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Welcome to the Eater round-up of Great British Bake Off 2019, as Paul Hollywood, Prue Leith, Sandi Toksvig, and Noel Fielding return to Channel 4 with the 10th series of cakes, puddings, breads, and inevitable recourse to terrible baking puns.
Great British Bake Off 2019 Episode 1 tackled cake, with a signature challenge covering fruit cakes, a technical challenge covering angel cake slices, and a showstopper covering birthday cakes. Contestant introductions were many, cutaways were rife, and there was an awful lot of abject feathering. Here, now, is Great British Bake Off 2019 Episode 1, (sort of) as it happened.
03:57: No mention shall be made of that Wizard of Oz intro. Sandi Toksvig once narrated the computer game adaptation of the Winnie the Witch picture books. Treachery. Noel Fielding is tasked with introducing Cake Week, and like everything else he says on voiceover, it sounds like he doesn’t quite believe what he’s reading. Anyway:
Weed, pizza and the Great British bake off
— JADE (@jadesykesxx) August 27, 2019
and with the return of the great british bake off I like to remember the time I met Paul Hollywood and told him I loved cake and he gave me the biggest and most threatening death glare I have ever seen a human being produce x
— sass (@sassholmes) August 27, 2019
04:44: How much is a “significant amount of dried fruit?” Only Paul knows. The Secret In His Blue, Far Too Blue Eyes.
05:00: Fielding has been taking hand gesture and intonation lessons from Gordon Ramsay.
05:43: Bleeder of the Week is Michael. The first cut is the deepest.
06:03: Amelia is making a Christmas cake, and is appropriately the first to be visited by the ghost of cakes past, Paul. Pour one out:
Gone but never forgotten #GBBO pic.twitter.com/4BvkHBQgYo
— Goth Detective (@emodashian) August 27, 2019
07:01: Five bakers are leaning into family recipes. Nothing like potentially dishonouring the forbears’ traditions on national TV. Michelle is making a Welsh rum cake, and says her husband thinks she looks like Noel Fielding. Mighty douche. Rosie, meanwhile, is concerned that everyone at work thinks she’s a crazy person for drying her own fruit in ... Where? The office? No. Wait. She’s a vet. No. Wait. She proves dough “in the warmth of her pet python Minnie’s vivarium.” Snake bread? Cancel the show, the winner is here: That’s Big Dough Energy.
10:22: Michael inadvertently cuts himself for the 30th time.
11:05: Foolhardy Manoeuvre That Will Quite Obviously Backfire As Soon As It Is Mentioned of the Week goes to Dan, who is adding extra fruit to his fruit cake at the last minute. Good night, Dan. Paul gives him the death stare.
12:05: “I love healthy baking,” David says as he ferociously grates his butternut squash with all the focus of Patrick Bateman. The squash is subbing in for butter:
The good thing about the technical challenge is the bakers are given all the ingredients and have to follow the recipe very closely, meaning it's impossible for David to put butternut squash in a cake this time. #GBBO
— innocent drinks (@innocent) August 27, 2019
12:54: “I’ll show him,” Dan says, as he puts his fruit cake in the oven. Oh Dan. It didn’t have to be this way.
13:30: Phil is putting a ring of marzipan in there. He drops a Nelson Muntz-esque “HA HA!” in his cutaway.
15:20: Alice uses cake to demonstrate coastal erosion at work. With molten icing on the horizon if the fruit cakes are too hot to sustain its solidity, she wins Inadvertent Global Warming Metaphor of the Week.
15:40: Jamie has an identical twin and his cutaway uses him in a terrifying trompe-l’œil, like all those mirror scenes in Us and Duck Soup and Mirrors. Cue Conspiracy Theory of the Week, kindly sponsored by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen:
My theory is that Jamie keeps forgetting things like eggs because he's so used to baking with his twin brother #GBBO
— Dr. Zoë Shacklock (@scifizoe) August 27, 2019
Theory. This isn’t Jamie and is his twin brother and that’s why he keeps making mistakes #GBBO pic.twitter.com/ji4ERP1XG9
— Kieran James Cleaves (@kieran_keek) August 27, 2019
maybe the real jamie is tied up in the cupboard and this is his twin sabotaging his dream #gbbo
— patrick sproull (@patrick_sproull) August 27, 2019
When Jamie and his twin did that freaky identical twin thing I nearly dropped my shop bought carrot cake #horror #GBBO
— Sarah Robinson (@sazzyrobnob) August 27, 2019
16:28: Helena lives like every day is Halloween. Halloween in January??? Her cake is both pumpkin AND maple, doubling down on seasonal drink flavours inflated by capitalism.
17:00 — 21:30: Fateful scrambled montage of cakes being removed from tins, icing running down sides, decorations collapsing, general pandemonium.
19:18: Dan’s cake is not done. Of course it isn’t done. He added extra fruit. It was written this way. The Foolhardy Manoeuvre That Will Quite Obviously Backfire As Soon As It Is Mentioned of the Week cannot be stopped.
Me: Can’t bake anything more complex than a Cornflake Cake
— jordan. (@jordancarroll_1) August 27, 2019
Also me: “Fucking hell he’s overwhisked that hasn’t he”#GBBO pic.twitter.com/kqlKXQSC6W
22:00: Signature challenge tiers
- God tier: Priya, Jamie, Henry, Steph, Michael
- Screams Christmas tier: Amelia
- Spicy tier: Phil, Helena
- Molten icing as a metaphor for global warming tier: Michelle
- Overboard with spices tier: Rosie, David, Alice
- Foolhardy Manoeuvre That Will Quite Obviously Backfire As Soon As It Is Mentioned of the Week tier: Dan
29:11: Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood’s Machiavellian schemes start off in earnest with a Genoese sponge. “You like a bit of cruelty,” says Prue.
33:03: Not much going on in the technical challenge. Everyone’s worried about timings. And the climate.
Since #GBBO revealed that Angel Cake can be used to teach erosion, I wonder what other cakes Geography teachers are overlooking?
— Mike Tyler ن (@MikeTylerSport) August 28, 2019
Maybe a bundt cake to teach calderas?
Layer cake for the MoHo discontinuity?
Fruit loaf for graded bedding?
35:30: Judging is blind and ranked from worst to best, but no time for that here...
36:30: Technical challenge tiers
- Like the feathering on this tier: Rosie, Henry
- Nearly accidental product placement with “exceedingly good cake” tier: Steph
- Pastel shades tier: Amelia
- “Flavours are there” tier: David, Alice, Michelle
- Many shades of tough tier: Phil, Priya
- Redemption from Foolhardy Manoeuvre That Will Quite Obviously Backfire As Soon As It Is Mentioned of the Week tier: Dan
- Still! Not! High! Enough! tier: Michael
- No buttercream, sorry tier: Helena
- Where’s the bottom tier, tier: Jamie
39:50: The showstopper is birthday cake. Pretty free rein. No real birthdays to speak of.
41:00: Paul Hollywood’s Kneady Sleazy Wheeze of the Week is inflicted on Helena, with his “fairy garden” mishearing.
43:15: Priya’s childhood featured an Easter bunny who lost his eggs.
45:00: Jamie forgets to add eggs to his cake mixture. Is he the Easter bunny who lost his eggs? Or:
Jamie should stay in bed and send his twin in for the showstopper. He can’t be any worse... #GBBO
— Ryan Love (@RyanJL) August 27, 2019
47:40: Snake chat. David had an albino Burmese python. Noel had a garter snake. Paul had a slow-worm. Make dickswinging comparisons at will.
49:30: More snake chat. Snake dough proving. Snake cake. Snakes wrapping themselves around computers. Reptile of the Week.
53:37: Phil’s wanking his nose cone.
55:21: Collective anguish descends. Violins play. Panic rises. And, from the distance, a clarion of truth sounds:
The absolute cheek, there’s 13 brits in this tent and not ONE has made a caterpillar cake, at least 5 of you bastards are lying #GBBO
— Lishaaaa (@getingthebread) August 27, 2019
56:00: Showstopper challenge tiers
- Snake tier: David
- Prue is dribbling and also it’s faultless cake tier: Michelle
- Good job with your fairy garden tier: Helena
- Good tier: Michael, Alice
- Where’s the passion fruit tier: Dan
- I can remember 1969 tier: Phil
- Slightly drier tier: Priya
- Saved by the blackberry tier: Henry
- Paul hates it but will only tell you with his eyes and not his words tier: Amelia
- Was this your twin tier: Jamie
- Paul and Prue don’t agree tier: Rosie
- Great concept, weak execution tier: Steph
Star baker: Michelle, a slight surprise — Henry was perhaps favourite, but things went badly on day two.
Going home: Dan, victim of the first Foolhardy Manoeuvre That Will Quite Obviously Backfire As Soon As It Is Mentioned of the Week.
Running theme: Snakes.