What I Saw: The Great British Bake Off
I like to read The Guardian, a British newspaper, online. It gives me some ideas for Brit TV series to watch.
Because The Guardian had several articles about it, I recently watched The Great British Bake Off. One of the reasons that I watched the whole season was because Gordon Ramsey was NOT on the show and was unmentioned. And this is a competitive amateur baking contest that pits ordinary British people who have real jobs, who for some deep psychological reason or other, become obsessed with baking stuff. All the stuff that they bake before they come on this show must be given away to the unfortunates or hypoglycemics or sold at school fund raisings because none of these bakers or their families (every baker gets a video shown about their lives before going on this show) look like they actually eat all those cookies, cakes, or puddings that they bake.
In Britain, certain confections are called puddings. They are not puddings as an American would picture a pudding---the kind where you have to de-skin the pudding before you slather it with Dreamwhip or real whipping cream.
This is an American Pudding Skin.
This is also an American Pudding Skin. Americans have a diversity of Pudding Skins in their cooking culture.
Puddings for a Brit, are small cakes or petit fours type desserts. I suppose a Trifle is an example of an English pudding, as is a Mississippi Mud Cake. English baking terminology is very confusing much like their spelling habits.
This is an English Trifle:
Although, you could say that by the colors, red, white, and blue, it could be a patriotic American Trifle but not a pudding. Or a Brit Trifle, same colours in their Flllagggg (sic: English Spelling!).
The Trifle is also a Pudding, I think. I could be wrong. The Brits have a very complex cultural cooking code, and I am but a Stranger in a Strange Kitchen. They put their Aga ovens on the left side of the kitchen, I do believe.
This is a Mississippi Mud Cake. It is as American as the Muddy Mississip'. There is no Pudding to be found in it (or Mud, I suppose this is where some people get the idea that Southerners eat Mud), but the Brits would call it a pudding.
In America, we would call these cookies.
But the Brits would call these "BISCUITS".
These are Biscuits.
But the Brits call these "SCONES". I fail to understand where that word "scone" even came from. It is probably a corruption of the word "CONES". They don't look anything like cones, but the Brits must have thought that they did. The Brits do think that a car "Hood" looks like a "Bonnet". That has something to do with British Haberdashery and the reason that British Hat Makers were all "Mad Hatters". And then that Famous British Sense of Spelling came into the mix and the Brits spelled "cones" as "scones" and thus a Baked Treat was named.
At this point you might be ready to just give up Baked Goods altogether, but please. let us not trot down that path of stoney failed yeast breads and strawberries. Just remember, no matter what the Brits call it, it still has lots of butter and sugar in it, and therefore it is very pleasing to eat. Next to eating baked goods, I like to watch them being baked. Krispy Kreme, why did you ever leave my town?
In a Great American Bake Off show, we would have the contestants all talking trash to each other and sticking their feet in each others' batters and impressing their buns on each others' buns. "WINNING, WINNING, WINNING, WHINING!' would be the key words. We, the viewers, would all be waiting for Tiffany to shut Tonton's fatt (sic: English Spelling) butt in his oven while Tiff cackles like a Wicked Witch who is frying up Pork Fat Crisps.
But in The Great British Bake Off, the Brits are very modest, anxious, and self-immolating. They read the recipes that they are to bake and wince. They address the camera with their insecurities, "Did I do it right?" "Is it Edible?" "It looks Horrible!"
After cooking and decorating and arranging their baked goods, they offer them to the judges and as the judges bite their goodies, the contestants bite their fingernails or suck on the stumps of their chopped off fingertips with apprehension. For every criticism from the judges, they offer their apologies and cringe obsequiously at their small failures (sic: It is a Heep of Uriahs! sic: British Humour! sic: British Spelling). However, I will say this. If one of them produces a BIG ASS GIGANTIC Failure to the judges, they just blow it off. It is the crumbs of baking failure that humble the Brits. The thermonuclear detonation of a sponge cake in the Aga causes them to posture like a North Korean. "Yeah, I blew the Sh*t out of that Batter Cake. So what you gonna do about it?"
One of the judges is an older Lady Baker named Mary Berry Sherry who is probably the Julia Child of British Bakery. The contestants are always curtseying around her and laying their tea towels (Americans call these Dish towels) on the kitchen floor for her to walk on. She is a very nice and attractive lady with very lady-like manners and pleasant criticisms. If one of the contestants decides that his/her chocolate pudding lacked pazazz and needed a hot punch in the kisser with the inclusion of raw chunks of Scotch Bonnet Peppers and a topping of toasted Scotch Bonnet seeds, Miss Mary Berry Sherry, will taste the concoction from the side of her mouth and then turn so that the contestant can't see that she spit that cr*p out of her mouth. Miss Mary Berry Sherry will then compliment the contestant on his/her sugar sprinkling technique and never will that unfortunate affair with the Scotch Bonnets be mentioned in polite tea drinking company again. Although after a few gins, in private, Miss Mary Berry Sherry is probably busting a gut (or a Pudding Skin) laughing and texting about it to all her Gourmet Royalty Friends.
The other judge is some guy bloke (British usage) with premature gray hair and beautiful Paul Newman blue eyes who is not afraid to say what needs be said about a botched Danish pastry to a contestant whose face turns even paler than the Devonshire cream artfully splattered on the pastry and in the contestant's hair. The Bloke with the Paul Newman eyes leers gleefully at the Baking Deficient Loser contestants before he sends them off into the Rain (it is always raining on this show) to slip on the soaked and slicked green grass as they trudge home with the shame of fallen cakes and rock hard pastry. The Bloke also makes them eat a hundred hard boiled eggs just like Paul Newman did in that movie, Cool Hand Luke.
And as for the rain, the cruelest thing that the show does to further cow the contestants, is to have them make and bake all sorts of meringue cakes and cookies and pavlovas and divinity in the humid humidity of Rain Soaked England. You can't make a good meringue in humid or rainy conditions, at least you can't if you are living in the American South. Even in New Orleans where they cook almost anything (but not Everything, they are not Chinese), they won't make divinity in the humidity. And yet, the British manage this Feat of Cooking Wonder. Or they would have you believe that they do. Maybe that pavlova is actually made out of ground up Packing Peanuts glued together with flour paste.
Highly Recommended, Especially if you are on a Diet and can't eat only Look.
Because The Guardian had several articles about it, I recently watched The Great British Bake Off. One of the reasons that I watched the whole season was because Gordon Ramsey was NOT on the show and was unmentioned. And this is a competitive amateur baking contest that pits ordinary British people who have real jobs, who for some deep psychological reason or other, become obsessed with baking stuff. All the stuff that they bake before they come on this show must be given away to the unfortunates or hypoglycemics or sold at school fund raisings because none of these bakers or their families (every baker gets a video shown about their lives before going on this show) look like they actually eat all those cookies, cakes, or puddings that they bake.
In Britain, certain confections are called puddings. They are not puddings as an American would picture a pudding---the kind where you have to de-skin the pudding before you slather it with Dreamwhip or real whipping cream.
This is an American Pudding Skin.
This is also an American Pudding Skin. Americans have a diversity of Pudding Skins in their cooking culture.
Puddings for a Brit, are small cakes or petit fours type desserts. I suppose a Trifle is an example of an English pudding, as is a Mississippi Mud Cake. English baking terminology is very confusing much like their spelling habits.
This is an English Trifle:
Although, you could say that by the colors, red, white, and blue, it could be a patriotic American Trifle but not a pudding. Or a Brit Trifle, same colours in their Flllagggg (sic: English Spelling!).
The Trifle is also a Pudding, I think. I could be wrong. The Brits have a very complex cultural cooking code, and I am but a Stranger in a Strange Kitchen. They put their Aga ovens on the left side of the kitchen, I do believe.
This is a Mississippi Mud Cake. It is as American as the Muddy Mississip'. There is no Pudding to be found in it (or Mud, I suppose this is where some people get the idea that Southerners eat Mud), but the Brits would call it a pudding.
In America, we would call these cookies.
But the Brits would call these "BISCUITS".
These are Biscuits.
But the Brits call these "SCONES". I fail to understand where that word "scone" even came from. It is probably a corruption of the word "CONES". They don't look anything like cones, but the Brits must have thought that they did. The Brits do think that a car "Hood" looks like a "Bonnet". That has something to do with British Haberdashery and the reason that British Hat Makers were all "Mad Hatters". And then that Famous British Sense of Spelling came into the mix and the Brits spelled "cones" as "scones" and thus a Baked Treat was named.
At this point you might be ready to just give up Baked Goods altogether, but please. let us not trot down that path of stoney failed yeast breads and strawberries. Just remember, no matter what the Brits call it, it still has lots of butter and sugar in it, and therefore it is very pleasing to eat. Next to eating baked goods, I like to watch them being baked. Krispy Kreme, why did you ever leave my town?
In a Great American Bake Off show, we would have the contestants all talking trash to each other and sticking their feet in each others' batters and impressing their buns on each others' buns. "WINNING, WINNING, WINNING, WHINING!' would be the key words. We, the viewers, would all be waiting for Tiffany to shut Tonton's fatt (sic: English Spelling) butt in his oven while Tiff cackles like a Wicked Witch who is frying up Pork Fat Crisps.
But in The Great British Bake Off, the Brits are very modest, anxious, and self-immolating. They read the recipes that they are to bake and wince. They address the camera with their insecurities, "Did I do it right?" "Is it Edible?" "It looks Horrible!"
After cooking and decorating and arranging their baked goods, they offer them to the judges and as the judges bite their goodies, the contestants bite their fingernails or suck on the stumps of their chopped off fingertips with apprehension. For every criticism from the judges, they offer their apologies and cringe obsequiously at their small failures (sic: It is a Heep of Uriahs! sic: British Humour! sic: British Spelling). However, I will say this. If one of them produces a BIG ASS GIGANTIC Failure to the judges, they just blow it off. It is the crumbs of baking failure that humble the Brits. The thermonuclear detonation of a sponge cake in the Aga causes them to posture like a North Korean. "Yeah, I blew the Sh*t out of that Batter Cake. So what you gonna do about it?"
One of the judges is an older Lady Baker named Mary Berry Sherry who is probably the Julia Child of British Bakery. The contestants are always curtseying around her and laying their tea towels (Americans call these Dish towels) on the kitchen floor for her to walk on. She is a very nice and attractive lady with very lady-like manners and pleasant criticisms. If one of the contestants decides that his/her chocolate pudding lacked pazazz and needed a hot punch in the kisser with the inclusion of raw chunks of Scotch Bonnet Peppers and a topping of toasted Scotch Bonnet seeds, Miss Mary Berry Sherry, will taste the concoction from the side of her mouth and then turn so that the contestant can't see that she spit that cr*p out of her mouth. Miss Mary Berry Sherry will then compliment the contestant on his/her sugar sprinkling technique and never will that unfortunate affair with the Scotch Bonnets be mentioned in polite tea drinking company again. Although after a few gins, in private, Miss Mary Berry Sherry is probably busting a gut (or a Pudding Skin) laughing and texting about it to all her Gourmet Royalty Friends.
The other judge is some guy bloke (British usage) with premature gray hair and beautiful Paul Newman blue eyes who is not afraid to say what needs be said about a botched Danish pastry to a contestant whose face turns even paler than the Devonshire cream artfully splattered on the pastry and in the contestant's hair. The Bloke with the Paul Newman eyes leers gleefully at the Baking Deficient Loser contestants before he sends them off into the Rain (it is always raining on this show) to slip on the soaked and slicked green grass as they trudge home with the shame of fallen cakes and rock hard pastry. The Bloke also makes them eat a hundred hard boiled eggs just like Paul Newman did in that movie, Cool Hand Luke.
And as for the rain, the cruelest thing that the show does to further cow the contestants, is to have them make and bake all sorts of meringue cakes and cookies and pavlovas and divinity in the humid humidity of Rain Soaked England. You can't make a good meringue in humid or rainy conditions, at least you can't if you are living in the American South. Even in New Orleans where they cook almost anything (but not Everything, they are not Chinese), they won't make divinity in the humidity. And yet, the British manage this Feat of Cooking Wonder. Or they would have you believe that they do. Maybe that pavlova is actually made out of ground up Packing Peanuts glued together with flour paste.
Highly Recommended, Especially if you are on a Diet and can't eat only Look.