The Great British Bake Off/Baking Show – Week 1 – Cake Week 2025

And we are back with cake week! I might hurt myself if I do not get this off my chest – the Jurassic Bake opening was tragic. At first blush, I thought Prue Leith was Martin Mull (resurrected) and each bad joke was predictable. That being said, I can forgive them the opening as I love the show.

Update: Waitrose Weekend’s September 4th edition has a two page article (p. 6-7) about the two women who organize all the logistics for the Bake-off Tent.

Now to the important things – the baking.

Signature challenge: a Swiss roll cake with an inlay design with two different fillings in two hours. We have 107 online recipes for Swiss roll cakes in our Library.

Overall, the baker’s designs were lovely save Hassan who had a large chocolate mess on his hands. I felt so bad for him. Iain’s Queens University design was spectacular as was Nataliia’s tribute to Ukraine. Bakers were given good comments about their flavors overall with a few being told that their rolls were too sweet and either under- or over-baked.

Darcie: Stress caused a few bakers to have mishaps that made them start parts of their bakes over, which meant they were extremely pressed for time, including Leighton, Hassan, and Toby. Two hours is short when you have to mix, bake, decorate, and fill any cake, much less ones with these intricate designs. I was impressed with Tom’s steady hands for piping such a neat tartan and Iain’s impressive drawing skills. I thought Pui would knock too much air out of her sponge when she banged it on the counter before baking, but it turned out okay.

Technical challenge: Set by Paul Hollywood – 9 fondant fancies in 2 hours and 15 minutes – specifically raspberry and almond fancies. We have 25 online recipes for fondant fancies and 47 online recipes for petit fours.

Recipe here: Raspberry & almond fondant fancies

They are making things much harder on the bakers. Usually, the bakers are given the ingredients needed with little to no instructions. This season the bakers were given many “red herrings” to quote Paul. For instance, the ingredients provided included ground almonds and almond extract (along with a selection of other extracts) and multiple fruits for the jam and so forth to throw the bakers off. I have to say that is too much! They are baking blind (almost – see next paragraph) why make it even harder. So much pressure – I was even sweating just watching them.

Under that infamous gingham cloth was a sample fondant fancy. The bakers had five minutes to sample and examine same to determine the flavors and design. Almost every baker used the ground almonds in the batter which made the cake “tough” “cardboard like” “shallow” and so forth. The colorings and flavors were off. The judging came down to:

At the bottom in 12th place was Tom, followed by Pui Man (who put rose in her cake!) and then Hassan in 10th. The top three were Nataliia in third, Jessika in second and Toby in first. But really no one was a winner.

Darcie: I second Jenny’s comment that this challenge was too much, especially for the first day. However, I do think this shows that the quality of the bakers over the years has steadily improved – perhaps a testament to the show’s influence on bakers. The judges felt they needed to set a really high bar (no recipe at all!) to keep the bakers challenged. But still, it was, as Tom said, “brutal”. What will we see for the technical challenges going forward if they are this difficult at the outset?! With only two bakes down, clear frontrunners are emerging and barring any disasters there are only a couple of bakers that need to worry about going home the first week.

Showstopper challenge: A landscape cake in 4 hours.

Iain had some issues with his cake collapsing but somehow scooped it all together and received nice comments – except for “too much icing” – if they only knew. Leighton’s cake was “wobbly” and he himself jokingly referred to it as the leaning tower of Mumbles (his landscape was to reflect the Swansea area of Wales know as the Mumbles). Nataliia’s tribute to Ukraine was stunning and delicious as was Tom’s depiction of Iceland (he wanted it to look like someone cut a cross-section of the earth in Iceland and put it on display). Hassan continued with difficulties and was told his cake was not well built but had good flavour; Jasmine needed more design work as did Pui Man’s. Many of the bakers had “stunning flavours” – with just a few negative comments here and there.

Darcie: When they said “landscape cake” for the challenge I wasn’t sure if they meant it to be a real landscape with somewhat geographic features or, as some of the bakers interpreted it, a layered cake with a depiction of an area. The former was what the judges were after, and that reflected in the feedback they gave to the bakers. It’s more challenging to do an actual landscape and those who took those risks were rewarded – even when they had a catastrophic failure like Iain’s.

I think some of the people who neither rose to the top nor sank to the bottom could have breakout weeks ahead of them, particularly Lesley and Jessika. The look on Leighton’s face when they announced that Hassan was going home said it all – it was a squeaker and I too thought he would be leaving the tent. It was a shame to see Hassan go because he seemed lovely. I wish they could all remain and just have a cumulative scoring system – at least for the first few episodes. We hardly even get to know them and they’re gone.

The results: The star baker was Nataliia (hooray!) who is my favorite so far this season and sadly Hassan went home.