On Your Marks, Get Set, Baaaaake! A Thread for Great British Baking Show / Bake Off & all of its sundry delights

My favorite bit:

Val: Of course, it may be difficult this year because it was a very intensive course, wasn't it, Selasi? You didn't have much time to come home. Last year we met twice. And we all did Candice [Brown]’s wedding in the summer, in France, who won [our season of Bake Off]. Selasi, because he was already in Europe, came on his motorbike. You made chocolates, and we all made wedding cakes.

Beck: You all made wedding cakes?

Val: Yes.
Selasi and Val (left) at the wedding of their fellow contestant. Courtesy of Val Stones.

Beck: That's a lot of wedding cakes.

Val: She had 11 wedding cakes.

so lovely

Thanks for sharing that, very rad

Aw, that's lovely.

man bun

🦇 🚨 GOTH BAKER ALERT 🚨 🦇

Paul Hollywood saying "simplistic" when he means "simple" is already getting on my bloody nerves. He's said it three times this episode.

dan bun gone

dan bun turned out, about 20 seconds after i mocked him, to be a good human being and not the hipster i took him for so was i sad to see him go.

Also Jamie was utterly terrible and should have gone, but he's clearly the Liam so we have to keep him.

Why's there no lovable granny figure this year? It's all very youthful.

we got a goth instead tbf

show still works

furry garden

totally rigged that the frosted tip guy did not go home.

I really liked Dan bun.

frosted tip guy having an identical twin with equally egregious hair blew my mind - how do you look at someone who looks just like you resembling the least popular member of o-town and not rethink your entire life

yeah, I was trying to figure out which c-tier boyband fanbase they were appealing to with keeping him on. O-Town it is!

He could play a young version of Paul Hollywood.

plot twist in season finale as frosted tip guy revealed as the fruit of paul hollywood’s loins

I’m watching the repeat and Frosted Jamie did manage a good first bake, but Dan Bun didn’t.

does the goth baker have a spanish accent going on as well, i cant quite place it

already strongly disslike David the HealthNut who goes trampolining & puts squash in his fruitcakes

lol’d at the Faraway Tree convo & Noel’s “my whole career has been inspired by Moonface” or something to that effect

They made a mistake casting younger all around.

I didn't mind the youthiness as much as I expected, but one black contestant in two seasons (I think) is ridic

otm: re: health guy

Goth baker is greek iirc

ahhhhh thank you!

This series will be the first I've watched since I started baking, so I'm definitely excited for that!

I was calling Jamie N*Sync, but that may be giving him too much credit.

I'm here for the goth jokes AND Noel's baking doppelganger. (That both Michelle and Helena have jet black hair probably explains why I initially thought that Helena speaks with a regional British accent.)

I winced/cringed/looked away a lot when the one guy kept cutting himself. Gore is not what I expect on GBBO!

Michelle is Fleabag’s sister (albeit in a Welsh accent).

Ha, and Priya has the Fleabag sister’s nightmare haircut (except good)

Except for the frosted tips, Jamie immediately gave me Slow-Witted Farm Boy crossed with Apprentice to the Krays ... but by the end of the episode I thought he was a sweet lad & i liked his Schnauzer Cake <3

Oh and I like the young lad Henry? Harry? Who made the Faraway Tree cake & seems like a bit of a young baking prodigy.

Quite like the younguns, imo

The highly strung lass with the long red hair seems like she could fall apart at any moment

OH and I like the woman with the ombre-dyed frizzy hair, she seems like she is a good one to watch

what the hell is the "fairy garden" joke? that it sounded like "furry garden"? what the hell is a furry garden? is this a britisher thing?

never mind, i said it out loud. I thought he meant like, a garden where furrys hang out.

I was looking up the name of frosted tips and came across a Telegraph article titled "Please don't turn the Great British Bake Off into a Love Island clone".

the only good telegraph article

My friend got into the final round of contestant selection for the newest season of the american version of the show. He is very sad he didn't make it. He did all this studying and prep for the technical challenge in LA. It ended up being "birthday cake".

Goth baker is Spanish, or at least they mentioned something about Lanzarote in her intro.

I like Henry. I also like that he's basically the oldest one there, despite being about twelve irl.

It is missing a batty old granny who will mother everyone then go out in week five.

I manage someone at work who might have been this year’s batty old person, but she didn’t make it through the auditions to the very end because of a chocolate tempering error :(

She was HIGHLY dismissive of the 2nd round challenge failures last week (“not a single one of them could make a fucking sponge!”)

now i very much wish she had gotten on

rosie must go

is she the posh vet?

Goth rallies! The design of her witch fingers was pretty clumsy, I think she could have at least made them more presentable if she'd gone for a more minimalist/abstracted graphic design, like a clean green bar with the almond as the finger nail.

I would not be surprised if Henry turns out to be Frankie Muniz pretending to be English.

Frosted Tips Jamie seems to be the least qualified / least capable / most in over his head contestant I've *ever* seen on this show, no?

He's also either a lunkhead or just young ... but at least he seems sweet, and he had a great attitude about all his failures.

I love the goth baker's accent and am rooting for the Welsh woman and Priya.

Has there ever been an overview or supercut or even ranking of the short videos of the contestants home lives throughout the seasons? They have a very specific ironic style to them and incredibly genius editing. My wife and I couldn't stop laughing at the one of the Scottish guy playing the piano with his parents playing strings. Priya's yoga was very funny too.

So "baps" only sounds dirty?

Michael's been consistently ingenious with his designs, no? The red swirl of his Signature this week is jaw-dropping.

is she the posh vet?

she must go

my mother in law remarked this weekend that she sounds like a Minion when she talks

lol, otm

rosie the vet def sounds like a minion

Alice “DID I TELL YOU I WENT TO NEW ZEALAND” has a v highly strung vibe, like the psycho roommate who would cut up all your clothes because you didnt screw the lid down far enough on the mayonaise jar

i noticed that jamie’s head is perfectly cube shaped

michael annoys the christ out of me