Great British Bake Off 2020: 80s week and the torture continues

It’s a scorcher for our poor bakers, just in case things weren’t tense enough.

Edinburgh’s Peter Sawkins kicked off the early pastry challenge (yeah, I know – all we ate in the 80s was pastry, right?) with a coconut curry quiche.

He’s throwing in salmon and crabmeat apparently. With a menu so appalling we can only conclude that he’s trying his best to get chucked out this week.

So there’s plenty of busy shots of hot bakers each trying to fan themselves with a dishcloth.

And for the second week running we have two competitors making the same thing – never good. Here it’s all about the ‘full English breakfast’ pastry. So now we have a mini-contest about whose will be the breakfastiest.

As usual, the result of this part seems to matter little, because we all know the only challenge that count is at the end.

It’s on to the technical side of things now!, and Lord Hollywood demands they all slave over their searing hot furnaces in the brutally and relentless sun to make him six custard and jam finger donuts.

Peter, despite hailing from Scotland, immediately shuns his heritage by claiming he’s never deep-fat-fried anything before!

Seems like he squeaks through though, but as ever, the showstopper will be the true test.

“Reimagine the 80s classic: the Ice cream cake” – I immediately feel like my childhood must have been missing something. I’ve never eaten ice cream cake in my life.

Peter intends to produce an ice cream Christmas cake – soaked in brandy, and with a few brandy snaps. All that booze could cost him, making the ice cream harder to freeze.

We see another few half-baked ideas for throwback cakes, but I’m already disappointed that no one thought to make a Nintendo Entertainment System cake, with mini Mario and Luigi on top. Just saying, it’s what I’d make. It’d taste awful, and the graphics would be appalling. But it would look great.

Lottie came closest to getting into the spirit of it with a cassette-themed cake, but she misses a trick by not having a pencil poking out of one of the wheel cogs.

Laura already thinks she’s on the way home after forgetting to hi the ‘freeze’ button on the ice cream maker. Not a great move on what is one of the hottest days of the year.

So the music’s getting faster now, and it’s back to the traditional Bake-off shot of fumbling hands and shakey close-ups to really ramp up the drama.

But there’s still half-an hour left! Ice cream cake! In the heat! This was just too cruel.

Mark’s up first, his doesn’t look too melted, and he seems to please the judges.

Peter’s effort looks seriously impressive, and the judges agree on the flavour too. This boy is just a born crowd-pleaser.

Sadly Lottie’s cassette just looks like a roof slate balanced on a cowpat – not only has it melted beyond all recognition, but it is slammed for its lack of flavour.

Hermine is named Star Baker for the first time, so it’s lovely to see a wee smile.

But as we could have predicted, Lottie is the one leaving today, so now it’s time for tears and talk of mixed emotions. When we see all this pain at the end it always makes me wonder; why do they put themselves through this?

However, we can take heart that Peter has had another good week and as a result will stay longer.