Every year we look forward to watching the Great British BakeOff on the BBC. For those of you who have never watched, it’s a weekly series of 10 shows where amateur bakers make the most yummy things in cakes, biscuits, breads, cupcakes and such, trying to be Star Baker and the winner at the end. Sharing their culinary journey week after week you feel like you get to know the contestants. And it’s always a pleasure to watch the presenters Mel and Sue and judges Paul and Mary. As the show is aired after the summer holidays, we always watch it while being on yet another diet to lose some weight ourselves, so picture us in front of the television drooling seeing the most scrumptious things being made.
Though I hate cooking, I do try to bake something myself now and then and for me it’s always paired with stress and the fear of failure. So I understand the pressure those people are under, but I was flabbergasted at the drama that unfolded in episode 4 last week. We saw handmade ice being prepared to go in a baked Alaska, stress in the tent because it was really hot that day in the UK, and contestants scrambling back and forth to their freezers to see if their ice had already hardened so they could finish the challenge in time.
All of a sudden we had a meltdown: Iain found his ice-cream, not in the freezer but out of it on Diana’s bench, melted to a pudding. Diana shrugged her shoulders when he asked why it wasn’t in the freezer and said he had his own freezer. Us viewers watched in horror: had Diana put Iains ice-cream out of the freezer on purpose? We saw Iain blow his top and throw his puddle of Alaska in the bin, stalking out of the tent.
As Iain didn’t have a result to be judged he was sent away at the end of the episode, nothing at all was said about whether or not there was foul play involved sabotaging Iains ice-cream. We were all speechless, I immediately checked the social media and saw outrage there.
I don’t want to speculate here about why and how, and who is guilty and who not. That’s been done in the press for the past few days, new articles are being published every day. The reason for this blog is simple: who knew that a baking competition could be so exiting and outrageous? This is must see television!