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

Also I kind of think they shouldn't send kids home every week - have it be a competition, yeah, but ending each episode with a talented young kid in tears is actually a bit of a downer.

Loving it, the kids are great. My friend’s daughter is trying for it next year - she is Georgian, really into baking, and massively into GBBO.

never has so much caramel been crystallised.

i do enjoy it when harry's jokes completely fail to land with the kids. and the general non-critical stance of it all.

(prue's been replaced for series 2)

my daughter turned down a piece of candy saying that white chocolate is "a bit too sweet" and it's 100% great british baking show haha

not worth the calories

would like to go on record as saying that is a hall of fame bad catchphrase

but ending each episode with a talented young kid in tears is actually a bit of a downer.

I think that too, but then I think about how much fun they're going to have watching themselves on telly, and it doesn't seem so bad. Although yesterday's was a tough one. "At least I got to hug Harry Hill." BLESS.

xpost hard agree

They did skip evictions the first week, which is something they should consider for the adult show, I think.

with kids, they should likely make the people voted off into judges

That’s a good idea

That's a great idea!

Slightly off topic: any of y'all seen The Great Pottery Throw-Down? It's Bake Off, but for pottery... my boo has been getting into throwing over the last year and a half, and her good pal gave us access to her HBO Max specifically so she could watch this show. It's fantastic so far! Obviously a bit more niche than baking, but OTOH more of it translates visually without smell and taste being as critical. And the stocky male judge's thing is occasionally he just gets so moved by what someone's accomplished that he starts weeping, which is a nice change from Hollywood's steez. Very very soothing and also educational to watch!

Oh yes, the Pottery Throw Down is the absolute business.

some discussion on the forks throws pottery thread: forks throws pottery (and maybe you do too?) - An ILX Ceramics Thread

oo, thanks!

Yeah, have your wife join me in that thread please Doc! It's lonely being the only chatty potter.
Where's her studio?

not my wife! but can pass it on. she's kinda not a messageboard "type," i fear....

her studio is in park slope, brooklyn. it has some pros, some cons (mostly the commute from bushwick) but it's where she started taking classes. they closed down in march of course but set up some protocols and limits for reopening in the fall - no classes, just bookable blocks of wheel and glazing time. enough to restore that creative/meditative "not looking at a screen" outlet...

sorry. "boo" not "wife"
i gather she's at BK Clay then. I've heard good things!

my partner is a big fan of the Great British Portrait Artist or whatever it is called

yah Clayhouse BK! she also took a look at Choplet in W'burg, which had this more old-fashioned, cozy, cluttery kind of vibe, which i loved but which she found distracting or like, not suited to her pottery zen vibe. could also be that quarantine procedures had jumbled up the space a bit and put people in odd places, dunno.

yeah, my studio is all distanced but folks are having a hard time figuring how to be community minded but still stay apart. We've had several positive tests and one student death. I've been mostly avoiding which makes me very sad.

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2020 season is nominated in the 2020 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2020 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 29, 2021

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

almost complete fail in yesterday's semi final.

just about to start watching the final but i think all my favourites are out.

My favourite made it to the final. Bottom in every technical challenge in final week but the only one who could make choux.

Just an all-round amazing programme. And for god's sake, making almost flawless entremets at that age. Bloody hell.

cultural mix of the final interesting as well, much moreso than the adult version (with it's 4 middle-aged, white presenters). families noticeably dressed up for the garden party apart from robby's dad who had his tracksuit top on. (also, a round of the national anthem with everyone in the tent singing)

well won by the young kid though, showstopper was head and shoulders above the others.

I'm only 3 eps in, CeCe and Reece are great

Fyn is in the Tom W "You are so bad at this how have you not left yet" seat

the Food Network is showing repeats and i thought i'd give it a go seeing as i missed the first n years.

but the series they are showing (7) must be the first one i saw (Candice and Selasie are on it) and they've also taken the original bbc1 show and cut out enough of it that they can have ad breaks and still fit it within an hour. feels panicky almost, not relaxing.

series 6 now. yesterday was bingate.

(oddly wikipedia has this as series 5, but epg says 6)

new series tonight

(and food channel are showing repeats again daily, last week was the Ruby year, this week i don't recognise anybody)

oh hey

New batch seem awesome tbh. Surprised Tom (?) was first to go when that other guy who was rolling up his showstopper just seemed to freeze when it wasn't going right and barely finished his cake. But Tom(?), while seeming sweet, had a very intense energy that was a bit anxiety inducing so maybe I don't mind so much.

I wanted to see his inevitable train cake tho

Yes, liked the crew this year. TBH I can't think of a dud bunch of contestants except for 2019 when they were all twentysomething marketing managers or something.

I like Matt but I wish he'd relax and let go of the shtick a bit more

Aw I like him. Matt’s Flintones theme sung in german was hilar imo

I am in love w this year’s Carmen SanDiego characters ie Jürgen and Guiseppe <3

Tom giving 100% Jordan Captain Chaos energy

Cannot stop staring at Freya’s eyebrows

train dude had cannon fodder written all over his face from the moment he was on camera

i'm on record about this, maybe on this thread, but the inherent ageism of them dropping the older contestants really pisses me off. I'm all in favor of the Pru-alike winning this.

She is mindbendingly posh though!

lol at Noel’s “I’ve never felt more like a chimney sweep” after watching Pru & Maggie’s conversation

i have to say that as an american what you call "mindbendingly posh" i see as "mindbendingly british" so

maggie = posh
lizzie = not posh

that is yr yardstick

Haven't finished the episode yet but the Achy Breaky cold open made me want to crawl into my skull and die.

that i agree with

i quick-skipped it to guard against my skeleton leaving my body

yeah that was not good. my partner was like "i like this show because it's NOT american in any way." thankfully the substantial segment devoted to something called "malt loaf" helped reset the scales.

lol otm

i have only had malt loaf once and did not care for it

I am in love w this year’s Carmen SanDiego characters ie Jürgen and Guiseppe <3

lol same! I love all the sundry accents on this show, Lizzie's included.

Funny that I didn't really peg Tom as a Captain Chaos heir apparent because he got lost in the shuffle with so many other bakers to keep track of.

I'm not sure how I feel about Chigs the quarantine baker -- I'm basically one myself but feel a bit put to shame at how much better he is than me (I may have made a disastrous mango cheesecake last night, so my feelings are a bit acute ATM).

I do like Freya so far -- vegan and with the Viking name that Catface would be envious of.

i feel like moreso than most seasons I have a REALLY clear sense of who's going to go the distance vs get knocked out in the first few weeks. of course a bumbler can always blossom, and a favorite can always fumble in the wrong week....