The Great British Bake Off

The superb partnership of Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins has once again been reunited for this lastest programme in the food calendar. There have been mixed reviews online with the Guardian recommending it as a pick of the day and the Telegraph labelling it as a poor Masterchef copy.

I can certainly see why someone might think that it is a poor knock-off of Masterchef but this is an altogether more fun and family friendly show in my opinion. I personally love baking - not to quite the extremes as these people seem to - but it gives you such a sense of achievement when a cake comes out just right. When you share it with other people and see them enjoying your baking it gives you great pleasure. The process of the competition sees a group of amateur bakers go head to head in a series of three themed rounds each week. This week was cake week and the contestants had to bake their signature dish, a Victoria sandwich and a chocolate celebration cake.

Each round was designed to test some aspect of their baking skill, with my favourite round being the second round testing the contestants technical ability. It was amazing to see all of the cakes lined up at the end because of the striking difference between the cakes given that they had exactly the same recipe sans method. My preferred method for a cake such as this is to cream the butter and sugar first and then add the other ingredients however, when I made my lemon and ginger muffins, the recipe said to use the 'all in one' method and it produced a fantastic result so I may adopt this for the future.

There were two clear losers of the competition which was nice in a way because you didn't feel like the judges has made the wrong decision. The final round gave the tell tale signs of who really stood out and who didn't. The inclusion of the chocolate pineapple shoved inside the cake from Lea in the final round was simply appalling and Mark's heart shaped chocolate concoction wasn't much better. The forest themed cake was spectacular but was let down with a poor cake base but given that they were testing for creativity, I'm not sure this mattered too much. The three tiered lemon drizzle cake was also a particular favourite and I may well attempt a simpler version of that later this week.