Column: Helen Bach - Bake Off rises to the occasion yet again!

Our colmnist Helen Bach was wowed yet again by the Great British Bake Off!

Ooh, wasn’t this year’s Bake Off good?

The final had me on the edge of my seat, too close to call who the ultimate victor was going to be.

I thought Kim-Joy had edged it, but Rahul was crowned the winner in what must have been the closest final in the show’s history.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Rahul appeared to genuinely not know how good he was throughout the series.

How this was possible as time went on and he received Hollywood handshakes almost every week is beyond me, but his lack of self-confidence and his Eeyorish quality of doom-mongering and always anticipating the worst outcome was endearing, if not a little stressful to watch at times.

I may take up Ruby’s use of positive post-it notes - we saw a shot of her flat, with messages like ‘I am the Bake Off winner’ etc on the fridge - and post mantras such as ‘You’re doing your best’ and ‘Your food is almost always edible’ to give myself encouragement.

I wasn’t sure about the out-of-the-tent experience of camp fire cookery if I’m honest, and I don’t think adding a Bear Grylls element to Bake Off was necessary.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Having said that, if I ever want to cook pitta bread alfresco, I now have a better idea of the pitfalls that could await me: forewarned is forearmed, as they say.

The companion show Extra Slice with Jo Brand provided a fun-filled hour of out-takes, behind-the-scenes clips, discussions with the baker who’d been voted off, and also an opportunity to see the culinary creations of the nation each week.

Never again will I be able to look at a hedgehog cake or Colin the Caterpillar in quite the same light though.

Some of the photos sent in by viewers were bordering on frightening - I can only hope these horrors were not presented to a child as their birthday cake otherwise years of counselling will ensue.

So that’s GBBO over for another year, and I’m missing it already.

At least we’ve got the Stand Up To Cancer fundraising celeb version to look forward to - bring on the bakers!