Bake Off: Crème de la Crème – episode four

Sebastien’s mini Marcs marry almond joconde sponge with rum chocolate and Chantilly creams. At the judgement there are too few slices and they’re not standing upright. Claire says they’re ‘nicely imbibed’ (which is how I shall describe myself in future when I’m struggling to stay upright) but Benoit thinks they’re not a Saint Marc.

The almond joconde pops up again in the Hilton team’s slices. Well, I say ‘pops up’ – it actually has to be prised from its tin as it sticks unexpectedly. Sajeela’s cream-free chocolate mousse doesn’t set and the team serves up only thirty-two slices. The precision is missing too – Cherish wields her ruler and says it’s not acceptable.

Next up it’s sfogliatelle (try getting your mouth around that), which is an Italian pastry meaning a small, thin leaf, sometimes called a lobster tail in English. Sebastien’s team is stretching the pastry by hand like strudel and Benoit says the technique is ‘on the money’. The filling of ricotta and semolina is flavoured with lemon, cinnamon and candied orange peel. Crushed pistachios encrust the crustaceous creations (try getting your mouth around that too) but the finished bakes are big, flat and pale.

Mark and his gang are striping their sfogliatelle with alternate layers of orange and cinnamon pastry. Filled with ricotta and orange zest, they unfortunately bake to look a bit like bacon rashers. The layers are lost and they’re judged to be chewy not crispy, which is not good for sfogliatelle or a bacon sarnie.

Sajeela’s sfogliatelle are filled with rum-infused ricotta, raisins and orange zest. Like Mark’s team, the trio is using a pasta maker to get the dough as thin as possible. Tom adds his expert insight – ‘it needs to be wafer thin – not like a pizza dough’. The bakers are enormously grateful for this clarification and put away their tins of anchovies. Good job too – the judges think the super-crisp pastries are rummy and yummy.

In the absence of the historical segments beloved by the original Bake Off, I’ll tell you that this week’s dome-shaped petits gateaux are little cakes shaped like a dome. And domes are classically found on buildings. Where else would you get such insightful excursions into the worlds of architecture and pâtisserie?

There’s a Granny Smith theme to the French team’s domed cakes. Benoit expects the finished cakes to look like apples, but he is disappointed. Apple tatin and mousse sit on a sablé biscuit and green-tinted white chocolate glaçage coats the domes, topped with a chocolate stalk. The glaze turns out to be dull, the flavours aren’t there and the chocolate ‘stalks’ look like little worms wriggling away to escape any embarrassment.

Mark’s team’s petits gateaux have a double-layered raspberry coulis and cream insert, vanilla mousse, pistachio dacquoise, crystallised pistachios, fresh raspberries and a vibrant chocolate glaze with metallic sparkle. It looks like a recipe for Red Nose Day but Monsieur Blin likes the bling. ‘Love it, love it, love it,’ gushes Cherish. She says it has ‘wow’ at first glance but she complains that Mark’s nuts are not uniform. I hope he’s not too uncomfortable with that.

The petits gateaux from Sajeela’s team have a chocolate ganache insert with blood orange mousse, a Florentine base and chocolate ring decorations. The glaze looks like lobster soup. ‘Beautiful layering,’ says Claire, though she thinks the decorations are a little thick.

As the teams prepare to take a little time out, it’s Sajeela and his hotel crew in the lead, closely followed by Mark’s team, with team Sebastien left trailing.

This week’s showpiece dessert calls up the creative juices to flow in the direction of a sticky toffee pudding. Mark’s team’s offering starts with a single chocolate tree, but he intends to recreate the Lake District as a tribute to the pudding’s reputed birthplace. Edible mushrooms and foliage flank a caramel lake, whilst the individual puddings rest on a white-chocolate-coated bank of (ahem) polystyrene. The puddings sound delicious – date sponges with a toffee mousse and vanilla cream, served with phials of local whisky. Dry ice adds a little morning mist to the landscape but it still looks like this Cumbrian excursion’s had a bad trip. Mark looks disappointed. Benoit calls it a big chunk, Cherish says ‘less is more’ and Claire thinks it hasn’t got ‘the flavour profile’, which I suspect is a posh way of saying it’s nothing like a sticky toffee pudding. James from the Hilton team carps that the pudding didn’t really originate in the Lake District anyway. If I were James, I’d avoid walking too close to Ullswater.

Sajeela’s showpiece is a toffee tower made from giant brandy snaps and sugar work. The team’s desserts are date sponge with caramel and plum jelly and vanilla mousse. Sam is crafting sugar petals – an admiring Benoit says ‘pulling sugar is my thing’, adding it gives him goosebumps. Who knew that sugar pullers have such fun? Toffee smoke threatens to choke the lot of them, but Cherish says it’s ‘very sexily done’. (Responsible public health warning – smoking is not sexy.)

The French team are flying some distance from the original pudding with a black treacle dacquoise, date and apricot compote and caramel mousse. Sebastien blows a flamingo, which is not something you hear very often, but its flaccid form has all the finesse of a rubber chicken. Benoit asks, ‘Have you worked with sugar before?’ Cherish isn’t content with their sweet confections either, saying ‘crystallisation is a no-no in the sugar world’. I love the notion that she lives on a different planet.

Inspecting their gateaux, Claire complements the team on how clean they are around the bottoms, which is always a relief to discover, but sadly they finish in bottom place. So it’s Sajeela, James and Sam who get a pass to the semi-final, but Mark, Helen and Samantha are still in with a chance as they take the lead as the highest scoring runners-up so far. It would be a nail-biting week of waiting for them if it hadn’t all been recorded months ago.

But let’s give the final word to the bidet-fresh trio from Comptoir Gourmand, who, in the time-honoured tradition of game show contestants who’ve just lost the jackpot, asked if they’ve had a lovely day anyway, say it was ‘une bonne experience’.