It seems like Americans and the English share a culture just like they share a language. After all, we watch their TV, and they watch ours. But then Allison Hammond starts Chocolate Week by singing the little ditty, “You’re sweet like chocolate, boy†and everyone laughs and gets it and you’re at home like [shrug emoji]. That’s when you realize that, yes, there are plenty of English things Americans don’t understand. In this case, it’s a 1999 hit by Shanks & Bigfoot that was number one in the U.K. for weeks but, like much of Girls Aloud’s oeuvre, has never been heard on American shores.
It’s like how our Daddy Dan keeps saying “tickety-boo†in this episode. I’m still unsure what it means, but there is one thing for sure, Daddy Dan could be my Tickety Boo whenever he wants. Dan has bigger challenges this week because, just like the other bakers, he needs to make a chocolate torte (which Prue says is a cake but denser), but they can’t use wheat flour. Do you know what that means? Cue the nut puns! Yes, Paul Hollywood wants to grind and squeeze and clutch and rub your nuts and then try to fit them all in his mouth. Paul loves nuts.
As everyone struggles with their nut cakes (no jokes, Paul), Dan is in trouble because he put the rack in the oven slanted, and now his cake baked on a tilt. Can’t you just make up that difference with some frosting? He has to bake it all over again. Christy can’t get the chocolate leaves out of their mold because it’s too hot in the tent. Ah, finally! Summer! Remember last week when they were wearing several layers and carrying around space heaters? England!
Dan takes his second torte out of the oven and asks, “Are you flat and balanced?†Oh, Dan, don’t you know that cakes are like lovers? You’re never going to find one that is both. We didn’t think he would finish in time, but his chocolate torte infused with chili and hazelnut with chili truffles on top is a beautiful ode to Mexico. I’m not sure why there’s a skull next to it. Maybe he’s trying to scare us. Tickety-BOO! Sadly, they don’t love the texture, and even Prue says there is too much booze in it, which is like Troye Sivan saying a dance floor smells too much like poppers and ball sweat.
Joining Dan at the bottom is Christy, who didn’t get the white chocolate collar on her cake to meet fully, and neither of them can taste the cherry liqueur or Chantilly cream inside of it. Paul says it has no taste at all. Um, Mr. Hollywood. We have seen you in countless Canadian tuxedos, and you’ll say Christy’s cake has no taste? Also terrible is my girl Saku’s take on a Sachre-Torte, the famous Austrian cake. Her piping on top looks more like the fake blood in a horror movie than something you’d like to eat.
Matty’s cake looks great from the top, all chocolate shards and hazelnuts, but from the side, it looks like a used diaper. Some of us just can’t take a profile shot to save our lives. The judges say his hazelnut and chocolate mousse cake is delicious, so the flavors save the day. Shockingly, Nicky, who is usually a bottom-of-the-pack baker, ends up with the nicest cake. There is a cool chocolate doohickey on top full of berries, and she placed her torte on top of a thickly set chocolate mousse, making it sort of an upside-down cake. Paul says it could have used fruit to break up all the chocolatey goodness, but they’re more impressed by the goodness than the lack of fruit.
For the technical, everyone has to bake individual caramelized white chocolate cheesecakes with black currant jelly on top. There are two things we need to address here. First up, white chocolate is garbage. There, I said it. It doesn’t even have any chocolate in it, just cocoa butter, sugar, and milk. It’s cloying, too sweet, and doesn’t have a depth of flavor. It’s like the decaf coffee of the chocolate world. Keep it. The second is that black currants are a berry that the English love but, again, has never been seen on American shores. I still have no clue what they are, though every single cough syrup in the pharmacy is black currant flavored. Weird.
During this challenge, we also learn the difference between jam and jelly, at least for the British. Jelly means it has gelatin in it, hence the name. Rowan thinks that gelatine is gross because it’s made from a pig’s “trotter,†which is the grossest word you could find to mean “foot.†Yeah, I know you were thinking something different.
While everyone puts their white chocolate in the microwave for 30-second bursts and burns the hell out of it, Tasha starts to get overheated. Suddenly, there is a medic by her side as she sits on the floor, and then they take her outside of the tent to make sure that she doesn’t die due to the excess of white chocolate fumes infiltrating the tent. Just kidding. She’s just hot. But she has to bow out of the challenge and doesn’t show up for the next day of baking. You know what that means? Whenever anyone is sick on this show, they pretend like they might still send someone home, but then they don’t and send home two people the next week. Tale as old as time. Beauty and the Beast.
As for the judging, most of them don’t turn out great, with Saku, Christy, and Josh pulling up the bottom three, which is especially bad for Saku and Christy. At the top are Rowan, Matty, and Zaddy Zan, who the judges say turned out nearly perfect cheesecakes. I know just how we can celebrate.
For the showstopper, bakers need to make a chocolate box with a chocolate cake inside and also some molded chocolates on top of it. I will complain a bit that chocolate work is not baking since no oven is involved. However, this isn’t a bad challenge for this “back to basics†season. It’s challenging but achievable, allows the bakers a lot of room for interpretation, and doesn’t require them to read Advanced Engineering for Dummies before completing it.
Saku is making a box and cake inspired by cricket because her daughter loves cricket. I’m sorry, but that is one English thing I will never learn about. That and Centigrade can both fuck right off. Saku, Dan, and Christy are all using molds to make their boxes, which seems like the best way to go for me. Everyone else makes sheets of tempered chocolate and then puts them together to make a box. Dana is doing something a little different and making a princess carriage out of two round molds joined together with chocolate horses pulling it, but she can never seem to get their legs out of the molds. I’m already sad for the poor, deformed horses.
I’m most worried about Rowan, though, because he had to finish his dissertation this week, so he didn’t have a chance to practice his two-toned chocolate box that was supposed to look like wood grain. I feel like this would have been a marvelous effect if he had practiced and had more time. Instead, it looks like a lock box that got hit with an atomic bomb. Nicky is also struggling for time because she can’t seem to make caramel for her chocolates. Ultimately, she’ll only get three out of the molds: one for Prue, one for Paul, and one Paul tosses in the air and hopes Allison catches it before it splats on that disgusting meringue-soaked carpet.
When Josh goes to assemble his box, he realizes he hasn’t tempered the chocolate right, and it’s collapsing. He tries to do it again with only 30 seconds left, and no one believes that he will get it done in time. He manages to, but Paul and Prue are not impressed with his second box’s lack of shine and definition.
They have the same criticism of Matty’s Swiss Cheese box but love the cake inside and the chocolates he made. After Nicky crashes and burns, running out of time and caramel, Matty’s the only star baker contender.
Saku’s box looks lovely with its green color and bright flowers, but everything inside is a mess. She made three types of chocolates, but they don’t like any, and they say the cake is dry. Christy’s box is the best of the lot, and it better be because she can never make it again. She got her millennial-pink, heart-shaped box straight out of the mold. Her little pink box was the prettiest of the night. (What, Paul, you have nut puns but no box puns?) Her cake, unlike her box, is a little too dry.
But don’t worry about either of them. Even as they drum up the dramatic music, we know what Allison will say: “No one is going home, and two of you are going home next week.†It’s like a prophecy fulfilled, it’s like taking the sword out of the stone, it’s like a blessing for England, this sceptered isle that we’ll never fully understand.