The Great British Baking Show tried its hand at Japanese week
This week was a first on The Great British Baking Show; it was Japanese week! I did not expect this week to go well at all, but shockingly, the bakers did well for the most part. Was it entirely Japanese desserts? Nope!
The first challenge was actually a Chinese recipe, not a Japanese one, and the signature simply added matcha to a french recipe. And it seems I’m not the only one who noticed. There was plenty of backlash on Twitter.
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But let’s get into the individual challenges. The signature challenge was all about steamed (Chinese) buns. Not gonna lie, most of these I would have eaten in a heartbeat. They all sounded so good and based on the judges’ reactions, they tasted good as well.
At first, I thought this was going to be another brownie challenge. Lots of the bakers were focusing on making their buns look like different animals instead of just making a good bun. Luckily, it turned out in their favor. The buns looked and tasted great.
Many of the recipes on Great British Bake Off this week were not Japanese
Next up, the technical challenge! They had to make a matcha crepe cake (not a Japanese dessert) which was a delightful green on the outside with white chocolate and strawberries in between the layers on the inside.
Again, most of the bakers did well, although some had issues with getting enough crepes out of their batter. In the end, Laura came in last place and Peter came in first.
The showstopper challenge was all about making a kawaii cake (which they mispronounced in the episode). Beyond making the cake, they also needed to take inspiration from Japanese cuisine.
The answer was no. None of the above.
— Naoko Mori 森尚子 (@naoko_mori) October 27, 2020
Instead, we were served a lazy bake of an out of date out-of-a-packet mix of ‘Chinese, Japanese, Whatever’ East Asian theme, served with a dollop of the rather passé & yawn stereotype of KAWAII (ironically mispronounced KOWAI)...
(Cont’d)
These cakes, if nothing else, looked spectacular. There were cakes that looked like cute avocados, cakes that looked like dogs, mushroom-shaped cakes, and even a pineapple and a shuttlecock!
Unfortunately, not all the cakes tasted as good as they looked. Paul said Mark L’s cake was borderline inedible and Hermine’s cake looked a bit more spooky than cute. In the end, Mark L was the one to go home and Lottie, with her jiggly mushroom cake, was named Star Baker.
The bakers may have done well with what they made this week, but the show did not with their lackluster attempt at trying to give the bakers Japanese recipes to make. It would have been better if they’d have stuck with what they already know. Especially since they were clearly not willing to do their research.
So disappointed with Japanese week on #bakeoff 😩 Here's a list of Japanese things they could have actually baked on #GBBO (instead of Chinese steamed buns):
— Emily H Emmott (@Emily_Emmott) October 27, 2020
Here’s hoping next week which is 1980s week goes much better. They can’t be offensive about the 80s, right? New Great British Baking Show episodes appear weekly every Friday on Netflix.
What did you think of this week’s Great British Baking Show episode? Let us know in the comments below!