Bake-Off Breakdown Week Five: Spice Week

It’s week five everyone and after a week where nobody got evicted, I mean sent home (wrong show)  the stakes were high in case old grumpy chops and silly necklace decided to get rid of multiple bakers.  This week Terry returned, and the theme was “spice” which is only vaguely a theme but let’s just roll with it, shall we? 

The signature challenge this week was simple; a family tea sized ginger cake.  I hate ginger. It’s horrible.  Moving swiftly on, Paul set the technical challenge this week which was to make Maamoul; Ancient middle eastern pastries with either date or walnut fillings.

These challenges just get crueller each week, don’t they?  Finally, the showstopper was to bake a spiced biscuit chandelier over four hours.  This was an impressive challenge where lots of the bakers overreached and thusly messed up.



In the week of delicately spiced biscuits and tongue burning spices the highlights were:

Ginger snaps of the week:

Rahul’s ginger cake got him a handshake and made Paul angry that it was so good.
Kim-Joy made another joy-filled cake which got her a handshake for it being “beautiful”.
Manon impressed with her cake and got another handshake!
Rahul’s maamoul were impressive.
Dan’s maamoul were “fantastic”.
Ruby finally won a technical challenge with her maamoul baking.
Rahul’s chandelier looked “beautiful” and the flavours were fantastic.
Kim-Joy’s Christmas chandelier was “phenomenal” and had classically tasting biscuits.
Jon’s chandelier was “messy” but tasted great.
           

Soggy gingerbread of the week:

Dan accidentally made cheese in his cake mix so had to start again, losing half an hour.
Terry’s ginger cake was so hot it melted the frosting as soon as it was assembled.  It looked like a gremlin that had been in the microwave. Prue said it tasted “gluey”. Yuk!
Karen and Ruby made cakes with too much booze! How is that possible.
Disaster! Karen put the wrong fillings in the wrong moulds for her maamoul! And they were dry.
Terry’s maamoul melted in the oven and again looked like that poor gremlin.
Jon went overboard on the spices in his maamoul.
Terry burned most of the biscuits for his chandelier. And his completed chandelier looked awful and tasted bland.
Karen dropped half of hers.


Sandi and Noel highlights of the week:

This week’s hairstyle for Noel was “lego hair” apparently.
Noel tried to explain Fortnite to Sandi.
Sandi and Noel were both “on the turn” for handsome Paul.


Star baker: Kim-Joy.  This was SO well-deserved as her bakes this week were just fun, happy and wonderful!

Who left the tent: Karen and Terry.  Unfortunately, it was well deserved.  Terry had a shocking week and Karen wasn’t much better.


Who’s for the chopping board next week?: Possibly Jon as it looked like he was really struggling this week while a number of the others are starting to soar.