The Great British Baking Show Recap: Buns in the Oven
The Great British Baking Show
Botanicals Week Season 14 Episode 6 Editor’s Rating «Previous Next» « Previous Episode Next Episode The Great British Baking Show
Botanicals Week Season 14 Episode 6 Editor’s Rating «Previous Next» « Previous Episode Next EpisodeI think that most of us at the start of this week are just like adorable gym teacher Matty, who says, “I had to ask [my fiancée] Lara what botanicals are and Google it.” He finishes this statement with a shrug that says, “When I found out, I was totally underwhelmed.” Same, Matty. I know what a botanical is; it’s basically Herbal Essences, right? You know the shampoo that gives you an orgasm. That’s totally it. No, according to Prue and Paul, they are flavors that derive from flowers, plants, trees, or barks. Um, okay. Isn’t that, like, everything other than meat or dairy? Are botanicals vegan? I don’t even know anymore.
The first challenge is to make 12 spicy buns, and at this point, I swear to Queen Camilla that they are making up these challenge ideas just for all the puns that are going to go around the tent. Noel starts us off with a great one, “This morning, Paul started examining my buns, and he was disappointed.” Home run, Mr. Fielding OBE. Sorry, he won’t get that. Replace “home run” with, I don’t know, a soccer home run. Sorry, a football home run. Man, Botanicals Week totally has me off my game.
Most people are making some kind of cinnamon bun; there’s also lots of cardamom, which is cinnamon for fancy people. It’s like the aioli of the spice world. What I like about this season is that everyone has enough time. We see the bakers working diligently and not without challenges, but no one is rushing like the Tasmanian Devil throwing plates and stand mixers and random lemons through the tent, breaking things. That, after all, is Noel’s job. Everyone finishes on time, everyone completes the assignment, and, for a change, most of the bakers do quite well.
At the top of the class is last week’s star baker Cristy, who made maple, pecan, and cinnamon-spiced buns that looked just like zebra stripes when they were cut in half. The judges love them, and for a second, I thought Paul was warming up his sausage fingers for a handshake. Also good is Tasha, whose “Yuletide” buns combine mulled wine and egg whites, which combine to make a dishwater grey color that Allison describes as rank. But the maroon color on top was mesmerizing, and Prue said they tasted just like Christmas. I, personally, have never eaten a Christmas, but I would give it a shot if it looked like those buns. My girl Saku made cinnamon buns because cinnamon is Sri Lankan. Ninety percent of the world’s cinnamon is made in her native country; no wonder she wants to celebrate it. Paul and Prue say she got the balance of her spices perfectly right.
The only one who was really terrible in the signature is our adorable, befuddled Matty, who attempted to make a spiced hot cross bun. They were one a penny, two a penny, hot crossed buns. (Yes, we all learned how to play that on the recorder.) Paul says they were underproved, just as Allison said they would be. Listen to Allison! Well, unless she calls for a group hug. I have never identified with anyone more than when she called everyone into her embrace, and Noel just sat at a table in the corner, asking no one to touch him.
The technical is to make a thyme-infused lemon-drizzle cake. See again. They’re just setting up the thyme/time jokes for Noel and Allison. Anyway, a lemon drizzle isn’t that popular in America, but it is literally everywhere in England. Every coffee shop and museum café worth anything will have one, but one with thyme? Ain’t nobody got thyme for that.
The challenge is mostly uneventful, other than Matty trying to crystalize lemon peel and thyme and making a mixture that looks somewhere between tatar sauce and paste that a kindergartener has already put up his nose. All the cakes come out of their tins nicely, and everyone finishes with plenty of time. It’s like a walk in the park.
But don’t say that to Tasha, Dana, or my girl Saku, who all ended up at the bottom of the pack. The win was between Josh and Cristy, who were also excellent in the signature. Cristy pulls out the win. Is she a dark horse? Is Cristy going to come from behind and take this whole trophy? Maybe her mediocre early performance was just due to nerves, and she finally hit her stride.
Well, I thought that until the showstopper, where it all fell to bits for our Cristy. The challenge was to make a layered dessert with a significant baked element using florals for both taste and design. That essentially means that everyone put hibiscus and elderflower in their desserts. Only Dana tries the dreaded rose, which someone attempts every season, and Paul Hollywood throws soap on a rope at them, and they never recover. Elderflower is a very popular flavor in England (sorry, “flavour”), especially in summertime drinks like Elderflower lemonade. It tastes like, well, elderflower. It’s hard to describe. Maybe it is the one true botanical.
I have never met a dessert I didn’t like (well, except tiramisu, and she knows what she did), but this kind of made my stomach turn. It’s like wet sponges surrounded by jellies and jams and weird flowers made out of gelatin that you probably could eat, but why would you want to?
When the judges come over to Tasha, she says she wants to sign what she’s making because she’s unsure of how to pronounce some of the words. Oh, Tasha. Your pronunciation is perfect. We’d all forgive you if you couldn’t get out hibiscus. Anyway, she’s making a ten-layer dessert, and it’s the kind of undertaking that will either make her the star of the tent or send her home. When she drops the highly decorated Joconde sponge on the floor, she says, “That’s okay; it was only my backup cake.” What? She’s doing ten layers and has enough time to do backups? This lady is a machine! Still, she says she’s become the lady who is trying to do too much and who she would shout at on the TV if she was watching at home. Yes, she has, because I’m shouting at her to stop.
But we have to talk about Cristy’s disaster. She was making a cake with a white chocolate mold around it. We already know that white chocolate is absolute garbage, and Paul Hollywood thinks it is too hot in the tent for her to use it. When she takes it out of the mold, the side of it cracks, and Cristy goes into a spiral that is so deep she waves at that submergible, looking for the Titanic on her way down. (Nope, not too soon!) She bursts out into tears and needs to start another one. As she’s stirring, Allison comes over and tells her to cool down and takes over. Miraculously, she finishes a second one and gets her cake to the judges just in time. Everyone is rushing to comfort her when she actually makes it work. Poor Cristy! She just needs a bit more faith in herself.
When it comes to the judging, she tries to explain what went wrong, and Paul just says, “Stop!” Yes, Cristy. You don’t need excuses. You don’t need explanations. You finished, it’s all good. They like the dessert enough. Prue says she was on her way to something perfect, but her white-chocolate coating was too thin. See. I told you. Garbage.
Tasha’s, of course, turns out to be a triumph, with elderflowers drawn on that undropped sponge and everything a delightful lilac color. See, even that is botanical. Prue says it’s a heavenly triumph and loves her combination of raspberry and hibiscus in her mousse. Josh’s dish looks absolutely perfect, with lady fingers all the way around, though there is a little break in them. Prue does her best to excuse it. He also has an amazing-looking jelly flower on top, which I wouldn’t put in my mouth but I would use as a paperweight. Paul and Prue say both the flavors and the setting are spot on. Naturally, after a very strong week, he goes on to win, possibly only because Cristy’s shame spiral got the best of her.
As for the struggle bus, it has three riders this week. Our boy Matty was aiming for his favorite summer cocktail: prosecco, elderberry, and blackberry. His mirror-glazed maroon cake with a few stray roses looks nice enough, but definitely something homemade, not something that is at the Bake Off/Baking Show level.
Dana made a gorgeous box out of isomalt and dried flowers to put her cake in. Everyone was awed but not so awed when they tasted the cake. It was supposed to be hibiscus, rose, and elderflower with white-chocolate (barf) mousse, but both Paul and Prue say they can’t taste anything at all. Our girl Saku is also on the bubble. She made an Earl Grey cheesecake, which I thought was a good way to get that botanical taste, but the judges say they only tasted the ginger in the other layers and weren’t getting anything else. She did make an amazing jelly flower, though.
It is Dana who goes home for the ultimate sin: no flavor at all. At the beginning of the episode, she said she was looking for a handshake, to be first in the technical, or to win star baker. Sadly, none of that transpired, but at least all of us — and Matty! — know what botanicals are now.
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