like the Red Wedding, but the blood is really the raspberry jam for a Victoria Sponge.
The first challenge is for everyone to make eight steamed puddings for the judges. This might confuse some American viewers because it is “Dessert Week” and many Americans think that English people call all desserts puddings. That is not necessarily the case. Puddings usually refer to this exact type of dish, a steamed cake made in a mold with stuff poured all over it. A typical English dessert like Eton Mess, for instance, might not be called a pudding, so they’re not entirely interchangeable.
The most classic of these puddings is sticky toffee pudding, or STP as it is referred to in my household. The three best things about living in the U.K. are, in this order, the NHS, Gogglebox, and sticky toffee pudding, which is a boiled cake shellacked in a caramel sauce. It is usually served with a dollop of ice cream and is available in almost every pub in the land. Like pizza, even when it is bad, it is still pretty good. Maxy is the only one who chooses this classic and, of course, everyone loves it. I don’t know if that is because everything she makes turns to gold, like Rumpelstiltskin with a KitchenAid, or because it’s hard to do wrong.
As the judges are going around the room, Paul keeps telling Dawn that she reminds him of his mother. “I’m not that much older than you,” she reminds the gray-haired trickster. Thank you, Dawn. “You remind me of my mother” is sort of like “You’re not a great kisser” or “I don’t think that’s a tumor,” things that no one ever wants to hear and are hurtful even in the right context. When Dawn finally serves up her dish, it looks like bleached cow pies with some flowers on top. The judges say it is delicious, though, or maybe Paul just doesn’t want to upset Mummy.
I’m not nearly as worried about Dawn as I am Compost Carole, who tells the judges that she has burned her plums. I had my plums burned once in a bikini-waxing accident and it was very unpleasant, so I completely understand how she feels. I worry about poor Carole, whose tap doesn’t appear to be working, so the water in her steam bath isn’t hot enough, which means her plum puddings are undercooked. She is the one who turns her moulds over and the puddings collapse like dehydrated teens who have waited on the curb all night before a Harry Styles concert. She does say that her dish will be accompanied by “Chanchilly crème” rather than “Chantilly cream,” so at least she doesn’t mangle only the names of Mexican words.
Carole’s is the only real disaster, though the judges also hate Kevin’s clootie dumplings, which is funnily enough the drag name of Scottish James who went home last week. Paul says that these biscuit-looking delicacies filled with whiskey-soaked fruit (which was Scottish James’s backup drag name) aren’t uniform enough. Yeah, they’re made with your hands. That is the point. Even if they’re delicious, though, they didn’t seem to fit the bill. Syabira has a typically gorgeous dessert with her puddings that are watermelon flavored and made to look like split-open watermelons complete with the seeds. They’re gorgeous, but Paul says they taste too much like fake watermelon flavoring. I get that the bakers want to do something different, but there is a reason why you don’t see many melon-flavored desserts, and this is just it.
Abdul starts off the week great with a fig-and-date concoction, Sandro is also tops with his cherry crumbles, and Janusz seems like he breaks even with his piña colada puddings that Paul says taste like suntan lotion. (You know that Paul has eaten it before. You just know.)
I absolutely loved this week’s technical, which tells the bakers they need to make a lemon-meringue pie but gives them absolutely no recipe. (“The method” in an English recipe are the steps to prepare it, if that wasn’t clear.) This is the sort of basic dessert that everyone in that tent should have made at least once. Even if they haven’t, they should know that it is a short-crust shell with lemon-curd filling and meringue on top. They should be able to whip all of these up in — cut to Noel and Matt doing a bit where they are juggling lemons and not really paying attention to the timer — IDK, some amount of time.
Of course, this favors people like Janusz who have made one before, but even Dawn, who says she makes a lemon-meringue pie every week, manages to mess it up. But we never understand why. Did Dawn measure her filling out wrong? Did she forget how long it takes to make the crust? Was she just plain old nervous? It’s hard to say. Syabira is more clearly struggling since she has never made one before and does what every one of us would do on a test they haven’t studied for: She starts looking around the room seeing who she can crib off of.
Everyone is nervous about how their bakes will turn out, and they’re doing the classic Bake Off/Baking Show thing of lying on the floor looking in the little window at their creation. But not our Compost Carole. “I’m not getting on the floor because I’d never get up again,” she says derisively over a cup of tea. Maybe she should have gotten down, because she is third from last, just above a devastated Dawn and, unsurprisingly, Syabira. Janusz comes in first with a pie that looks right off of a recipe card. (Let Grandpa Moylan tell you about how we used to do things before the internet.) Abdul and Maxy are second and third, and the divisions of those likely to make the final and those whose spatulas should be in their carry-on luggage gets starker and starker each week.
Paul clearly elucidates this as we prepare for the showstopper. He says Janusz, Maxy, Sandro, and Abdul are at the top. Why are you gagging so? They bring it to every ball. Everyone else — Dawn, Kevin, and Carole — is in the bottom. He does give Syabira a special carve out, but admits she’s having a bad week.
It doesn’t get any better for the bottoms when they have to make a mousse-based dessert with a “surprise” inside. They say the surprise can be anything. Even, like, a chisel baked into a cake like in old cartoons? No? Well then it can’t be anything, can it? Matt and/or Noel tell us that the most difficult part of this challenge is using gelatin: not enough and it will be runny and not hold, too much and it’s like Flubber in the Eddie Murphy remake of The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps. I like these challenges way more than last week’s because they aren’t overcomplicated and let the bakers show off their creativity and skill, but this illustrates one of my problems with the show in general: If you need a bunch of gelatin to achieve an incredible feat of construction, then you shouldn’t be judged on how it tastes.
All of the creations look amazing (with the exception of Dawn’s, which looks like the corpses of a fleet of mushrooms covered in Fluffernutter), but a vast majority of them have a flaw either with the gelatin or the cake “surprise” inside. That’s the sacrifice the bakers have to make: either achieve the feat or have it taste good. It is often too much to have both.
The only one who pulls it off is Sandro, whose globe-shaped project Prue literally says at the outset he won’t be able to pull off. They love his white-chocolate mousse, his Prosecco jelly, and the earth’s crust hidden inside. There is even a tiny Sandro that lives on an island, but it looks like there is room enough for two on that island and I am ready to give it all up and just live in Castaway bliss with my imaginary husband forever. Janusz gets probably the second-best critique for his, which looks like if a drag queen needed a cake for a birthday that’s also on Pride. It does appear a little similar to last week’s masterful dragonfruit cake, with a pink, drippy top and little dots all over the side, but both look amazing so who cares.
Everyone else’s, though, has a problem. Abdul’s probably looks the best, with a nebula-themed mirror glaze that looks like something Marvel’s CGI department would create for the next Guardians of the Galaxy movie. But that top is too rubbery and the curd inside has too much gelatin. Maxy, whose gorgeous cake conceals a sunset inside, also succumbs to overly gelatinous curd. Kevin’s cake, inspired by his dog and looking like a Wallace and Gromit movie, has a banana with too much gelatin and a tough cake in the shape of a bone.
The three up for elimination are all pretty bad. Syabira struggles with hers from the get-go, with an intricate bee-shaped cookie on the top that crumbles and then floats away when she tries to submerge it in jelly. Also, it’s a melon-flavored cake. You think she would have learned her lesson from the watermelon puddings, but no. Still, I think her skill throughout the competition saved her.
Dawn’s is the messiest of the bunch, with yellow daisies that wilt before they’re even put in and a mushroom surprise that buckles under the weight of the dessert. The judges say it tastes amazing, which I find hard to believe, but I have definitely put grosser things in my mouth.
Compost Carole’s actually looks pretty good. She references Fanny Cradock, who was like the Julia Child of England in the ’60s and ’70s (and whose “Personal Life” section of her Wikipedia is definitely worth a read), and the strawberry inside is probably the best surprise of the three. However, yet again, the cakes are tough and there’s too much gelatin.
Sandro, unsurprisingly, becomes the first non-Maxy or -Janusz to take home star baker. Meanwhile, Paul Hollywood must really love his mother because somehow Dawn survives the guillotine this week and our Compost Carole goes home, leaving Dawn and Kevin next in line for our death march to the finale. But I wouldn’t count Syabira out, as long as she gets it through her melon that weak-flavored cakes won’t cut it.
