The Great British Baking Show Season 14 Episode 1 Recap: Cake Week

The Great British Baking Show is back with a new crop of bakers and the same dry humor we’ve come to love. 

The Great British Baking Show Season 14 Episode 1, “Cake Week,” starts off with a little interlude called “The Breadfather” in which the hosts and judges parody The Godfather.

During the segment, Noel Fielding introduces new judge, Alison Hammond to “Don Paul Leoni,” with a cameo from Prue Lee. 

The segment is filled with bread jokes: kissing a loaf, having to “prove,” and Paul Hollywood eating dough balls. 

Signature Challenge: Vertical Layer Cake

On their first day, 12 bakers enter the tent and are instructed to make a vertical layer cake. (It’s quickly explained that this is just a Swiss roll on its end, and while the final result looks amazing when cut, it’s hard not to echo Tasha’s sentiment:

TASHA: It’s just a Swiss roll, on it’s end. And I can’t help but think…why? 

As the judges move around the tent, getting to know the bakers we’re given the typical baking show stories with a few notes about each contestant.

A few standouts include Rowan, who is immediately noted as being the youngest baker in the competition. He’s 21, and his signature challenge cake is chocolate and raspberry, inspired by a wedding cake he made for his 21st birthday.

(Why didn’t the producers use a picture of that? Because I seriously wanted to see that birthday wedding cake!)

Nicky, a former flight attendant, makes a vertical layer cake inspired by her childhood with her sister. The two used to play a skipping game while singing, “Oranges and lemons sing the bells of St. Clements.” 

Saku, an intelligence analyst who plays for a cricket team, is making a lemon and blueberry cake. It’s one of her husband’s favorite cakes, but Prue has concerns about the blueberry flavor being too pale. When she admits she’s nervous, Paul Hollywood hugs her. 

Keith, a chartered accountant, goes for an orange chocolate cake inspired by his father, who served in World War II. His father was a prisoner of war on starvation rations, and when he returned home, he would hoard Christmas chocolates from October onwards.

Keith decided to add a little extra orange liqueur to his buttercream to impress Prue. 

Abbi, who works at an organic farm, is working on a poppy seed, lemon, and black currant cake. She foraged for her own fruits and veg for her cake, including the petals for her decoration. 

As the two-hour bake continues the bakers face a time management challenge: they have to let all of their cakes cool sufficiently so that they won’t crack once they’re standing on its end. 

Many bakers have trouble with this and the final countdown is stressful as the bakers finish putting the decoration on their cakes.

During the first judgment, there is a lot of praise from Paul and Prue but some practical advice for the bakers as well.

They loved Rowan’s and Cristy’s cakes on a technical level, praising them for the vertical lines during the cut, but both needed to work on their flavors. On the other hand, Abbi had a good balance of vertical stripes and flavors. 

Saku and Nicky’s cakes both had structural issues, with Nicky’s cake “looking a bit like a barrel,” and Saku’s cake leaning a bit to one side. Nicky’s cake was lacking in citrus flavors, which didn’t impress Paul. However, Saku’s cake earned high praise from the judges.

PRUE: I think the real achievement is to get real flavor out of blueberries, which are really not the easiest fruit to make taste great. 

The signature challenge leaves most of the bakers with high spirits as they move into a technical challenge. 

Technical Challenge: The Iconic Baking Show Cake

The bakers’ next challenge is to recreate the iconic raspberry chocolate fudge cake from the show’s opening credits. (Yes, the cake with the missing raspberry.) 

In this challenge, the judges are looking for two layers of chocolate cake with a silky smooth chocolate ganache topped with fresh raspberries. During these challenges, the bakers are all given the same set of ingredients with a pared-down recipe. 

During the baking time, Paul and Prue explain some of the technical challenges. The most important part of this challenge is the ganache. 

PAUL: It comes down to the ganache. You got to cool your ganache down to a point, but not cold, because it’ll be solid. When it comes into contact with the sponge, if it’s warm, it’s just going to run out. 

The bakers run back and forth between the fridges and their stations to cool down their ganaches. There’s a lot of downtime in this bit as different bakers fight with their ganache.

As they finish their bakes, Tasha realizes that they aren’t instructed as to whether or not to leave off the missing raspberry in their decoration.

This leads to some creative artistic division between the bakers, many of whom decided to just rectify the missing raspberry. Rowan had one of the funniest reactions:

ROWAN: It’s here. You can put it on if you want. I’m not going to do it for you. 

When the judges are brought back to the tent they taste each of the cakes blind and then rank them from 12th to 1st place.  None of their judgments included any comments about the missing raspberry despite the emphasis on that flaw throughout this segment. 

At the bottom is Dana whose cake was a little too dense for the judge’s liking. Tasha came in 11th because her cake had a large waste band around it as the layers came together. Nicky came in 10th because her chocolate was too light. 

Amos came in second place and Dan was the winner, both amazing cakes that did the iconic bake-off cake justice. 

Showstopper Challenge: Cake in the Shape of an Animal

The next challenge requires the bakers to make a cake shaped like an animal. This is their first chance to show off and many of them use the four-hour challenge time to do just that. The bakers are allowed to use puffed rice to create certain elements, but the cake’s main body has to be sponge. 

Many bakers decide to make cakes based on their four-legged companions. Keith creates a likeness of his poodle Maise, Dana makes a cake inspired by her dog Gracie, Matty creates his cocker spaniel, and Dan pays tribute to his 17-year-old dog who passed away a month before. 

However, not all cakes are inspired by pets. 

Amos aims big with a killer whale cake. He’s using a dense sponge cake that’s great for carving but is also hoping to bake this monster cake without any support structure.

Nicky delivers some laughs on this episode for choosing a beaver, her announcement causes judges and hosts to love their biscuits with laughter. Nicky named this cake Norman and while everything is very cordial during judging, her choice of animal is the same one that gave us moments like this: 

PRUE: So Nicky, tell us about your beaver.

Josh has decided to make a highland cow in honor of his mom’s 60th birthday. He has come prepared with a plan for how he will construct this cow and has thought enough about the filling to know that he needs something that will support the cake’s heavy head.

His precision pays off because he’s able to build his cow with no support structure.

The bakers all move through their cakes balancing baking sponges with additional details from isomalt to modeling chocolate until judging.

Showstopper Judging

First up is Christy, who gets high praise for the color of her Mallard duck and the use of an isomalt lake. The judges especially like her raspberry sponge. 

Then came Keith. His Maise cake has a little less artistic flare but Keith sells it well. While his decoration may not be on point, he has strong flavors. 

Matty struggled with getting the right color for his black cocker spaniel. The result is a gray color that Paul Hollywood says “looks like it’s been run over.” However,  his also has good flavor and laughs off Prue’s comments about the color. 

Rowan’s lobster cake has more impressive detail with multiple flavors that Paul judges as tutti-frutti, and Saku’s orange poppyseed cake with orange buttercream comes off as “quite stodgy” according to Prue. 

Dan presents his Bruno cake on a real dog bed, and Prue deems it “totally adorable.” Paul then apologizes as he cuts off a quarter of Bruno’s head and is greeted with some groans from the other bakers. Prue and Paul judge it as “moreish” and “very intense.”

PRUE: I think you’ve done Bruno very proud.

Josh’s highland cow is also praised for it’s style. However, Paul thinks that there’s too much buttercream.  Similarly, Dana’s Gracie cake is overpowered by the peanut butter flavor. 

Meanwhile, Abbi’s sheep is immediately praised for having “real character to it in the face.” This earns a joke from Prue about his treatment of the Bruno cake. Her cake has a variety of flavors including rhubarb and ginger earning her high praise from Paul and Prue.

On the other hand, Amos’s killer whale is found to be “tough as old boots” and “bone dry” by Paul and stodgy and sweet by Prue.

Then comes Nicky’s judging, which of course earned a roar of laughter. While her cake has some solid cartoonish style, the cake is bone dry and overbaked. 

Last is Tasha, whose Robin is praised for the pipework and stance. She takes a risk with chocolate and tahini. After struggling a bit in both the signature and technical challenges she gets rave reviews from both Prue and Paul.

Prue is surprised by how balanced the tahini is with the chocolate. Meanwhile, Paul decides to give Tasha a heart attack.

PAUL: I don’t like that, Tasha. I love it. 
PRUE: I thought I was going to have my first big battle with Paul Hollywood, because I would have gone to the wall to defend you if he’d meant it.

Overall, Tasha’s cake is praised as being a fantastic job. While it’s clear she’s probably not going to be Star Baker this week, she has picked herself up a bit in the ranking.

The Elimination

While each baker has shown strength over the first three challenges, one ultimately has to go home. During deliberations, the judges identify Amos, Dana, and Nicky as the three who have struggled the most, and it’s hard to argue with those observations. 

However, first, we get to announce Star Baker. This week it’s Dan. His Bruno cake bringing it home for him this week. 

Noel has the unfortunate task of announcing who goes home this week, and the first to go is Amos. However, his departure is a warm one with many of them hugging and encouraging him to keep going. 

The Great British Baking Show airs new episodes every Friday on Netflix

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