Margo Leadbetter

I’m one of the few people who wasn’t blown away by the book. I thought it had a strong first third and I loved the historical aspects but thought it lost steam as it went on and kind of ended with a whimper instead of a bang. TBH, I read mostly non-fiction, although I’m trying to read more fiction, but clearly sweeping multi-generational family sagas aren’t my thing. That being said, I’m looking forward to seeing how this transfers to the screen.

Nadiya’s was first, for Chocolate Week I think. The body was puffed rice treats and the feathers were made out of blue and green modeling chocolate. And I’m pretty sure they tasted the body since I remember a big wedge being cut out of it. (ETA: Just checked the ep and they did indeed taste it.) Candice’s was very similar and she got a lot of flack for it, with people accusing her of copying Nadiya.

I stopped watching GBBO when Matt came on board because I found him so off-putting and un-funny (hasn’t changed) but my daughter recommended I check out this season because the contestant pool was so good and I’m glad I did. Just finished bingeing yesterday. I’m sorry but not sorry to see Juergen go. He reminded me a lot S3’s Brendan, who I thought was an excellent technical baker but just seemed to be lacking…soul for lack of a better word. Personality-wise they were very similar as well and while it shouldn’t have had any bearing on their standing in the competition, I never quite warmed to either. As far as his elimination over the others, while his showstopper centerpiece was much more complex than some and wasn’t made out of rice puff treats like others, aside from aesthetics, I wonder how much those structures factored into the final judging. I guess as long as it was made out of something edible, taste really didn’t matter. IIRC, I don’t remember seeing anyone actually taste them (which they did with Nadia’s rice puff peacock). But if aesthetics were the determining factor, he definitely had the edge over Guiseppe’s extremely simplistic showstopper and Chigs’s somewhat clumsy tree, although his gate did look quite burnt. I actually thought it was going to be Guiseppe who’d be eliminated because his showstopper was so simple and the green so in-your-face. I laughed when Chigs said his apples were pink lady apples. Much like S3’s James (still my all-time fave contestant) when he said his derelict barn showstopper was just what he intended, it was a good save. (Although I think John is still salty that it won over his Colosseum.) Of the two Rubys, Ruby T was just exhausting and not fun to watch. Ruby B and Crystelle are outsized personalities with BIG reactions who ARE fun to watch. But none of the three ever struck me as not being genuine and I side-eye anyone who accuses them of trading on their looks to get where they are. (FTR though, I do remember S2’s Rob, arguably one of the series’ best looking contestants but a train-wreck from the get-go, being accused of making it as far as he did because of his looks.) This season, I think all three are worthy finalists and I’ll be happy with whoever wins.

Sura, who won praise for her whipped cream, put her cakes in the freezer to cool them down.

I thought it was pretty clear without a lot of explanation that he wasn’t being penalized. They judged him on the one cake that survived and said the caramel was overdone so it wasn’t like the missing ones were miraculously going to have better caramel. There have been a few accidents over the years and the judges have been pretty good about taking them into account. UK S3’s Dani (who I liked a lot until she turned out to be such a Bitter Betty post-show) dropped almost all of her bakes in episode and was certain that she’d be eliminated for it, but IIRC they praised her flavors, etc. based on the one that survived. And S2’s Rob had a cake crash to the floor that Paul helped him salvage and he also survived (long past when he should have). On the other hand, when Iain binned his Baked Alaska, they had no option but to eliminate him since there was nothing to judge. The colors of the Battenbergs were really off putting to me. I don’t mind oddly colored food but some of them were practically glowing. The showstoppers were kind of doomed to fail because of the time frame. Even on the Food Network challenges, they had more time and most of the cakes still looked unfinished. There was no way a group of amateur bakers was going to do much better so kudos to them for doing as well as they did. The time factor was definitely to blame for the bust of Lupita Nyong’o looking more like Maz Kanata than anything. I nearly forgot this was back on and then almost decided not to watch because I really felt like it was running out of steam after last season, but I’m glad I did. It’s still the nicest show on TV and the contestants are almost always a delight. Paul is okay and I do like Pru. Noel, who I knew from Boosh, IT Crowd, Buzzcocks and Big Fat Quiz, totally surprised me. I really had my doubts but his whacked out humor just works—well, most of the time anyway. I knew a little about Matt before but he hasn’t made much of an impression on me yet so I’ll reserve judgment.

All I could think of when I saw that hat was Lime Cat.

This was definitely one of the most difficult hours of television I've ever seen. I probably knew about Aberfan since I was 12 when it happened, but it faded from memory in the intervening years. As soon as I saw the opening scenes, combined with the fact that it was Wales, my mind immediately went to some kind of mining disaster (I've seen "How Green Was My Valley" too many times—and talk about a gut-wrencher, that'll reach down your throat, wrench out your guts, throw them on the floor and stomp all over them.) Still, I wasn't prepared for what came and it was shattering. I'm a big-time crier but as I watched, I was so numbed by the scope of this tragedy that I was dry-eyed, and it wasn't until later, when I had time to process it, that I choked up. So in that regard, I could understand the Queen's seemingly unemotional response, and that single tear, obvious and cliched as it was, made sense to me.

What makes the diss on the Black Forest cake even more baffling is that it was the theme for the first signature in Nadiya’s season. Not in the “let’s throw it back to the 70s” sense, but as “let’s see your take on a perennial favorite.” And I think almost every season has had a least one baker doing a variation of same, without any snide comments from the judges, who are, once again, consistent only in their inconsistency. Based on most of the comments I’ve seen, most people consider David a worthy winner and indeed, he was. If anything, they may have thought he’d once again, put out beautiful bakes that fell just short of the mark. But Steph picked a bad day to have a bad day and even though he and Alice were close, he was just a smidge better this time. I was thinking about how calm he always was and it struck me how similar in personality he was to S8’s Sophie. It actually makes a lot of sense that they’d both be fairly unruffleable (if that’s not a word it should be) given their backgrounds, David as a nurse in some pretty rough situations and Sophie in the military, where neither can afford to lose their cool. It’s a trait that translated well to Bake-Off.

I’m really happy for David and I’m completely okay with his win. He’s GBBO’s version of Jay from S1 of Project Runway. Never won an individual challenge but when it counted at the end, he brought the goods. David was always cool under pressure, he was creative, methodical and meticulous and even though his flavors didn’t always hit the mark, it was clear that he’s a very talented baker. I felt so bad for Steph. It seemed like anything and everything that could have gone wrong did so. In the end though she took it in stride and I think the experience did her a lot of good. I’m glad Alice’s parents made it in time. It obviously meant a lot to her. This may have been my favorite group of contestants and one of my least favorite seasons. I’ve been rewatching S3 (with my all-time fave James) and the difference between then and now is like night and day. Sure, there was still drama but it wasn’t manufactured due to insane time constraints and unrealistic expectations. The atmosphere was so much lighter. The past couple of seasons it’s been almost oppressive. Slowly but surely, the producers have been ramping things up and it’s now too obvious to ignore. I feel like the show that I adored—and I watch very little TV so I’m very picky—is no more and I’m kind of sad about it.

I was actually surprised (or maybe I shouldn’t be, giving how “mean” they say they like to be) that they didn’t give the bakers the pasta attachment for the Kitchenaid, since they already use them. It would have made things a lot easier than trying to wrangle long sheets of dough while cranking at the same time. I make pasta all the time and that’s what I use, not only for pasta but for things like crackers, breadsticks—the fettuccine cutter works brilliantly—and such (the pix are from my now defunct blog). I have a lot of pain in my wrists sometimes, which make rolling dough out to a uniform thin/thickness difficult, so the pasta attachment is my friend. Bread and pasta are my favorite things to make. Pastry, fussy desserts and cakes, not so much.

I’d say the reason they don’t give the technical as much weight as the signature and showstopper is that you go into the technical cold, but you’re supposed to practice the others. So if you screw THEM up after baking them a few times, then you really don’t have much of an excuse. The technical is probably the go-to if they need a tiebreaker, which they often don’t. I’ll miss Rosie because she definitely grew on me, even though she was often a 78 that needed to be played back at 33 in order for me to understand her. (Did I just seriously date myself there? :D) She certainly didn’t deserve any of the crap I heard she got on social media. Alice is a good baker, but she’s exhausting. Not in an S4 Ruby way, but she’s such a bundle of nervous energy I feel wrung out by the end of the episode. I like David as a person and I think he’s a creative and meticulous baker, just not one who bakes things people actually want to eat. Stef/Steff/Steph is my pick. She’s been the most consistent, she’s creative, her flavors are usually very good and while she’s had her moments, she’s mostly unflappable. And while she’s no Henry (who’s tied with Tamal and sneaking up on James for my favorite contestant ever) in the personality department, she’s got a dry sense of humor that sneaks out every once in a while.

As much as I like this group personally for how supportive they are of each other, they’re definitely not the most talented bunch. At this point in the show’s run, for a contestant to say they’ve never made something as basic as choux or a genoise is almost unbelievable. The show has always claimed that these are supposed to be the best amateur bakers in the UK, but if that’s the case here, someone must have drained the talent pool because it’s awfully shallow (with a couple of exceptions). Whether or not it has to do with their overwhelming youth, I don’t know—17-year-old Martha almost always killed it—but there’s something to be said for experience and that’s sorely lacking here. Sadly, I think the show has finally run its course and should probably be put out to pasture. As much as I’d hate to see it go, I’d hate it much more if it became such a joke that that would be what people would remember, instead of the incredibly fresh and charming show that was so beloved. ETA I guess when they were making such a big deal about Stef possibly being named star baker three times in a row as something that never happened before, they were only talking about the current run because I’m pretty sure Ian was the first to accomplish that feat.

I seem to remember that almost every time they've done a challenge involving tartlets it's been a disaster. No one ever seems sure what size cutter they should use so the pastry will fill cavity—it always shrinks so there's not a lot of room for the filling—and then no one seems to be able to get the damned things out of the pan without having a broken mess. One of the things S4's Ruby did right was using paper strips for her tartlets so she could pull on the strips to remove them instead of attacking them with knives like most people seem to do. So if there's a mistake in production it's that they keep doing tartlet challenges. Or at least if they're going to keep doing them, then at least provide pans with removable bottoms (which is what I use).

But they all seemed so totally flummoxed by “bake a cake with yogurt.” I’m surprised they all turned out so well, but are yogurt-based bakes not that common in the UK? While the challenges were sort of meh, one thing I’m sure of is that this group as a whole is probably my favorite of all 10 seasons. I don’t even think the legendary Season 5 group gelled so quickly and seemed to care about each other so much. They’re all so quick to jump in to help or give comfort or kudos. Every one of them (even the ones that kind of annoy me) is delightful.

Well, here's an interesting take on Bake Off. 😀 https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/09/great-british-bake-off-baking-show-socialism