Can a Cake be 'Too Cakey?'

It’s Tuesday evening, and I am bereft. Bereft, I tell you. For what is there to look forward to, now that The Great British Bake Off has disappeared in a flurry of icing sugar and showstoppers, a tsunami of tears over failed fondant fancies and with everyone flustered by frasiers and friands? Well, everyone apart from alarmingly calm Brendan, who finally cracked at the end, did some crying, and left an enigmatically unfinished sentence about what it would mean to him to win.

This seems to have been the year when everyone I spoke to was obsessed with Bake Off. We all had our favourites, and howled with indignation when they were kicked out. ‘AN ALL-MALE FINAL?’ I shrieked when Danny-the-NHS-Emergency-Consultant was unceremoniously shown the marquee tentflap. Bake Off madness! I had my worries that Mary Berry might be overcome with the testosterone – although given the finalists were John, James and Brendan, I figured she’d probably be able to remain upright.

I was rooting for James to win, as HOW many times was Brendan going to say it was his ambition ‘throughout’ to get to the final? He was starting to sound like he had designs on invading Poland by the end. Also, isn’t it everyone’s ambition throughout to get to the final? I doubt many people go into it thinking, ‘ooh, I’d love to get to week 4, then I’ll have to opt out because I’m shit at pork pies’.

Although I was only rooting for him to win because I thought John (my true fave) was too inconsistent to claim the Golden Bake Off Baguette. My friend Ed was of the opinion that James is totally the person at school who is all, ‘Whevs, hehehe, jokes and larks, I ain’t done no revision’ (the fact that he wasn’t a Cockney – or Russell Brand - notwithstanding), but secretly he was a total swot who craved star baker and that John was class. James’ crucial final bake was basically just a ton of cake with half of Tesco’s fruit selection on top of it. Which I could have made. (As a side note, I did love the idea of a cake being criticised for being ‘too cakey’, though.)

Ed, a man of noted taste, decreed that John must win, and lo, he did! Even though he was clearly the best chap there, (excellent at baking, pretty, clever, seems totally sweet – what more could you ask for - AND I loved his accent! Sigh), I found myself shrieking, ‘WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!’ when the winner was announced. I was worried Brendan was going to kill him and put him under his (gingerbread) patio. It was all too exciting – my friend Claire pointed out the genius piece of editing when ‘Brendan realised James’ showstopper cakes had gone wrong. He looked over to John, in the manner of a man playing Cardinal Wolsley in a BBC drama, as if he were the only figure between him and total domination; cut to three ravens in a tree, one of which flies away. Amazing.’ Accompanied by shots of rain dripping off the bunting – mirroring Brendan’s tears of angsty ambition.

I loved John’s comment about how people thought bakers were all drippy housewives, and actually they were all control freaks who were desperate to be loved; couldn’t help thinking that he’d come up with that based on 10 weeks of hanging out with Brendan, The Macaron Machiavelli.

My only technical problem with the show is that I can’t decide whether you should win based on having been really good throughout (ie James was star baker 3 times, Brendan 2, John only 1) or whether it should all be down to the final push, as it were. Although surely John deserved the win just for using a hairdryer on his showstopper icing. I think Mary and Paul both fancied him, and he had a total flirtathon with Sue, which probably helped. (Can we have Sue and John presenting next year? Mel could do the ‘history’ bits?)

And another unanswered question was, when they all had a group hug, are John and James really tall, or is Brendan incredibly dinky, and he’d actually made that gingerbread house the correct size for him to have as a holiday cottage?

Anyway, I must confess, I’d got so over-involved that I got rather emotional about it - especially when John said he just wanted to make his mum proud and his family all seemed rather unsupportive (the subtext of which appeared to be: I am disappointed you’re gay. Why are you doing all this baking? That’s TOTALLY GAY). I wanted to shake his mum and go, ‘Why are you not proud of him? He’s amazing! The whole bloomin’ country loves him!’ AND HE GOT A FIRST IN HIS LAW DEGREE. WHILST DOING ALL THIS BLOODY BAKING.

I’m still bemused by this idea that James is a fox, though. He just wears funny jumpers and is a bit Scottish. Maybe people who like baking shows have more homely tastes. ‘Daniel Craig? Oh no, I bet he couldn’t make a profiterole to save his life – give me one of those baking boys any day’. I’d also be a bit wary of having him as my doctor, given his ‘I’m making Turkish Delight for the first time! It’s the final, why not?’ approach. I have a vision of him trundling into surgery, merrily burbling, ‘Appendectomy? Well, yeah, haven’t tried that before today, but let’s just see how it goes! Oops, I’ve dropped a crucial bit on the floor’.

As a special treat, and to save us all from withdrawal symptoms, can we have a special bake off challenge as part of this year’s Apprentice, just so we can have Mary and Paul back on telly again being judgy? I think Mary could try flirting with Nick Hewer, and I’d like to see Paul (whom Claire has dubbed ‘the Christian Grey of Baking’) face off with Karren Brady. ‘Go on, have some of this bakewell tart, it’s delicious’. ‘No, Paul, I can’t, I can barely fit into this pencil skirt as it is!’ ‘Come on, Karren, live a little! I’ve kneaded this dough over here for you specially’ *Karren blushes violently and goes a bit wibbly*

Or Mary and Paul leading teams of rival bakers for a Comic Relief Apprentice? C’mon LordSirAlan Sugar – the clue’s right there in your name…

Here be Dragons

So, I am still living in The House of Tiny Tearaways (we have also added mice, and moths in the kitchen cupboards, to the household which is not very pleasant). One of my housemates was visibly horrified when I bludgeoned a moth to death on the wall with a magazine the other day. When you see 'em, kill 'em, that's my motto. I'm not taking the same approach with the mice, mind.

Anyway, some new David-the-housemate gems.
1/ He took a girl to see Shame on a date. (Award for least appropriate date movie choice ever?) I asked him if he knew what it was about before he went and he said yes. It was a second date – they unsurprisingly didn’t make it to a third.

2/ I came home the other night to find him at the table in the sitting room, constructing a number of dragons (and a wizard) from small pieces of coloured card in a kit. I was so bemused, I couldn’t even form the question as to why he was making them. He mocked my choice of TV viewing matter (True Blood – I know it’s schlocky, but I like it), which caused me to retort, ‘I AM NOT THE ONE MAKING DRAGONS OUT OF BITS OF CARD, DAVID’. His reply, ‘I’m making the wizard now, actually’. He really is a genius. He’s just posted on our house FB page that we now have a MarioKart trophy. I’d kind of like to live in his head for a day, it must be quite an intriguing place to be.

I also tried watching the much-hyped Girls on TV and then Tiny Child Ben walked in at the beginning of the second episode when they’re having very noisy sex. I don’t think he believed me when I said it was ‘the new Sex and the City’, especially as I was so flustered that I tried to turn over to Newsnight… Living with 6 people does have its drawbacks.

Bonding with Daniel

What did you do with the extra hour on Sunday morning, then? I, of course, woke up at 7.40am (so, in theory, I’d had a lie in, if I was assuming it was 8.40am Old Time), my brain having amused itself by creating another Weird Celebrity Dream. This time, I was going out with Daniel Craig. Yes!! I’ve upgraded from having awkward chats with members of Take That in the back of a taxi and I’ve got a celebrity boyfriend! And not just any Celeb BF, actual JAMES BOND. Wow, my psyche is really upping the ante here, I thought. Before wondering, in the dream, (not unreasonably) what on earth Daniel Craig was doing going out with me (see, even when unconscious, I’m realistic about my place in the pecking order). And then having the terrible realisation – on top of not feeling A-listy, beautiful and interesting enough to go out with Daniel Craig – and once I'd stopped giggling wildly like a nervous chimp at the idea that he fancied me, that, um, we had nothing in common. And that actually he was quite dull.

No offence to the real-life DC, by the way, who by all accounts is charming, lovely and a jolly good bloke.

The dream culminated in Everyone’s Favourite Blue-Eyed Bond inexplicably throwing those little paper cups (you know the ones that you get jam in when you have a cream tea in a Cornish cafe? Those) at me and making me catch them. He’d filled them with honey instead of jam, though (no doubt as part of the numerous Skyfall product placement deals, 007 isn't allowed to have jam on his toast of a morning and has to have honey instead). Of course I was failing miserably to catch them, because my hand/eye co-ordination is non-existent. ‘You have to WATCH IT’, he kept saying, lobbing another one at me from a different angle. I got the hang of it just as I woke up. So, hey, maybe we could’ve made it work after all. I am now even more keen to check out Skyfall to see if JB woos a lady by throwing small paper cups of honey at her to test her reflexes.