With the antics of Mel and Sue taking us back to Carry On films, I think half the UK population were rather hopeful the baking would be abandoned this week in favour of a bit of sauce with Paul. Now would he be a Sid James or a Kenneth Williams I wonder? that would make for a great Comic Relief spin off don't you think?
Anyway back to baking. After much 'ooooooh matron' style references to sauce and saucy we discovered that the bakers had to produce 8 identical, individual proportioned, self saucing puddings. The saucy bit could ooze out of the middle (a classic fondant) or sit on the base of the sponge
Paul wanted to see a nice, light sponge. Mary was after some sauce. I expect the contestants were too. There were a couple of pitfalls for them to worry about and share their expert techniques on
- the light sponge could easily over bake and result in something a little too hard making it difficult to get to the sauce inside
- the sauce could overcook and not ooze from the middle
I am very sad to say that there wasn't a spotted dick amongst them. We had three camps.
The chocoholics
- Martha - a chocolate sponge with a peanut butter and chocolate molten centre
- Nancy - a chocolate and pistachio sponge with a molten chocolate centre
- Kate - a chocolate and nut sponge with a salted caramel centre
- Iain - a chocolate and lime sponge with a raspberry centre
- Richard - a chocolate sponge with a fruity cherry centre
The Tutti Frutties
- Chetna - a rhubarb, strawberry and raspberry pudding
- Diana - an orange sponge with a lemon curd centre
The Pudding Pair
- Luis - Pear Puddings with a cinnamon spiced sauce
- Norman - Sticky Toffee Puddings
All the ideas were wonderful but the most beautiful looking were the pears from Luis. He used individual pears sticking out of a sponge in mini casserole dishes. Sadly his sauce was not thick enough at all. It was more of a puddle of water for Paul and for this his precision of baking the pears with little foil hats to prevent them burning was a little overlooked sadly.
For everyone else, it was a little tick, tick, tick exercise during the judging. No-one seemed to have any issues on flavours and that is a pattern emerging this series. The only others to receive any negative critique were Martha for over peanut buttering her molten centres leading to that 'it's stuck to the roof of my mouth' feeling and Nancy for overbaking her sauce resulting in no sauce.
It was really hard to see a stand out leader in the pack this week after this round.