Great British Bake Off 2019: Biscuit Week

by Chetna Makan 04 September 2019

Chetna Makan gives us the lowdown on what went on during Biscuit Week, the second challenge of the 2019 series of Great British Bake Off.

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Chetna Makan

Chetna is a food writer and baker who appeared on the 2014 series of Great British Bake Off.

Chetna Makan

Chetna is a food writer and baker who appeared on the 2014 series of Great British Bake Off.

Biscuit Week is always a creative and fun week in the Bake Off tent, and chocolate biscuit bars is a delicious signature challenge to start things off. All the ideas the contestants came up with sounded really interesting and delicious. We also got to know a bit more about the bakers – it was lovely to see so many of the bakers this year have either a musical and creative side to them.

From the start of the show Michelle looked very confident and in control of her chocolate biscuits – and for good reason. Her chocolate bars turned out beautifully, both sounding and looking delicious. Michelle seems to be the most confident of the bakers in the tent this year and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see her glide through to the finals.

Amelia, on the other hand, had great sounding flavour combinations but the biscuits didn’t turn out as fantastic, lacking both crispness and crunch. She was definitely in danger from the get-go.

Jamie seemed carefree, not too stressed and so relaxed that while everyone was getting the biscuits out of the moulds he was only just putting them into the fridge. This meant that the biscuits were not set in time, but lovely Michelle stepped in to help him at the last minute. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to rescue his disastrous bake.

What is surprising is the fact that we’re two weeks in and no baker has yet to receive a handshake from Paul. I wonder if he is making up for his over-generosity from last year!

The technical challenge this week was for fig rolls. Are these cakes or biscuits? To be honest it’s a debate I can’t be bothered to get into. All the bakers do OK – no disasters this week – but bottom of the bakes was Helena’s, while Alice came up on top with her ‘almost perfect’ fig rolls. I wonder if anyone ever tries to bake the technical challenge at home?

Next came the interesting bit: the showstopper challenge was for 3D biscuit sculptures, which sounded amazing and I knew it would be a great challenge to watch.

‘If it doesn't taste good I don't care how beautiful it looks,’ said Prue at the start of the challenge, and I could not agree more with her. I have always believed that taste is key when it comes to food; the way it looks is not really of much importance to me.

All the ideas sounded great, some more challenging than the others and there were also plenty of innuendos to keep everyone amused.

We almost had the first meltdown of the season when Michael glued his biscuits to the wrong side of his creation and Priya rushed to give him a hug – but the judges couldn’t tell the difference when presented with the end product anyway.

David’s ‘wedding spray’, on the other hand, looked spectacular. It featured such delicate and thin flowers, which not only looked great but sounded delicious too. It was a very clever design which pleased the judges a lot (although not enough to reward him with the title of star baker, but still great praise all round).

I did like all the designs, from Rosie’s chicken and Phil’s tortoise to Steph’s cat and Helena’s very clever spider. The only design I was not sure of was Amelia’s dolphin, and it turned out Paul was not too impressed either. Being a designer, I was expecting a bit more actual creative design from her.

In the end, it was Alice’s chocolate and coconut sculpture that won her the star baker title for Biscuit Week, with a very clever and funny design finished with delicious biscuits. Unfortunately, it was Jamie’s simple and very clumsy design that sent him home in week two.

All in all it was a very creative episode and if I could try one biscuit from this week it would be David’s delicately flavoured flower biscuits.