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The Great British Baking Show Recap: Custard’s Last Stand

Season 13 Episode 7 Editor’s Rating4 stars ****

Photo: Netflix

Great British icon Louis Theroux’s money may not jiggle jiggle, it may fold, but the desserts this week were jiggling with wobbles and wibbles like weebles in a wee blender. Yes, it’s custard week! What is custard? Well, it’s like English pudding but not nearly as stiff, and they find a reason to put it in or on just about every dessert you can imagine. A whole week for custard is not a week that I thought I needed until it was here, providing us with a wonderful and thrill-packed episode that saw my lover Sandro also do a little Salt Bae slide after he finished baking for one of the challenges, and my heart melted like everyone’s ice cream.

The signature challenge is for the bakers to make iles flottante, which are poached meringues floating in a sea of crème anglaise, which is French for English custard. How parfait! (That is French for yogurt in a tall glass.) We’ve seen these before as a technical challenge way back in season two. Yes, the last time we witnessed these we had Mel and Sue and Mary Berry, the U.K. was still in the European Union, and Boris Johnson only had about five(-ish) children. My hats off to Syabira, who made a “floater” joke on the most wholesome show on all of television or whatever it is we’re calling Netflix these days.

My biggest problem with this challenge is more of a problem with the whole season: Why does there have to be booze in absolutely every dessert? My lover Sandro put both brandy and prosecco in his dessert. Kevin also added prosecco, but he put it in the meringues so they deflated like Paul Hollywood if you don’t pay him enough compliments. Syabira’s dish was themed after a mojito, and she hopes that it will immediately send the eater straight to a mojito island where the only word they can say is “mojito,” like they’re Smurfs or a Groot or something. To make it even worse, Syabira’s showstopper is piña colada themed and Kevin’s has even more prosecco in his buttercream. What, did he not want what was left over from the signature to go to waste?

The triumph of the first round has to be Janusz’s creation, which is a drink but not a tipple. He pipes and steams the meringues so they look like the foam on the top of a latte and makes an espresso-flavored custard. Truly genius, and the judges seem to love it. The only other one with positive critiques is Syabira, whose mojitos look like breaded chicken cutlets to just about everyone familiar with your grocery’s freezer section or a disgusting school lunch. She wanted her islands to look like actual islands, but who wants anything resembling sand in their desserts? The judges love the taste, though, so I guess we shall forgive her.

Everyone else gets a minus in the first round: Maxy’s doesn’t offer enough for a full dessert, Kevin’s meringues (like so many great writers) were done in by booze, Sandro’s were too busy, and Abdul’s meringues got squished by his own caramel decorations. There are so few people here, not only does the tent seem as empty as one of Elon Musk’s apologies but no one can slip up or it means going home.

For the technical we get the rare staggered start time, which means the judges are going to eat something melty and the producers want to make sure they can serve it up fresh for the panel. Sandro was selected (maybe at random, maybe because of his dreaminess) to start, and he has to make six pistachio-and-praline ice-cream cones. It seems like this has nothing to do with custard, but I guess ice cream is really just custard that you make really cold, so I’m totally going to give it to them.

Sandro was not only first but also best. His cones look as good as the display ones that the food stylist made for Prue and Paul to eat at the kids’ table where they sit outside of the tent while the bakers get to work. Syabira and Janusz make the mistake of putting their warm custard into the freezer, which heats up the icebox and doesn’t let the ice cream melt. Note that one down for the next time you make ice cream at home, which will be [checks watch] 15 months after the apocalypse. Those two are in the bottom, Sandro wins, and the rest end up melting their way somewhere toward the middle.

The showstopper is the kind of classic challenge that I love. The bakers have to make a set-custard gateau (which is French for both “hello” and “good-bye,” sort of like aloha). It’s really just a cake with custard in between the layers. Of course it has to be ambitious, of course it has to look amazing, of course it has to taste good, but thankfully one doesn’t need a degree in structural engineering to be able to put it together.

This setup also allows us to have the ultimate in Bake Off/Show suspense when the bakers peel away their barriers for their custards and we see if they set or they’re just going to collapse like 2007 Lindsay Lohan with exhaustion. The only person who fell victim to a cake falling to shit was Kevin. It seemed fine at first but, like an inflatable front-lawn snowman when you turn it off, it slowly sank into the ground, leaving just a hint of its original shape. Sweetly, though, everyone pitched in at the very end to make sure he got some decorations on the cake, including a mound of macarons that I would sink my rotten teeth into.

I have to give Abdul lots of credit for being the only one not to make a traditional-looking layer cake. He makes a rough-puff pastry (using Paul Hollywood’s recipe, which is crafty) and creates a mille feuille (which is French for “tartan blazers,” of all things). Between his layers of pastry are a chocolate-and-vanilla custard filled with raspberries and other fruits. The top looks especially amazing, with berries resting in sloped stripes amid rows of powdered sugar. The judges are all impressed.

Maxy falls in the middle of the pack for making a cake inspired by her father-in-law that has a stencil of Africa on the outside and the colors of Africa on the inside for a nice surprise. Both Prue and Paul agree there is not enough custard, though. Sorry. Janusz had a very interesting idea to make a Neopolitan cake. (That is Italian for “three-colored ice cream invented by Americans.”) There are vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry layers, but apparently all of the custard is like glue. I think what Paul was really mad about was seeing Janusz’s third drip cake in so many weeks. Between him and Sandro, all we have are the boozy drips (which is also the name of my five-a-side team).

The only other bangers are Syabira’s, her second potent bake of the week, but her piña colada (which means “French” in Spanish) cake looks absolutely amazing. There is toasted coconut on the sides (also covered in custard) and an explosion of red and orange blooms on the top. Prue can’t stop praising how much custard there is in the cake, and it’s still perfectly set. Paul even shows off the cake’s structure by shaking it. Sorry, Mr. Theroux, but it jiggle jiggles. Her only possible contender is Sandro, whose three-tiered masterpiece has each layer crowned with gorgeous lilac buttercream rosettes. (Matt even took some time to help him decorate. Ever notice how much time Matt spends lingering around Sandro’s bench? Hmmm. Curious.) There are really three different cakes in one; everyone loves the coconut and mango layer, but Paul thinks the chocolate layer is too gloopy. There’s another layer too, but who can even remember?

Looking at what Sandro ended up with and what Kevin ended up with makes you wonder how they had the same amount of time to cook their creations, as Kevin’s sort of melts into a half-solid gazpacho. Naturally Kevin, who has been struggling for several weeks, goes home and Syabira takes star baker for the second week in a row. That’s three bakers (Syabira, Janusz, and Maxy) with two wins, one baker (Sandro Moylan, my husband) with one win, and, well, Abdul. Wonder who might be packing it in next week?

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