Great British Bake Off: Peter perfects his pastry skills in week five

Rachel Mackie reviews this weeks GBBO – spoiler alert. Naturally.

It’s pastry week this week, and honestly, I’m terrified.

The delicate nature of pastry work means this has the potential to be as tense as watching that bit in the Great Escape where Mac speaks English by mistake.

Round one – Cornish pasties, and I’m hungry already.

Peter nails his fifth week in GBBO.

Oor Pete is making some mad fish pasty, that’s fish shaped and has fish in it and as always, seems far too chilled out.

Worth mentioning, Prue is determined to have crimping on all the pasties and has mentioned this more than once which is in no way weird.

So, with a low stress round and with Linda looking wholly unimpressed at Noel Fielding’s joking around, we move on to the judging.

Lord Hollywood loves the overall look of Peter’s, but apparently they’re quite dry.

This is nae bad at all, as everyone’s seem to be a little dry – someone get Prue and Paul a cup of tea for goodness sake.

Technical challenge now folks – eclairs.

Prue astonishingly believes that ‘everyone thinks eclairs are very easy’, but not me, and it seems, none of the bakers either.

Many of their chouxs have collapsed, which must have hurt their toes (ha ha, get it? Choux? Urgh, forget it, I'm wasted around here.)

The judges are scathing and half the contestants look about ready to cry, not Peter though – he managed to grab an Edinburgh worthy first place like a hero!

Yas! Well done Pete!

Onto the third, and thankfully final round, and we’re looking strong.

The challenge is a ‘caged tart’ which sounds a bit dangerous – what happens if it gets out the cage?

There’d be jam everywhere.

Peter admits that he had never heard of a caged tart before this, but seems as confident as always.

Nothing seems to phases him, apart from Laura saying she could put him in a pastry cage and feed him cheese.

Reading that sentence back, I’m struck with just how bizarre it is but it definitely happened, honest.

Watching the bakers put their cages together has more drama than a Christopher Nolan movie, but Peter’s is already looking pretty stunning AND it remained in one piece, unless some other bakers I won’t name (Mark...it was

Mark, his broke.)

Judgement time, and Paul and Prue’s mood seems to have improved somewhat as they are handing out compliments like they grow on trees.

Well, until Lord Hollywood smashes up one of the cages like the Incredible Hulk – chill out mate.

We get to Peter’s Blackcurrent and Lemon creation and BOOM, he has Paul laughing and claims that Pete’s tart ‘put a smile on his face’.

Laura nabs the star baker (congrats) and Linda gets the boot, and as the sad, melodic piano music kicks in, I'm genuinely a bit sad.

Anyway, that’s all from me folks.

I do have a question before we go though.

Are Paul Hollywood’s eyes really, actually and in real life that blue, or are they enhanced by the camera people? Anybody who has any answers, do let me know. I’m genuinely curious.

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