Great British Bake Off 2019: Dairy Week
The all-new Dairy Week sees the remaining bakers tackle Indian sweets, cultured dairy cakes and Maid of Honour tarts – Chetna Makan tells all.
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Great British Bake Off 2019Week four marks the start of the very first ‘Dairy Week’ in the Bake Off tent. For the signature challenge, the bakers have the task of making a cake with a cultured dairy product, which should result in a very moist sponge.
Most of the bakers look a bit unsure of what the cultured dairy product is actually adding to their bakes, though all the cakes sound quite good. True to form Helena is making a ghost cake that, according to Prue, looks both scary and sweet.
Using a bundt tin is always fun, but not so much when half the cake is stuck to the bottom, which is what happens to Michael’s cake! In the program he tells us that he has made the cake ten times in the week and out of those it had only worked once. Maybe it was a sign to change and tweak the recipe slightly, but in the end the judges loved how the cake tasted which was definitely a relief for him. He also mentions that it is just a cake, which is true, but seeing as it’s a cake made for a baking competition I think it’s a little more important than he makes out!
Next comes the dreaded technical challenge, where the bakers have to make something called a ‘Maid of Honour’. I haven’t had one of these before, but seeing as it’s made with puff pastry and lemon curd I can’t see how it wouldn’t be nice. Saying that, the ones sitting in front of Paul and Prue at the start of the challenge looked like they needed some real colour on them.
The rush in the tent gets real when everyone starts trying to make the rough puff and lemon curd all at once. Helena forgets to add water to the dough, making her puff pastry more like shortcrust pastry. Priya, on the other hand, wants to get her lemon curd right, which means she ends up running behind. While she is rolling out her pastry, the other bakers have already blind-baked theirs.
It was no surprise that Priya came last in the technical challenge, while Steph with her best-of-the-lot bakes came first. It’s been a good week for Steph so far but Priya needs to pull something seriously impressive out of the bag to stay in the running.
For Dairy Week, the showstopper challenge requires a stunning display of milk-based Indian sweets in three different flavours. Now this is one challenge I would have loved to do, but I’m a bit confused as this is the Great British Bake Off – having eaten and cooked many of these sweets before I know you definitely don't need an oven to make them. First we had the cooking of the burger last week and now it's the mishti!
At the start of the challenge Steph, Henry and David are safe and doing well, but Paul states that all the others are in danger. Henry’s melting kulfi brings back some bad memories of ice cream failures from previous years.
David has made sweets that look very impressive, extremely neat and pretty. Helena saves herself with her delicious lemon sweets and Steph makes some tasty little treats.
Phil, however, is totally out of his comfort zone as he himself says that this is not for him. So when he presents his sweets to a very surprised Paul and Prue who thought they looked more like Playdoh than showstopper material. Priya and Michael are also in danger when they present theirs, which is why it comes as a bit of a shock to both Phil and the audience when they decide to send Phil home. I wasn’t sure of this decision at all – did he deserve to go home after just one low, or was it time for Priya to leave the tent? Steph wins the title of Star Baker and Prue commends her baking skills.
If I had to choose one thing to try this week it would have to be David’s kewra water sweets, as it is one of my favourite flavours. Next week is yet another first, themed around the Roaring Twenties. Expect custard pies and booze-fuelled bakes aplenty!
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