Bake Off: The Professionals (Ch4)
Taylor Swift is missing a trick. Her career-spanning Eras show, which sees her touring Britain this month, features 13 costume changes . . . but no concealed cakes.
Her repertoire is crying out for the full patisserie treatment.
Bake It Off, Blank Spastry, I Knew You Were Truffle (When You Walked In), Streusel Summer, Look What You Made Me Choux . . . a hidden dessert in every hit.
She could take lessons from Benoit Blin and Cherish Finden, the exuberant judges of Bake Off: The Professionals, who set contestants a challenge to create pecan pies in camouflage.
Though it wasn’t compulsory to adopt a musical theme, all six baking duos opted to make edible instruments — two guitars, a drumkit, an accordion and a marimba (a sort of xylophone).
Benoit Blin and Cherish Finden, (with Liam Charles and Tom Allen), the exuberant judges of Bake Off: The Professionals, set contestants a challenge to create pecan pies in camouflage
The only slight exception to the rule was a vinyl record-player.
It turns out there’s a good reason electric guitars aren’t made out of chocolate. Under the heat of the studio lights, the neck fell off one of them.
The pies were revealed when the judges cut into an amplifier and effects pedals.
Some of the techniques were, as always on this series, eccentric to the point of lunacy.
One pair coated their cakestand with whisky-flavoured paint . . . as though the judges might start licking the accessories.
Mind you, the bakers, Ashley and Kian, learned their craft cooking for megarich celebrities on superyachts.
Perhaps paintwork steeped in spirits is ordinary fare for Russian oligarchs who were weaned on vodka.
The trompe l’oeil illusions formed the second of two tests, though the first — strawberry tarts with frangipane cream and a chocolate ‘amenity’ or decoration — was little more than a warm-up.
Cherish and Benoit, usually so scathing with their criticism, were hardly worse than disapproving when bakers failed to deliver the specified number of tarts or served up crumbling, overdone pastry.
‘It’s actually quite pleasant,’ Benoit said, as he struggled to swallow one offering. ‘There’s a few things you have done OK.’
That’s like Simon Cowell telling a tone-deaf singer, ‘Don’t worry about all the wrong notes — I’ve heard worse.’ You’d worry he wasn’t feeling well.
Good enough to eat: Bake Off: The Professionals hosts Tom Allen and Liam Charles
This lax attitude won’t last. Bake Off: The Professionals is so notorious for the harshness of its judging that one cake-maker, Gerol from the RAF Club on London’s Piccadilly, was in tears of terror as she brought her tartes aux fraises to be inspected.
Her panic is understandable. Last year, when a contestant used a smidge too much gelatine in a dessert, Cherish announced she’d have to use a chainsaw to slice it. No chef wants that on her CV.
Despite all the expertise on display, this version of Bake Off always emphasises the disasters. There’s a cliffhanger before every ad break, with masterpieces on the verge of collapse.
That’s a complete contrast to the original show, where we’re cheering on plucky amateurs and willing them to success.
This urge to see professionals humiliated leaves a slightly bitter taste.
