The sound of mixers whipping up buttercream, the heat of 12 ovens, and the smell of some dessert you’ve never heard of: It can only be the return of The Great British Bake Off. (It’s worth pointing out here that The A.V. Club, like it always has in recaps, refers to the show by its proper British title, not its American one for Netflix.)
The tent is the same, and Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood are still here to cast judgment, but there’s a new presenter for the series’ fourteenth season in the form of the iconic Alison Hammond, who joins Noel Fielding. A well-known presence on daytime television in the U.K., Hammond’s likely best known elsewhere for her hilarious, giggle-filled interview with Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling for Blade Runner 2049 (or the clip of her accidentally pushing a scantily dressed guy into the water when jumping across a floating map).
Of course, she’s not the only new face in the tent; there are 12 bakers who’ll spend the next 10 weeks vying to be crowned the winner of Bake Off. Thankfully, this season has abolished “National Week,” so we won’t get anything as disastrous as Mexican Week from season 13, or season 11’s Japanese Week. But still, this very gentle reality television competition is sure to have a few tense moments to come.
And where better to begin than with cake. Let’s bake!
Signature
While part of Bake Off’s charm is that it’s reliable and you know what you’re getting, that’s not always a good thing. An example: The sketches are still around, and this week’s was a very unfunny couple of minutes titled “The Breadfather.” Let’s all ignore it ever happened, and just focus on how, when we finally get into the tent, Alison looks like a kid in a candy store.
The first task for the bakers is a vertical layer cake, which Paul describes as a bit like a “Swiss roll standing up.” It is exactly a Swiss roll, just turned sideways. Tasha, a 27-year-old from London who was a ski instructor in Japan and now works for a children’s charity, says she’s can’t help but think “why?” and I have to agree. This cake requires rolling of multiple layers of light, fluffy sponge, which means there’s a risk of cracking. And like always, if their cakes aren’t cool enough, there’s a chance that fillings will melt or seep out, and what’s left will be a mass of crumbs and buttercream.
There are, unsurprisingly, a lot of nerves in the air. Saku, a 50-year-old intelligence analyst from Hereford, looks so scared that Paul doles out a very uncharacteristic hug. Could Alison’s warm-heartedness already be rubbing off on the rest of the cast?
We get too-rapid introductions to our 12 bakers (it’s always seemed like a bit of a lost opportunity that this show doesn’t start with a baker’s dozen): Matty is a PE teacher, with an adorable smile; Rowan is the youngest contestant at 21 and making a play for best shirt of episode one; Amos still bakes at home with his mum; Abbi forages for her own ingredients and works on an organic farm; Dan grows his own rhubarb.
With so many bakers to attempt to get to know, there are some that don’t make an impression, and there’s not much time to focus on the bakes themselves, especially as there are no great disasters. Sure, Matty mucks up his buttercream twice, but he has enough coffee mascarpone cream to cover his cake without a panic, and the drama around Tasha’s decision to use genoise sponge, which can be fragile, feels unnecessarily heightened.
Everyone manages to cool their cakes so they can add their fillings and produce their sideways Swiss roll. None are a complete mess, although there are some that perhaps could be called rustic, if we were feeling unkind (which we’re not, because that is Paul and Prue’s job): Abbi’s foraged poppy seed cake is described by Prue as having an “informal cornucopia look,” while Tasha’s “looks terrible,” according to Paul, but he loves the flavors and textures.
Most of the bakers produce decent flavors, from Saku with her husband’s favorite cake to Dana’s salted caramel latte cake and Keith’s chocolate orange cake. No one comes out of this badly, which is the best way to start the show.
Technical
For the technical, Prue and Paul start with something kind, i.e. a bake people have actually heard of: a chocolate cake. And not just any chocolate cake but a recreation of the one covered in raspberries (with one missing) that appears in the opening credits of the show.
Two hours to make a two-layer chocolate fudge cake sounds pretty good for Bake Off. But the ganache needs to be the perfect temperature—too cold and it won’t go on neatly, too warm and it’ll melt off. Dana makes a mistake almost straight off the bat, putting in double the chocolate she needs, but just hoping for the best. There are, if we’re honest, worst mistakes to make.
The big dilemma is whether or not the ganache goes in the fridge. Some bakers opt to put it in; others think it’s better left on the counter. The latter probably come out of this the best. There are lots of dull-looking, split ganaches from those that went in the fridge.
At judgment time, Prue and Paul seem defeated by the amount of chocolate cake they’re going to have to eat even before they’ve started. There’s a line of people who’ll take the job from them if they’re not up to it.
Dana comes in 12th—the extra chocolate led to a dense texture—but it’s close between everyone, which is both the benefit and the drawback of having a task that isn’t really that challenging. Amos comes in second, with a “nice and shiny” cake that Prue doesn’t have any complaints about, while Dan and his massive shoulders come in first.
“It’s just cake at the end of the day,” says Dana, although she’s slightly choked up and understandably not enjoying the feeling of coming in last. I want to give her a good hug, because we all—even Dana—know that in the Bake Off tent, it’s never just cake.
Showstopper
Going into the showstopper, Paul and Prue have a number of bakers who could be named Star Baker, but Paul cruelly says there’s a “huge bunch” that could leave. That’s overly harsh, I think.
The bakers are tasked with making a cake shaped and decorated in the form of an animal of their choosing. Nothing has ever gone wrong before when the bakers have to make cakes in the shapes of animals or people, so this will be fine, I’m sure. As expected, the main risks here are structural and around being able to decorate their cakes to perfection.
There are lots of dogs in the works: Keith is recreating his aging poodle, while Dana is going for her cockapoodle, Dan is making his late dog Bruno, and Matty is going for the family cocker spaniel Marty. Where are all the cat people?
Paul doesn’t like the sound of Amos’ “dense sponge,” from which he’ll make a whale, and he’s right not to: Amos’ buttercream is too soft, and his cakes are too heavy, and the result is a leaning tower of cake that falls down during construction. He sticks it in the freezer and hopes for the cold to do its work.
Tasha, like in the first task, is going above and beyond, making six sponges that will come together to form a robin. At some point, I predict that Tasha will be told that she needs to strip things back a bit and not do too much. But this week, it works for her.
The biggest laughs come from Nicky’s beaver cake, because Bake Off’s presenters and judges can never resist turning into teenage boys. The beaver puns are overdone, but admittedly watching Alison get such joy out of them is funny.
The main challenge of construction seems to be timing, as the bakers rush to ice their cakes and give them the right flourishes. Dana is sensible enough to put gloves on while making their puffed rice mixture, but others are not so forward-thinking and no doubt waste some of their baking time trying to de-stickify (technical term) their hands.
Mid-build, all the cakes look like haunted versions of the animals that are being created. But by the end, only a few of them look like creatures you wouldn’t want to encounter on the street, while some look genuinely lovely.
If I was judging purely on looks, I’d give top marks to Christy’s duck, Josh’s Highland cow, Saku’s turtle (Paul says it’s style over substance, and I’m happy to fight him for being even slightly mean to Saku), Abbi’s Herdwick sheep, Tasha’s robin (which gets Paul’s first fake-out “I don’t like that… I love it” of the season), and Dan’s dog.
The rest of the cakes are mostly middling, neither so bad that they put the bakers in the drop zone nor so good that they have Prue and Paul gushing with praise.
The winner is Dan, but there were definitely a few who could have taken that spot. Going home is Amos, whose cards were marked as soon as his cake was cut open, and we all saw what looked like raw batter in the center where it’s been compressed. Amos is so emotional that he cries during his VT and has to walk it off, and I cry watching him.
It does seem unfair that anyone should go home in the first week. Yes, while the bakers should have the basics down, there’s no consideration given to the nerves they’re feeling and how working in a completely unfamiliar kitchen will affect them.
There are firm hugs all round for Amos, who will be much missed; I can’t wait for the closing credits of the final episode when I can find out what he’s been up since he left the tent. But for now, it’s goodbye.
Next up: Biscuit Week, and there’s a scandal the likes of which we haven’t seen since season four’s Custardgate.
Stray observations
- Join me for the rest of the season for these recaps and do share your thoughts on the bakers and the show in the comments. My qualifications are that I’m British, feel confident judging bakes I couldn’t make in a million years (I’ve never made a quiche that didn’t have a soggy bottom, but guess what—they’re still edible that way), and that this show is one of my three comfort watches. (The others are The Great Pottery Throwdown and The Great British Sewing Bee. They do what they say on the tin.)
- For those counting, this is the fourteenth season of the show in the U.K. I’ll be referring to seasons by their British numbers.
- Alison’s excitement is infectious, and you can tell she genuinely loves the show. Somehow she’s shown more enthusiasm and joy in this one episode than Noel has the entire time he’s been a presenter, and she’s drawing out the best in Prue, Paul, and Noel as well.
- It’s lovely seeing Alison and Noel learn some sign language, thanks to the presence of Tasha in the tent. Yes, the bar is very low.