The Great British Baking Show Recap: Puddings Pop

The Great British Baking Show
Dessert Week
Season 17 Episode 5
Editor’s Rating ★★★
Previous Next
Previous Episode
Next Episode

This was a shockingly British episode of this quintessentially British show. While we have to reckon with bread-and-butter pudding and more custard than is good for a healthy heart, the most English thing is everyone calling Gary by the nickname “Gazza.” It’s common here with any name that ends that way (Barry becomes “Bazza,” Sherry becomes “Shazza”), and I always get an absolute kick out of it. You can call me Brazza as much as you like. As my father says, call me anything, just don’t call me late for dessert — and we got plenty of those this week. 

Dessert week is always a little bit odd because I don’t know how it differentiates itself from all the other weeks. Can’t many of these sweet bakes be dessert? This season it definitely seemed mostly like things you would order in a restaurant rather than bake at home, at least for the signature and showstopper challenges. The signature is to make eight “self-saucing” puddings, which makes them sound like they have some kind of medical condition. Many of the bakers are going with a variation of a chocolate lava cake, and at least four of them are going with the chocolate-orange flavor combination. While it’s not common in America, it is everywhere here in King Charles’s formerly European island. And not just the famous Terry’s Chocolate Orange Americans can buy around Christmas (which is available year-round here). When you go to the cookie shop, the ice-cream store, and any place where fine desserts are sold, you’ll find something chocolate and orange flavored. That combination, along with sticky toffee puddings, is one of the best things about having the honor of paying His Majesty’s taxes every year. 

Because these types of desserts are best served straight out of the oven, they staggered the bakers’ start times so that the judges can get them hotter than Gabe and his two boyfriends at a polyamory convention. Connie, one of only two remaining females in the tent and the third baker to finish, wows Paul and Nigella with her (yes) chocolate-orange fondants and gets a handshake. I feel bad for everyone involved in this. No one gets to appreciate Connie’s handshake because everyone but Gazza and Clazza (that’s Clara’s new nickname) is still working. Also, how disruptive that must be. Everyone’s cheering and clapping, and they’re just trying to make cake with sauce oozing out of it in under two hours. I am glad for Connie, especially since she forgot to set the timer on her bake and has to figure it out by eye. 

Gary also gets high marks for his (yes) chocolate-orange fondants. Though Tom’s apple-crumble puddings look like blobs, the judges still say they’re disgusting. Paul absolutely loves Mo’s fondant inspired by the free cookie he got in his meal deal but says the sauce was a little too grainy. Clara’s “doce de leite” looks runnier than a nose on a cold winter’s day, and Nigella says they’re more like liquid with a bit of cake floating in them. Gabe’s have no sauce, which is ironic because he pumped his (yes) chocolate-orange fondants full of orange liqueur. The worst has to be Yannis, who makes apple-strudel puddings, which are so big they don’t bake. You know that his apple-strudel puddings are common in Austria. Did you know that Yannis spent his childhood in Austria? Yeah! It’s true! I don’t think we’ve ever heard this before. 

The technical is to make bread-and-butter pudding, which is even more English than getting drunk, screaming football songs at the top of your lungs, and then pissing against a wall straight onto the sidewalk — sorry, straight onto the “pavement.” As you see in the technical, it is made by buttering stale white bread, slathering it in custard, and then plopping the whole thing in the oven. It is a cultural institution, and it is … a cultural institution. I do not love it. It’s sort of like having French toast for dessert. Mo says that it sounds like a war recipe and he’s totally right, but it actually dates all the way back to the 18th century, so it is the only thing in the tent older than Paul’s entitlement. 

What’s even worse than the pudding itself is that Nigella tells them all she wants them to soup it up and add things to it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is not how a technical works. We went over this two weeks ago. The entire point of the technical is that everyone is making the same thing so that they can rank those bakes. Here they are asking them to make something different again. I find this as annoying as top-ten lists that include “honorable mentions.” No. Someone set the arbitrary number at ten, and the whole point of the exercise is to whittle the list down to ten. Just like with the technical. The arbitrary designation is that everyone makes the same thing. If the author of the list wants 11 titles, just make it a top-11 list. No one cares. If the producers want the technical to be different, then change the rules. But these are their rules and they should play by them.

Not surprisingly, Gary and Connie make the best bread-and-butter puddings because they’re the only two who have made them regularly, because it’s a bit of a fuddy-duddy dessert. Moyin, Yannis, and Mo are at the bottom for, respectively, not using enough custard, adding too many additional flavors, and not really caring about anything because that is his whole shtick. 

The showstopper is a very cute idea where each baker has to make a dessert cart with at least three classic desserts on it. While they keep talking about all of these retro desserts, I still regularly see these carts with just these types of desserts on them all over London. Well, maybe not all over, but they’re not entirely uncommon. There are lots of Black Forest gâteaus (which there often are on Baking Show) as well as sticky toffee puddings, which are the best dessert invented by the Anglican Jesus and something that I desperately miss when I’m back in America. Also trifles. The English love a trifle. Why they always be trifling? Mo even makes a STP trifle, and I would really like to get my hands on that.

Unlike with Bread Week last week, it seems like everyone is quite successful in their creations. Well, they all look fantastic, and everyone works harder than J.Lo worked the pole in Hustlers. Tom goes one further and decides to make four desserts, all of them inspired by his favorite cocktails, and his drinks-and-dessert cart might as well be Michael B. Jordan’s backside because I want to bury my face in it. Even Nigella gets a little worked up eating his mojito-inspired pavlova, and she asks if she can steal the recipe. Make that the new Hollywood handshake, the Lawson larceny. They also go gaga over Mo’s mango mousse that he makes in the shape of a mango. (Can he make it in the shape of Michael B. Jor … Oh, never mind.) Nigella asks him if he made the recipe, and he says he did, and both she and Paul are astounded by how good it is. Mo seems to finally care about something, and it’s this mango. After these two winners, I thought for sure one of them would take Star Baker, but instead it goes to Connie. She makes a classic trifle, an apple-and-pear tart, and a pineapple upside-down cake. The judges don’t love all of her desserts (as they didn’t with Mo and Tom), saying that her cake was overbaked and that her pie needed custard. However, they love the trifle so much, and she ranked so highly in the first two challenges that she gets to make a call home to her very cheeky husband, who asks when she’s going to arrive home, probably so she can whip him up one of those trifles.

Gazza, who has been cruising along all episode, doesn’t bowl the judges over with his treacle pudding or his Black Forest gâteau, which is a little bit shocking. Clara continues to be in the bottom, rare for her, with her macarons and frangipane tarts. Yannis decides to go for STP, a Black Forest gâteau, and a Mary Berry’s recipe for Queen of Desserts, which is a mix of breadcrumbs and custard with jam and topped with meringue. I don’t know, guys. I don’t think I would make that queen of anything. Though I would throw Paul out of my kingdom for the face me makes when Yannis says he is going to use Paul’s old co-judge’s recipe over his. Yannis doesn’t seem to score with any of these confections, and he is sent home. Actually, no. Noel personally drove him to the train station, gave him a fresh sausage roll, and sent him on his way. As Yannis stood on the misty platform, saddened and slightly shivering, he pulled back as the train screeched into the station. The doors opened, and he approached just as the conductor said, “Next stop, Vienna!”