Val defended her soggy-bottomed bakewell tart: “I like it gooey”BBC

After the novelty of batter week, things don’t get much more traditional in the Bake Off tent than pastry week. Churros, Yorkshire puddings, and lacy pancakes have nothing on fidgety filo, dodgy Danishes, and – dare I say it – the dreaded soggy bottom. True to form, pastry week doesn’t fail to whet the appetite; alas, many of the bakers do, and quite spectacularly so.

The signature kicks the first day of baking off as any day should start: with Danish pastries. Jane makes life difficult for herself by opting for two different types of dough, as if timing wasn’t a major consideration when folding, chilling, and baking multi-layered pastry. This makes it all the more impressive when her orange pain aux raisins and raspberry, chocolate and almond Danishes are battered in compliments. Another baker sending me into serious pastry cravings is Candice: she goes for a rather full-on breakfast experience, braving the savoury with her Danish pastry croque monsieur kites, complete with pancetta and mushrooms, and topping it all off with cinnamon apple and vanilla crème rose Danishes, with actual apple roses.

Unfortunately, not all the bakers seem to have gotten out of bed on the right side. Tom’s ‘Mega Breakfast Bonanzas’ with granola and wheat biscuits end up as nothing but a bonanza of rawness that Paul refuses to taste, while Andrew’s efforts to be a reputable engineer by measuring out his butter don’t extend to his ability to estimate the thickness of his pastry. I would have loved to puff his pastry a bit; I’m sure the crunchiness of his Danishes would have wowed the judges back in biscuit week, but sometimes you just have to go moist. The most dismaying performance to watch, though, is Val’s: apparently it’s a family tradition at her house to have breakfast pastries a bit soft in the middle ­– but quite frankly, that just translates into ‘underdone’ in Bake Off terms.

The technical is no more forgiving: queen of tarts Mary Berry asks for “sheer perfection” of pastry, jam, frangipane, and icing in the form of the classic bakewell tart. Jane and Candice seem to get the memo, but unfortunately many of the other tarts end up in something of a frangi-panic. Rav’s bakewell collapses rather spectacularly, while Andrew sits happily in front of his oven until his realisation that the oven is not in fact switched on causes a general panic in the tent. Result? A tart with a sad circle of icing around the edge ­– though quite miraculously, the pastry itself is baked well (excuse the attempted pun). What is most remarkable, though, is that Andrew’s engineering failure manages to score higher than Val’s tart, despite the latter – in her own words – baking a bakewell every week. Apparently learning from your mistakes is not a thing for Val, because just as with her under-baked signature, she defends the first and only soggy bottom of the week with: “I like it gooey”. And I like eating raw cookie dough; but it would never cross my mind to serve it to Mary and Paul.

The showstopper, a batch of identical savoury and sweet amuse-bouches each, spices things up a bit after the more classic technical. I feel like making an offering to the baking gods for Benjamina’s plantain and spinach samosas and chai pear cups, and lighting a candle at the tent’s gingham alter for Candice’s full-on Scottish experience with sausage, black pudding and apple rounds, and banoffee and whiskey cups. As always, not all the more experimental takes on this pastry manage to amuse my own, or the judges’, bouche. Tom’s ‘Yin and Yang’ amuse-bouche with sirloin steak and spicy chocolate sound intriguing to say the least (and that’s a lot coming from a vegetarian like myself) but turns into a synonym of his gingerbread construction from biscuit week – a ‘near death experience’. At least Tom cannot be judged for a lack of inventiveness; Val’s goat’s cheese and caramelised red onion tartlets and Jane’s Roquefort, fig, and walnut parcels remain too much on the safe side of pastry flavourings to stop any show.

Pastry week is as classic Bake Off as it gets, but for one thing, this year’s batch of bakers all excel. Despite their brutalised bakewells and distastrous Danishes, only one soggy bottom is bared to the judges. Here’s hoping for equally firm tarts in botanical week!