The Great British Baking Show Recap: Land of the Free

The Great British Baking Show
Free From Week
Season 17 Episode 7
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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After watching the episode, you have obviously ascertained that free-from is a British catchall term to describe cuisine that does not have gluten, dairy, eggs, animal products, or taste. Just kidding on the last one. Sometimes I just need to take the easy joke, but I have had a Greggs Vegan Sausage Roll and know their deliciousness. What may not be clear is that this is a well-known and widely used classification for food in the U.K. There’s a “free-from” section in every supermarket so that people with intolerances or dietary preferences can find their favorite products in one aisle. (There’s always an “American” section too, and it sells Nerds, sugary cereals, and precooked hot dogs in glass jars, which just shows what the English think of our diet.) While the term free-from might seem strange to American ears, I think it shows the facility and economy that the English have over the language they invented. In the U.S., they just call them “soy boys,” which isn’t nearly as nice.

What is strange to me about this week is that the theme is two-toned, like most of Prue’s pairs of glasses (RIP Prue). Not only is it free-from, it is a party. Okay, why can’t we just have a children’s party week? That’s when a lot of people are pulling out the baking stops to impress the wee tykes; why can’t we just do that with regular ingredients and have free-from as its own stand-alone category with some adult foods? Like reaching for the random Pert Plus in an Airbnb shower, two-in-one is all we get, so two-in-one is what we are going to use. 

The first challenge is to make pastries for a children’s party, and they need to have either a sweet or savory filling. Oh, and they have to be gluten-free. The poor kiddies. Why usher them into the world like this? Mo has the biggest triumph, netting himself a handshake while Nigella stands limply by and says, “I salute Paul in saluting you.” He makes gluten-free Pop-Tarts, which he was denied as a child because they have gelatin in them (which is made from pork and therefore not halal), and he wanted to get in on the fun. Gabe also does well, putting the ingredients for hamburgers inside pastry and shaping them like ladybirds, which is what the English call ladybugs because they never had the First Lady or the Greta Gerwig film. I think they look a little weird, but the judges love his filling. Tom’s are much more fun. They look like Minions, but he calls them “little monsters” because, you know, the Lady Gaga runs deep in this one.

During the baking, Noel asks Gabe if he’d rather have a handshake or win Star Baker, since he’s achieved neither so far. He says that he would rather win Star Baker, and Noel is surprised. Really? He would rather win for three of his creations and be recognized by both judges (let’s be real, Gabe only wants Nigella to love him) rather than have just one thing selected by just one judge? It’s not even a choice. 

Gary makes a “Gazza the Caterpillar,” which is styled on Colin the Caterpillar, an utterly delicious confection that is ubiquitous at children’s birthday parties. (The convention is that the birthday boy or girl gets the first slice so they get to eat Colin’s face.) It’s available only at Marks & Spencer, and it has sued to maintain its intellectual property, which makes it shocking that Gary gets away with this when just an episode ago Tom couldn’t even say the name Chicken Run. I don’t think M&S is too worried, considering the judges hate his pastry and consider it a failure. Also struggling are Connie’s butterflies filled with blueberries and frangipane. The judges like the pastry but say there is hardly enough filling. Of course, last episode I called out Gary and Connie, our two older bakers, for going so deep into the competition, and now I’m going to have to watch them struggle with all these new-fangled ingredients.

The technical is to make a vegan chocolate sponge cake and ganache with frosting that seems like it is made out of the leftover slime from a kindergartner’s slumber party. Each of the six bakers has to make their cake in a different color and like a different animal, and they select at random which one they will get. This isn’t nearly as bad as the other technicals this season, where everyone is making something different, but … why? That dinosaur is damn cute. Why couldn’t we have just had six dinosaurs? Sure, the techniques to make the different animals are all the same, but, again, it’s not the apples-to-apples comparison that a technical is supposed to have. Also, the similar but different colored animals remind me of the five (5!) gentlemen left in the tent, each wearing a similar but different-hued short-sleeve shirt. 

The biggest failure is Gary — who seems actually angry that he’s been forced to make something for vegans — forgetting to put the vegan butter into his “icing” and it is just pink goo that barely covers his cake, and the face of his axolotl congeals at the bottom of the cake like the melting face emoji but pink. Connie, whose cake is like glue inside, and Gary are once again at the bottom, with Gabe’s dynamite dinosaur and Tom’s foxy fox placing them at the top. 

The showstopper is to make a children’s birthday cake that is either gluten-free, dairy-free, or vegan, and it must have some kind of moving part or interactive element — the results are fun. Gary makes a witch’s cauldron where the parts inside churn around. Connie makes a Rubik’s Cube cake on top of a carrot cake. Gabe makes a bug-inspired cake where you can dig in the “dirt” for “worms.” (Edible and made of candy, of course. This isn’t Survivor.) Moyin makes a volcano topped with a breakable dinosaur egg (which the judges seem underwhelmed by).

The best designs go to Mo and Tom. Mo makes a cake inspired by a “beloved Hoover brand.” A “Hoover” is the general term the English use for a vacuum (like Americans say Kleenex to mean any tissue), and Henry the Hoover is a beloved national icon, a canister vac with a little face on it, and it is the best-selling vacuum in the U.K. Mo’s somehow, actually, vacuums up sprinkles, and I still have no clue how he did this, and I think it is just fairy magic and we will leave it at that. While it is widely recognizable, he never calls it a Henry the Hoover. Meanwhile, Tom makes a swamp cake with Shrek and Fiona from Shrek sitting in a tub and “farting” through chocolate milk to turn it into a Jacuzzi. I just don’t get the logic here. Tom couldn’t mention Chicken Run, Gary couldn’t mention Colin the Caterpillar, Mo couldn’t mention Pop-Tarts or Henry the Hoover, but Tom gets to depict a whole actual scene from Shrek complete with lifelike renderings of them in fondant and it’s no big deal? This is the craziest thing since Americans having to call it the Great British Baking Show or someone from Pillsbury will show up at your door with a cease and desist and an already-exploded sleeve of Grands.

Sadly for Tom, one of the two sponges in his cake tastes more like swamp water than pistachio, knocking him out of the running for his fourth Star Baker. Paul and Nigella both love Mo’s chocolate cake, which seemed like it would suck up the competition. But it is Gabe who takes Star Baker with his chocolate bug cake that Paul says is so good that they could sell them. Well, as long as you don’t call them Colin the Caterpillar, it’s probably fine. This puts a nice button on Gabe preferring to get Star Baker over a handshake. Everyone in a throuple gets a wish, and this is Gabe’s come true. 

At the bottom are Connie and Gary once again. The judges aren’t particularly wowed by Gary’s cauldron and say that it looks Halloween-y on the outside but is strawberry flavored on the inside and feels summery. Also, his buttercream is grittier than the Philadelphia Flyers’ mascot. Connie’s cakes, one carrot and one chocolate, took way too long to bake, and so her decoration turns out to be a little rudimentary. Both judges note that it fell apart and is also far too gloopy, a difficult combination to achieve. Just as I think Connie is doomed, Gary is the one sent home, leaving Connie as our only female left in the quarterfinals. This week the tent was free from a lot of things, but we can’t have it free from women.