The Great British Bake Off/Baking Show – Week 1 – Cake 2024

The bakers are back in the tent and once again the opening segment had my tired eyes rolling a bit. Barbie themed it was and a bit over-the-top. I had to chuckle when the American baker, Jeff, said, “It doesn’t matter if you win or lose as long as you win.” There is that American sportsmanship.

Ironically, the tent was “cold” for a change and bakers were chilly and having some issues with chocolate and other things setting up too quickly. It is either feast or famine right?

Signature bake: An elevated loaf cake in 2 hours.

Prue made me laugh when she stated that the bakers could “bury something exciting inside”. I thought of maybe a gold bar or treasure map.

Most of the bakers had issues with timing as the cakes didn’t have enough time to cool despite the chilliness of the tent and their ganache and icings melted into sweet pools of goo. Christiaan will never forget that Paul doesn’t like miso and Illiyin will never forget the first Hollywood handshake for her cinnamon roll-styled loaf cake.

Darcie: At first I was confused by the linseed in Mike’s cake but after he said the flowers were purple I knew it was the same as flaxseed, because my brothers (both farmers) grow that occasionally on their farm in North Dakota. If you ever have a chance to see a flaxseed field in bloom take advantage of it – the sweeping expanse of blueish purple flowers in the spring is breathtaking.

It’s rare to have a Hollywood handshake on the very first bake so Illiyin had to feel pretty special about that one. Two hours seems like a long time until you are faced with this time limitation – cooling a cake fully can take almost that long. Plus you couldn’t just slap together a quick banana bread and call it a day. To paraphrase Paul, “the idea of ‘that’ll do’ won’t do in the tent.” The cool weather was especially apparent in the buttercream icing where a lot of it looked curdled.

Technical challenge: Set by Paul – 8 Mini Battenberg cakes in 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Jeff was not present for the technical as he was sick (he also missed the showstopper). This was the first time that the bakers were not given even a hint of a recipe. They had five minutes to taste and examine the Battenberg cake provided to them and then they were left to their own devices.

We have 40 online recipes for Battenberg cake in our Library.

Darcie: I really enjoyed the idea of the ‘taste and bake’. This helps eliminate the issue of some bakers knowing what the end product should look like with others never having seen it before. It is also a real test of their baking ability: can they judge from the texture and flavor how the cake was mixed and how much flavoring and coloring to add? Despite having a sample readily available, I was surprised by how thick some of the contestants made their marzipan wrap.

Judging was mixed. Coming in the top three were: third place was John, second was Christiian and in first place was Georgie.

Showstopper: An illusion cake in four hours.

All the bakers did remarkably well with a few having a great design but overbaked cakes. Alison had everyone laughing when Paul cut Georgie’s cake which was of her chicken Fanny. Alison asked, “Is the Fanny taste gone?”

Mike’s books were amazing, stacked and individual volumes done. He received kudos on his flavours as well. Sumayah’s duck was exceptional both in design and flavour. Dylan, Gill, Georgie and Nelly did impressive work in both design and flavour. Christiian, Hazel, Andy and Illiyin had issues with either overbaking or flavours not being spot on.

Darcie: I was tickled to see two bird cakes because I have actually made a chicken illusion cake before (pictured here, and I guess to be accurate it was a rooster not a chicken), although it took me considerably longer than four hours to make. I made the feathers out of modeling chocolate and can empathize with Georgie on making hundreds of feathers. Sumayah had a smarter approach with texturizing plain fondant instead of making individual feathers.

It’s amazing to see what all the contestants could do in a relatively short time frame and I think it’s fair to say that as the years have progressed in GBBO, so has the quality of the bakers. No one had an absolutely terrible disaster, and the showstoppers all seemed well conceived and fairly well executed. This is the best start to a season in a few years.

In the end, no one went home due to Jeff being sick, but that leaves the possibility of two people going home in the future. Star baker was given to John who was number three in technical and made a well-designed pair of pants for his illusion cake with lovely sponge.