The Great British Bake-Off 2021

[Gurke and Hare]

Giuseppe has a ridiculous unfair advantage here.

Yeah, but it wasn't his fault. Did they not think not to put two Italian breads as challenges when one of the bakers is Italian? And the milk bread isn't Italian  (is it?) so he didn't have an advantage in that, and his was clearly the best.

[bgmnts]

Cant wait for pizza and lasagne week.

[dissolute ocelot]

Shouldn't milk loaf be cylindrical?

[Blue Jam]

Shouldn't milk loaf be cylindrical?

Yes, when are we getting Blackpool Week?

[Gurke and Hare]

Yes, when are we getting Blackpool Week?

That could work - doughnut signature, milk roll technical, biscuit roller coaster showstopper.

[JesusAndYourBush]

Had a cackle when her focaccia got upended, hope they do it to all her bakes.

What was all that about?  Paul Hollywood said something nonsensical, something like "you've got to press down to feel underneath" as he upended it and knocked all the topping off.

Cant wait for pizza and lasagne week.

Thinking about it now, I'm kindof disappointed that Giuseppe didn't make a Leaning Tower Of Pisa for his Anti-Gravity Illusion Cake two weeks ago.

[JesusAndYourBush]

I was just thinking last week when Bake Off Extra Slice was on... Tom Allen has a really long microphone because covid... but then he shoves that same microphone in everyone's faces.  He's effectively going around with a huge superspreading stick!

[Norton Canes]

Can I have a definitive answer, please, because I've watched him all the way through this and I can't make up my mind: is Chigs cross-eyed?

[dissolute ocelot]

Can I have a definitive answer, please, because I've watched him all the way through this and I can't make up my mind: is Chigs cross-eyed?

Coz he's got a big nose it makes his pupils look close together?

[Norton Canes]

No, not that. I genuinely can't tell if he's just got a very intense stare, or if his eyes are actually looking in different directions.

[Pijlstaart]

Great bum-bum jape at the beginning, expert deconstruction of the comedy rule of three. Where do they get the time to write these? 

Not sticky toffee pudding, as far as I'm concerned if it didn't come in a tin it isn't authentic. Why serve crackers with it? Am I missing something here? They were judged on the crackers? Producers should have stepped in long ago.

Gorg, blinded by the miasma of his own vulgarity puts a bumcrack in his meringue, can't spell. Still squeaked through.

Freya maintains a strong moral core, even donned pe'ot to symbolise her unflappability in the face of fashion or extinction cult baking dogma. Hair a great virtue signifier, and a striking visual contrast to Jurgen, whose eyebrows not only lack religious significance but aren't eyebrows at all, instead sensory hairs so he can navigate the pitch-blackness of his mole hole, away from prying eyes. Comfortably the most sensual sense, what we can only smell and hear from the gloom, he'll feel. Jelly on a cake, that's not normal, and by extension neither is he. German Week next week, the whole thing's rigged.

Paul Hollywood a vegan hater, Paul Hollywood full to the brim with dead cow, the personification of colon cancer and a ferociously shitless man. Astonishing that a man who's wallpapered himself brown in presumable solidarity with our diminishing hardwood forests would fly into a frothing banshee rage the minute the blood round his lips starts to dry. Let's hope Freya didn't bother picking floor lint off of her floor crackers, she's a beacon, would love to link hands in a daisy chain and have her guide us to a new era of peace and prosperity, want her to dress me in King of Hearts livery and place me in prime plush position atop an ornate toybox.

Maggie flubs the sticky toffee puddings, extraordinary, lowest of the low. Menstruation sin-cakes cum bin-cakes from the menopause set, freud rides again. Bleak future ahead for her, she's off the village fete circuit for sure, good chance even the lonely sorcerer who animated her will turn her back into a bogbrush. Desperation laugh at the end, sour grapes gloating about a HND career, about shitting time she's gone.

[confettiinmyhair]

Maggie's middle class privilege tainted that episode. Have some pride woman. Gormlessly laughing, "oh I'm a silly sausage", as she ruined three rounds left me seething. Show us that you care, and that this isn't a stop off on your bucket list. This is the Bake Off for God's sake. It matters!!!

[Huxleys Babkins]

Maggie's probably the most Tory person we've ever had in the tent. A tent that has Prue Leith in it every week.

As a result, she'll inevitably fail upwards to a multi-million pound book deal and a judging spot on Bake-Off Professionals.

[dissolute ocelot]

Maggie was terrible "What are your two elements?" "I spooned some fruit juice over the top." "Die."

Freya doing meringue (twice) and jelly was chafing against the limits of veganism. You can do these things vegan, and I'm sure she's practiced a lot, but it is harder, has less scope for error, and takes longer than the regular sort.

No idea why they had crackers with the sticky toffee. Especially as all of them seemed to manage to do the crackers no matter how inept they were at the rest of it, especially custard (there's custard every year; I guess it's not so much that it's hard as that it requires attention, but still there's not much excuse for failing to make custard.)

Still, aside from the crackers I thought it was a good set of challenges. Nothing too unattainable, and the showstopper had elements of skill without being completely beyond what you might be able to cook at home. I really hate Chigs just for being called Chigs, though - really angling for a series where he's laddish and bakes. A throwback in which he cooks 18th century cuisine ("Chigs Wigs") or is a hippy ("Chigs Digs"). 2ND EDIT: And obviously "Chigs Swigs".

[Huxleys Babkins]

Awright, laaaaads! Welcome ta anuvva series of Bakin' Wiv Chigs! Tonight, ah'm gonna be makin' a Stella Artois-infused swiss roll in the kitchen at Teamsport Indoor Karting, Coventry! Fahk it!

[Blue Jam]

"Two Spaceship Enterprises kissing on ze jacond"

I love Jurgen.

[Gurke and Hare]

Chigs only got it because the gammons would have started a petition if Jurgen got star baker again, he was the best all the way through. Oh boo hoo there's some bubbles in the jelly fuck off Hollywood.

Has there ever been an elimination on any show with less doubt about who was going?

[Blue Jam]

Has there ever been an elimination on any show with less doubt about who was going?

[Gurke and Hare]

I guess, but the strawberry waterfall wasn't far from that without the benefit of sabotage, and on top of the shit efforts in the other two rounds...

[Blue Jam]

The strawberry waterfall wasn't BINCAKE though. Without any Showstopper at all to present the judges said they couldn't possibly put him through and so Iain was a cert to leave the tent. Maggie was a very close second though, crap baking all round and she didn't even have to bin any cakes.

Looking forward to the rest of the series without her twee overexcited babbling on like she's after Noel and Matt's jobs.

[Blue Jam]

Getting full Werner Ziegler vibe from Jurgen, hope he does a BCS theme bake.

I take back what I said earlier: after all the talk of making the "Passover cake for my wife" I can see him fleeing the tent to book a romantic weekend break for two and getting all the way to Travelwire before Paul Hollywood notices the dead pixels on the security cameras.

Big Rock Candy Mountain showstopper next please Jurgen.

[Norton Canes]

It's the pleading note in his voice

[Blue Jam]

Indeed it is. I can't not hear it now you've mentioned it.

"Zere are so many stars wisible in Essex. I will take a look..."

[Blue Jam]

No thoughts on Freya's sectoral heterochromia, Pijlstaart? I find it a bit mesmerising.

[Pink Gregory]

You would just leave the tin on and admit defeat wouldn't you.  Start swigging from a bottle of cooking sherry and throwing teaspoon measures at the cameras.

[JesusAndYourBush]

You would just leave the tin on and admit defeat wouldn't you.  Start swigging from a bottle of cooking sherry and throwing teaspoon measures at the cameras.

On the other occasions when someone has put the filling in a cake and it's still too hot (or not set) and the two layers are both sliding and slithering about, if it was me I'd get a skewer or chopstick and just ram it through both layers.  The top layer wouldn't slide off after that, but they never think of that, just keep persisting with the slithering and sliding, getting nowhere.

[Mr Trumpet]

Maggie to play the Joker in next Batman film

[Pijlstaart]

I imagine there'll be riots some time in the coming days and they'll be forced to re-film this series with the correct result. Only reason Gorg even rolled onto set is he didn't fit into the aperture of the peeling drum in the Walker's crisp factory, a thoroughly incapable man buoyed solely by "Shrek is Love" memes buried in the Judges' subconsciouses, his CV is blank save for the word "Mashing", but somehow he gets through. What a king of a man, in no way a collapsed riverbank, what a mitzvah it is to kneel on the dreams and necks of our children as we exalt him.

Paul Hollywood, perpetually empty by dint of being a tiki mug yearns only to be filled by the tears of children and I imagine as Freya cries so do all the other forest children in unison, a lot of black magic'll be done with pilfered tears tonight. And she had a thumping episode too, lot of golly goshing, cosplaying a fracture hills faun to really accentuate the vocal fry, and I hadn't even noticed the eyes, presume she's trying to be unique. Shades of Lukashenko here, a flagrant stitch-up but I have every faith the peasantry and assorted woodland friends will rise up to see justice is done. Still rooting for Freya in all of this, the chips are down and it's a real "clap if you believe in fairies" moment, deus ex machina is on the way.

Scouse woman has acquired a cherry on top, finally achieving the cherry bakewell phenotype in addition to genotype. Amazing how little footage they get of Chigs, conspicuously little, as the closest thing to male totty on this series was expecting loads. Probably running the gamut of mentally unwell behaviours, constant failed backflips, maybe yowling, have him pegged as a floor spitter. Trying not to comment on the italian guy, the most transparent sacha baron cohen character yet, but you know people will gush about it when he reveals himself.

For me it is telling that Jurgen persists in wearing polo shirts, he could wear a button-down shirt like a normal man and when he took it on and off it'd be normal, but he knows polo shirts are the most vulgar shirt to take off, you know he pauses at the point where his head's in the shirt and his gut's hanging out the bottom, you know he really eeks it out and presses himself against stuff. History will tell a different story to that of the bakeoff producers.

[JesusAndYourBush]

I was hoping the showstopper would be to make a cake in the likeness of a well known German person.  They'd have had to scrap the footage and re-film it the next day of course, with everyone having to choose someone else and the result would be eight Hasselhoffs in cake form.

[Thomas]

Fracture Hills, I knew I'd seen her before.