The chickens and cows of Berkshire (and doubtless far beyond, when you consider the quantities of eggs, cream and butter the tent normally ingests) are taking a well-earned break for Bake Off’s first ever vegan week. Noel and Sandi admire the choreography of ‘Paul and Prue’ (how we wish it really was them) in a pantomime cow costume and Noel sings his special composition: ‘It’s Vegan Week, Chop up a Leek’.
Briony isn’t chopping leeks but she is slicing celeriac for her Signature bake. The remaining bakers’ half-dozen must produce eight savoury tartlets in two flavours. She adds sweet potato and some controversial apple, which the judges worry will add too sweet a note to the filling. Briony assures them it won’t and proceeds to make some French onion tartlets with vegan goat’s cheese (that’s a tapioca-based substitute, not the cheese of a vegan goat).
Despite wearing a particularly cheerful Hawaiian-style shirt, Jon’s really not a happy bunny. Vegan week is ‘not my thing’ he admits. However he’s committing himself to some pretty complicated bakes, including making falafels, hummus and sweet potato mash for one batch of tartlets. Garlic mushrooms and vegan cream cheese fill the others… well, I say ‘fill’, Jon soon realises he’s underestimated the amount of filling needed for his generous pastry cases.
Rahul has no such problem – he piles vegetables and coriander ‘posto’ (apparently a Bengali version of pesto) on a layer of cashew nut paste and spoons chickpea curry and vegan yogurt into his Ghugni Chaat tartlets.
Ruby and Manon are both attempting to recreate a buttery creaminess with cashew milk. Ruby adds arrowroot to thicken the sauce of her ‘Cheesy Greens’, whilst Manon whisks up a béchamel to coat the chestnuts and mushrooms of her ‘Winter Tartlets’. Noel, who’s still learning that baking tins come in all shapes and sizes, thinks the little rectangular ones are ‘like mouse beds’. Moving on to her ‘Summer Tartlets’, Manon packs her cases with aubergine and courgettes, which she charmingly pronounces as something like ‘hatatouille’.