Dessert Week is the stupidest week, at least conceptually. Cake Week, Biscuit Week, and Bread Week all make sense, but any of those other weeks could contain things for dessert week. What makes this different from any of the other weeks? What specific things do any of these bakes have in common? Why do all of these bakes have to be on Dessert Week rather than at any other time in the competition? The category is just too broad and too vague. It’s like the village talent show. That talent could be little Suzie tap dancing, your neighbor Marty, who can do 512 different bird calls even though they all sound the same, or Pam, the preacher’s wife, singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” (Every talent show has at least one person singing “Hallelujah,” a song that should be banned from public performance by the U.S. Constitution, the Paris Agreement, and the Geneva Convention.)
But this competition does not have Suzie, Marty, or Pam, the preacher’s wife. Instead, there is golden boy Aaron, WWII pilot Toby, short king Iain, lanky Disney Prince Tom, and Jasmine, for whom there are no words. Well, at least that’s Noel’s estimation. The first challenge is to make a Basque cheesecake, which, yes, meets the very vague brief that it could be eaten for dessert. I don’t know about you, but I could also probably eat this for breakfast, a main course, a midnight snack, or a post-workout protein. If you think cheesecake must be a dessert, then you really just aren’t creative enough or have never watched a full episode of The Golden Girls.
The baking itself goes smoothly enough, except that Toby keeps curdling the white chocolate (vom) cream for the top of his cheesecake. “This is stressful,” says our stressed-out king, who has uttered that same sentence while grocery shopping, watching Celebrity Traitors, and taking a sound bath. Iain also has a stressful moment when he tries to transfer his wobbly cheesecake from the paper to its stand, asking for Toby’s help. Of all the people to ask, you’re going to ask Toby “Squeaky Bum Time” [Insert Surname Here]?
Iain’s cardamom and orange cheesecake turns out to be quite nice-looking, but Prue says he included too much zest, and it had turned bitter. It seems like he has “taken the pith,” a pun that everyone in the tent is so proud of that they go on to use it more than Toby could use some of Parker Posey’s The White Lotus diazepam. In short (sorry, Iain), the judges didn’t love it.
Jasmine’s is really the only one they like, and it looks absolutely gorgeous, with a giant mango rose in the center and lots of passion fruit curd underneath. Prue says it’s “proper burnt” as a cheesecake should be. Aaron gets decent marks as well for his orange cheesecake with plum and sake gel on top, which leads him and Noel into a long pun-off around “succulent plums,” which I think they are using to mean balls, but I don’t know — I was blinded by the desserts.
The losers in this round are Toby and our not-so-perfect Tom, who struggles the entire episode, which is strange for a man who is that good-looking. The only thing he must struggle to do is beat them off with a stick and a plum pun. Toby is using passionfruit and white chocolate (barf) and marbling them together, an effect which doesn’t fully come out when it’s finished baking. While the judges love the bake, they think that the flavors are underwhelming, with Paul saying there is not enough citrus and Prue saying it’s far too rich, which is something I wish I could say about myself. They both love the fake passion fruits Toby uses to decorate the top, which have passion fruit curd inside white chocolate (retch) shells.
Tom’s cheesecake looks absolutely brilliant. It is all black with black sesame flavoring, blackberries on top, and a chocolate-lemon dyed black, filled with bright yellow lemon curd, which would be the only hint of color when it’s cracked open. Noel says it is a goth boy’s dream and wants to give Tom the first-ever Noel Fielding handshake, but as he reaches out, Paul Hollywood swats his hand away, strops off to his Ferrari waiting in the parking lot, and revs the engine for 25 minutes just to assert his authority. While it does look amazing, both judges think that the sesame flavor isn’t really coming through and that it is much cooler to look at than to eat.
The technical is technically a dessert, I guess, but I don’t understand these gluten-free orange upside-down puddings. First of all, why are they gluten-free? Did someone in the tent suddenly develop a wheat allergy? Is Henry, the cameraman, always like, “Ugh, I never get to try anything because I’m celiac,” and so they threw Henry an orange and cardamom-flavored bone? Also, what sort of idiot chef came up with this recipe in the first place? Who thought that cake wasn’t good enough just baked in the oven? What dessert really needs is to be put in a tin, covered with foil, tied with the littlest string outside of Cardi B’s thong, and then placed in the oven in a pan that is half submerged in water? Who thought that would make this better? Why all the steps? Why all the fuss?
While we’re asking questions, why do they call it “Crème Anglaise” in French? That means “English cream,” and we’re in England speaking English? You know what they call English muffins in England? Muffins! Just muffins! (My grandmother was a muffin.) Why don’t they just call it cream? It’s like if you went to Paris and they called them French Fries in English. Make it make “sense de l’anglais.”
What were we talking about? Oh, the technical. The rankings go Aaron, Jasmine, Toby, Iain, and perfect Tom, reclaiming the perfection that is his birthright. It’s like the judges just went left to right because that is the order the dishes were placed on the table. It’s also inverting how things went in the Signature, with Tom and Iain on top, Aaron and Jasmine on the bottom, and Toby sleeping in Baby Bear’s bed, which is … juuuussssst riiiiiggggght.
The showstopper challenge is to make a free-standing trifle. I was going to complain that this is one of those challenges where the bakers need to worry more about structure than they do about how things taste, but is that even true? Most of them make something that doesn’t need a container and tastes horrible. Is that the fault of the challenge or is that the fault of the bakers? I don’t even know at this point. I am still thinking about “Crème Anglais.”
Once again, Jasmine’s is the best. Let’s be honest, Tom might be perfect, but Jasmine has it all wrapped up. Her trifle is made with lemoncello sponge, strawberry jelly, and vanilla bavarois, which is also Aaron’s drag name. It’s a gorgeous-looking dessert (this is Dessert Week), but kind of ordinary. Yes, it looks like the example out of the textbook, but it’s not nearly as inventive as all of the boys’ creations. But the judges love it, and that is enough for Jasmine’s fourth win. The record belongs to season five’s Richard Burr with five Star Baker wins in one season, so our girl Jazzy J is within striking distance of a tie. (There is no Star Baker in the finale.)
Aaron, who has the correct opinion of hating trifles, makes one with a striped chocolate collar around it to prop it up and covers the top with succulent plums, intricate chocolate circles, and champagne jelly. It looks delicious, but the jelly is the only thing the judges like, and that’s probably because it’s boozier than Paul Hollywood on Greek Easter. (The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City fans know.)
Toby’s is Christmas-themed because, like the Hallmark Channel, he is always in the holiday spirit. It’s a sherry trifle with elderflower based on his grandmother’s holiday favorite. The crowning glory is a jelly dome with a pointsetta inside, but it sticks to the bowl as he’s making it and ends up looking more like what the alien leaves behind after it pops out of someone’s guts in Alien. The sponge collar around it, decorated with Santa Clauses and ornaments, looks amazing, if not like something you’d buy in Poundland (British to American translation: Dollar General). Paul says the sponge inside is both rock hard and dry, and Prue only likes his elderflower jelly.
Perfect Tom strikes out once again, not on the look but on the flavors. His towering creation, inspired by a trip to Greece and flavored with honey, yogurt, and figs, looks like it would be on the homepage of the New York Times cooking section, complete with his own jelly dome topped with an olive branch. Once again, the judges say all you can taste is the almond extract he put in his sponge and nothing else. I hope that our perfect Tom isn’t like the desserts he keeps making: gorgeous on the outside but no fun in your mouth.
I thought it was Tom’s time, sending him just shy of the semi-finals. Instead, the judges decided it was Iain’s time to be sent packing. His trifle looks fantastic with a sponge collar, which gives it the air of wallpaper in an Italian boutique hotel. There is another jelly dome on top, this one with a sun inside, but Paul and Prue say it tastes like absolutely nothing — like water. That is true of everything, including his sponge, which Prue says is firmer than her conservative beliefs. So, of all of our archetypes, it is the short king who is going home rather than the WWII pilot or the lanky Disney Prince. But the way the competition looks now, everyone in that tent with a Y chromosome is just battling it out for second place.
