It is everything else that is wrong. Just look at the challenges, which increasingly feel as though they belong in a show called The Great British Cook Off. So far in this series they have had to make pizza, tacos (with steak, refried beans and guacamole fillings) and spring rolls (consisting of a ridiculous 29 ingredients.) The spring rolls this week also required a dipping sauce, whose ingredient quantities weren’t specified by Prue Leith’s instructions – leaving the bakers to freewheel combinations of fish oil, soy sauce and other flavourings. Watching it, you genuinely had to remind yourself: this is a baking competition! For Halloween week, they had to make an edible hanging lantern, which also had to double up as a piñata. Why? In a small jug, mix the cocoa powder, vanilla, red food colouring and hot water together to form a paste. Add this to the bowl and mix well until combined.

Spread one fifth of the icing over the first sponge, then top with a second sponge. Spread with another fifth of the icing, then top with a third sponge. Continue layering until you have 5 layers of icing between 6 sponges. Review:"After the 2020 GBBO, I've been making the rainbow bagels a few times, following the recipe online, which is fine but I still definitely prefer having a recipe book I'm front of me and that's why I decided to finally buy this one.. just because of that one recipe! But this book has got lots of lovely recipes that I can't wait to try.. and one of the first ones that I already have ingredients ready for is the doggy biscuits (yes, this book has a dog biscuit recipe! It's fantastic and we don't even have a dog.. but hoping a beloved dog in the wider family will enjoy them..) Her use of flavours has been exceptional, defying the judge’s initial expectations. And then there are her showstoppers! I’m still thinking about her double helix from last week. Not just because of the design, but because she dropped little facts about it while assembling the layers, because the concepts were so well thought through: “If you untangle your genetic structure, which is your helix, you will have 67 billion miles of DNA,” she said. “How mad is that?”Remove the second bowl of icing from the fridge. Using a palette knife, spread half of the icing over the outside of the cake to seal and neaten. Clean the palette knife and smooth off any excess icing to create a smooth even icing layer. Using half of the remaining icing, spread a second thin, even layer over the top of the cake and smooth it with a palette knife. Review:"A staple of any baker's recipe collection, this book is absolutely fantastic for anyone with even a passing interest in baking as the recipes are simple and very easy to follow. Perfect for someone with a busy life or not much time as almost all the recipes use the one bowl method. Everything I've tried has turned out great and I absolutely swear by the basic traybake recipe - it's amazing! There is a variety of recipes including simple layered cakes, biscuits, cheesecakes and even some more challenging recipes for more adventurous bakers like a Battenburg. This cookbook from the latest series has plenty of easy-to-follow recipes for you to have a go at, including buns, biscuits, pies and pastries. One of our favourites is the raspberry and salted caramel eclairs. Delicious. Review:"I bought this book with a view to upping my baking game, inspired by the programme. It is based on the two Channel 4 series (8 & 9). Encouragingly, after intros by Paul and Prue, there are good bios of each baker in series 9.

More striking is the fact that the three finalists are immigrants to this often mean-spirited polity. Abdul is Pakistani, Syabira made a first-week cake in the form of her native Malaysian home, while Sandro was born in Angola and now lives in London’s East End. He never imagined that someone like him would get to present his stuff on the gingham altar.In a small bowl, mix the vinegar and bicarbonate of soda together, then add this to the bowl and beat gently until the mixture is smooth.

Make the sponges. Heat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/400°F/Gas 6. Beat the butter and sugar in a stand mixer fitted with the beater, on medium speed for 3–5 minutes, scraping down the inside of the bowl from time to time, until pale and creamy. Add the eggs, a little at a time, beating well between each addition until combined. Paul and Prue both seem to be out of their depth too, with the (rightly) much-criticised Mexican week demonstrating their poor understanding of the diversity of Mexican cuisine. Matt and Noel only made matters worse with their crude use of stereotypes – including donning sombreros, Matt shaking maracas in the tent for no reason, and then both joking that there wouldn’t be Mexican jokes (“not even Juan”). But this is nothing compared with what has been going on in the showstoppers. The concepts for this challenge have been getting increasingly wild for years, but now it feels as if the production team are seeing how far they can take it for a bet. For cake week, the bakers had to make a 3D replica of a house they once lived in. For pastry week, they were yet again having to do three-dimensional design, with pie scenes inspired by their favourite nursery rhyme or childhood story. For Halloween week (which aired two weeks before Halloween for no reason), they had to make an edible hanging lantern, which had to double up as a piñata. Why?

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Spoon the remaining icing into the piping bag fitted with a medium closed star nozzle and pipe 8 rosettes around the top edge of the cake. Here’s the thing. Even if the bakers’ creations are disappointing, Bake Off has never been a place to tear people down. It’s Bake Off! A programme that has been all about celebrating the good rather than dwelling on the bad. If you want harsh critiques, there are plenty of other shows that already cater for you. But more about the orangutan. “He’s saying: ‘This is my home. Preserve it’,” says Syabira. I don’t pretend to have the baking expertise of judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith, but surely a talking sponge-based ape should stop not just a show but any human doing anything – except standing with their amazed cake hole open. And that is why, in my view, Syabira is a worthy winner.

No GBBO list would be complete without the queen of baking, Mary Berry, herself (we miss you on the TV Mary!) Almost every recipe inside this cookbook takes just ten minutes to prepare, so no matter how busy you are, you'll always have time to make the perfect cake. Abdul’s theme is bees, so expect massive disappointment if you don’t care for honey. Sandro’s also has a theme but for the life of me I can’t recall what it is, being thoroughly distracted by the provenance of his lemons. Like Chris Martin and Sir Francis Drake, they’re from Devon, thus demonstrating the principle that one’s ingredients need have minimal air miles unless you want to make Greta Thunberg cry. Recipes are organised by type. There are 25 baker's signature bake recipes which do not seem to have been 'dumbed down'. (It would have been good if the bakers could have been named). In addition, there are 7 judge's recipes and 14 step-by-step guides to creating showstoppers. The remainder is contributed by members of the bake-off team and seems to belong to the same company. Towards the end of this final, if you listen really carefully, you can hear a noise that sounds like a fan oven but actually turns out to be Suella Braverman firing up the Kigali-bound jet, to send Sandro, Syabira and Abdul to compete in The Great Rwandan Bake Off. As with the orangutan cake, I’m kidding, but a truth remains.If you know your way around the kitchen, why not try out your bakes on family and friends? If they don't have a sweet tooth, there are plenty of savoury recipes, too. Combine the buttermilk and salt in a jug. Mix one third into the bowl, then add one third of the flour. Continue to mix in the buttermilk and flour alternately until thoroughly combined. Although to be fair, British TV cooks have a history of clunking cultural appropriation. Jamie Oliver, for instance, is paella non grata in Spain after his inauthentic recipe. And yet Bake Off has long been a proving ground for a kinder, more diverse and inclusive Britain. Think of Mary Berry reduced to happy tears after Nadiya Hussain won Bake Off in 2014, despite the nasty Islamophobic jibe the Daily Mail columnist Amanda Platell wrote about the diversity of the show’s contestants, including the Bangladeshi-heritage national treasure.