Week Nine Of The GBBO: Patisserie

All images, unless stated, owned by the BBC.

WARNING: This is jam-packed with The Great British Bake Off spoilers because - well - it's all about The Great British Bake Off.

Originally posted on The Bake Off Update.

Signature - savoury palmiers

Technical - savarin - KitchenAids came into their own with this one, Candice was using the whisk attachment, Jane using the dough, and Selasi using a mixer. Lord knows what Andrew was using. You just can't pay for that kind of publicity.

(Except you can. And they did.)

Showstopper - fondant fancies - the standards were sky-high for these from Paul's POV: 'I want to see shop-standard Fondant fancies'...

We've reached semi-final week!

As Candice says: 'It's the last time someone goes home, because the next time there will be a winner.'

WHAT.

Selasi doesn't know you need to sieve flour. And he reached the winners circle. 2016 has been a right one.

Mel and Sue were drowning in French jokes. Plus there was that awkward moment when Mel and Sue joke about leaving the show and having enough... when in the future they will be leaving the show and will have had enough...

We've had a crazy wardrobe realisation with these two, seeing Mel with her 'happy' slogan on the back of her blazer. Maybe that's what it is! All this time, the stylist has been going mad on the back of their clothes with embroidery, fabrics, and props. We've been too busy looking at the front.

The Beeb editors had some fun again this week with the palmiers:

Selasi: I think you don't want to fill it too much

Candice: I think you have to put in a lot of filling to get more flavour

Mary's face of the week

MBez got a bit saucy on us this week, proposing to Candice: 'It's something I'd like for breakfast.'

Source: http://mashable.com/2016/09/15/bake-off-prince-william/#qbzgSWMBDuq4

Steady on, you haven't seen her technical yet.

Paul was back with his cringeworthy sound-inducing blade for famously crunchy genoise sponge and tough puff pastry.

Jane

She's still known as 'garden designer Jane', but luckily Sue was on standby to slam her floral palmiers:

'So it's sort of a puffy hand?'

Yes Sue. That's exactly what it is. They are posh Monster Munch. The design expert has fallen at decorating. Again.

She was one stressy Betty this week, having a caramel melt down (well, crystal down) and admitting to lying 'awake tossing and turning worried about my bakes'.

I'd probably stay up all night too if I was planning on decorating lemon fondants with blue icing...

Amidst all of the panic and stressing, she managed to come first in the technical, and crack out some great flavours (tapenade, sun dried tomatoes, pesto = my kind of lady).

Andrew

The man meant business. Everyone was acting like it was a two-woman race, so that left Selasi as Andrew's obstacle to the final. And he had a pencil in his ear to prove it.

He was bringing back his musical roots this week with treble clef palmiers and philharmonic fondants.

Of course, memories of his successful musical theatre group came flooding back to us, with glorious images such as:

His great attempt during the technical simple and stylish showstopper saw him well and truly beyond Selasi - and even set him to be a bit of a contender for the winning spot next week.

Selasi

He seemed like he was at his most relaxed yet, stepping in on the judges and hosts' scripts. But our gentle giant was the most stressed we've seen him with sweat patches, heavy breathing, and Sue needing to mop his brow.

The Bake Off producers have never been ones to leave us in suspense; and once Paul had said 'what can we say about Selasi?' during their pre-result summary, you knew it was him.

He served up raw palmiers (with good flavours) and, although he had the right idea decorating straight into the freezer, his whole orange segment decorations were not received favourably.

He was on edge throughout the episode, appearing to have a real problem with how punctual Jane's bakes are and how prompt she was with getting her bakes into the oven. You do you Selasi. You do you.

Selasi's face of the week

Candice - sorry - CB

Source: https://voyageroffreedom.wordpress.com/tag/gifs/

The judges admitted to not really classing her palmiers as palmiers. They need to sort out their judging rules, because surely baking one less of the right cake, is better than baking 24 of the wrong... ya feel me?

Candice has a knack of casually nailing bakes where everyone else appears to be failing miserably. E.g. whipping up perfect fondants and having the genius idea of icing onto melted chocolate, unlike the bumpy result everyone else had like some of that personalised Thornton's shit.