Yahoo LifestyleGreat British Bake Off: 15 things we didn’t know before GBBO started
And we don’t just mean ‘how to stop cakes looking like they were made by a five year old’
It’s the best thing to happen to baking since we finally agreed to stop making the rock cakes - but as the fourth series of 'Great British Bake Off' begins, let’s check out all that it has taught us so far...
1. If you have handwriting like a small child’s, don’t do one of those cakes where you write the French words on top. It could taste like something Mary Berry herself has crafted, but if it looks like it was made by a sugar-fuelled four year old on the last day of term, you’re out of the game.
2. No-one really wants to know the history of the Bakewell tart (‘The history bit’? Basically code for ‘Put the kettle on and Google what’s going on with Paul Hollywood’s love life’).
3. Our new style icon would be a very posh lady born in 1935. See you in Zara for this season’s version of the bomber jacket?
4. Our new crush would be a middle-aged bloke with a paunch who’s awfully good at kneading dough. Oh come on, it’s not just us.
5. A soggy bottom was potentially something we could find in our kitchen, and that would only mildly alarm us.
6. There is more pun potential in baked goods than there is in most subject matters in the world. Anyone fancy a squeeze of some buns?
7. Watching people sit in front of oven doors looking anxious is a lot more dramatic than you’d think.
8. If you cover up your burnt bits with icing, Paul Hollywood will know, and he will not be happy with you.
[Recipe: Aubergine Parmigiana]
9. What you actually do with baking beads. Good to have that clarified after owning them for TEN YEARS.
10. If we’ve got a big white tent, some nice bakers and a rum baba, we don’t need dramatic music, deadlock or Dermot O’Leary.
11. You can never really have too much bunting.
12. We have very, VERY rubbish kitchens.
13.Recipes from the 1970s are not popular (oh Brendan), so don’t plough ahead with your prawn cocktail pie, no matter how ‘lovely and unusual’ your nan said it was.
14. If you use proper knives, rather than something that’s so blunt it could sneak into a Fisher Price set, then baking can be brutal. Great British Bake Off: the bloodiest show on TV since 'The Wire'.
15. The meaning of the word ‘pithivier’. Actually we still can’t remember what it means. Something to do with cake though, definitely something to do with cake...
