A First-Ever Theme At CBC Baking

And a etiquette faux pas at GBBO

SPOILER ALERT: Winners of both shows inside. Also, a lot of caramel.

It is the first ever Savoury (or Savory) Week at the Great Canadian Baking Show.

First up: samosas, the filled Indian pastry that is usually fried.

“The point is to see how they can blend baking technique into cooking,” judge Bruno says.

Patty is using butterfly pea flour, which creates a for purple color in her Thai samosas. They look cool, but Bruno says they are unevenly baked.

Marcus is using cured Chinese pork belly. “A perfect amount of saltiness,” says Bruno. “The flavor is flawless,” says judge Kyla.

Elora has brought her own garam masala for chicken samosas. Says Kyla, “All of these flavors are dancing in my mouth.”

A garlicky technical challenge

The bakers are tasked with making Korean cream cheese garlic buns. They have an enriched dough with cream cheese from scratch. “So addictive,” says Bruno.

The bakers have to get two main aspects right: the bun and the filling.

I’ve taken a mozzarella class, but I’ve never seen homemade cream cheese being made. This involves cooking and straining milk, then whirring it in a food processor.

The buns all look pretty good, with some little flaws. “A bit more garlic would have been more playful here,” Bruno says of Rita’s buns. Patty is last; Guillaume wins for the second week in a row.

Guillaume, Elora and Marcus are singled out before the showstopper, which is a Wellington.

Vintage dining elegance

It is a dish that “even scares professional chefs,” said Bruno. It contains a protein, most often beef, topped with mushrooms or another ingredient, that is encased in puff pastry and baked. When I was growing up, Beef Wellington was haute cuisine. My mum always ordered it if she saw it on a menu.

These bakers aim for highly decorated Wellingtons. One imitates a Galette des Roi, or the French version of King Cake, while another is shaped like a cat. There is a beet Wellington, a lamb version, one with salmon, and a chicken one.

Guillaume uses kimchi fried rice and squid in his. Several are using crepes to separate the protein.

(May I again remark that this is head and shoulders above a challenge on the Great British Bake Off?)

Rita’s is burned on top. “It does distract the eye,” says Bruno, but he likes the mashed potatoes inside.

He also likes Jen’s Beet Wellington. Bruno says Marcus’ lamb galette is worthy of a pastry shop in Paris. Kyla says it was just a few minutes from perfection.

Elora wins praise from both judges for her multiple layers of flavors in her chicken tikka version. “Flavor wise, I’ll be thinking about that for days,” Kyla says.

Elora gets star baker and cheers go up. Patty goes home. “I’m feeling amazing, so many butterflies,” Elora says. Next week is coffee and tea week, another unique twist for this innovative show.

A Sticky Great British Bake Off

It’s Caramel Week, which in Britain is pronounced CARE-a-mell, not CAR-mell. At the outset, I cringed. A) I am not a fan of caramel. B) Dylan is wearing a hat indoors. Gentlemen do not wear hats indoors, unless they are athletes or characters on stage. This an etiquette violation.

Speaking of that, Paul also displayed some questionable manners. During the judging of the Signature challenge, he was about to give Georgie a handshake for her Snickers-like chocolate biscuit. But he pulled it back, because some of her biscuits broke.

I agree with New York Magazine’s recap, which said, “Paul loves to tease Georgie. If he does it one more time she should be able to amputate that hand and keep it in her living room to shake whenever he wants.”

In the process of judging, we learn a new British expression: “moreish.” It doesn’t refer to vast expanses of wilderness or a character in Othello, it means that the judge wants to eat more of it.

I secretly suspect they made this up, since no one on Downton ever said “moreish.” Peckish, yes.

Paul tells Dylan that his futuristic biscuits look like a UFO convention. Interestingly, his hat disappears when it’s time for the Technical challenge.

The technical is a pear tarte tatin with a caramelized walnut ice cream. “Oh bloody hell,” says Nelly. I have the same thought: neither seem all that caramel-y. I’ve made tarte tatin with apples and the syrup seems more like a glaze.

While goofing off, Noel ruins Nelly’s glass sauce dish, which smashes in a million pieces. He’s seen sweeping the floor as Nelly says, “When I go home he will drive me home in (his) Porsche car.”

The tartes tatin look as uneven as Georgie’s biscuits. Andy loses the technical but happily, Georgie wins.

The Showstopper is a caramel mousse cake with “spectacular sugar work” and two caramel elements. Since it’s multi-caramelic, I would never order this, although the presentations are impressive.

Nelly’s Behind Every Woman mousse cake gets a “well done,” and she saves herself from elimination.

Andy does a mousse cake topped with a tree. Georgie does a gorgeous rose cake that Paul says is too small. (Phooey.)

Dylan’s hat makes a comeback in time for Paul to fanboy over his caramel lemon mousse concoction. “You’re the flavor king this year,” he says. (I wonder if the other bakers secretly pummel Dylan after the show.)

After all of Paul’s teasing of Georgie, she gets star baker. Mike goes home and takes the news well. “I’m just this little farmer who does baking in the kitchen,” he says.