There is always something menacing about the Bake Off final, with the eerily empty tent quite fit for Halloween. The tent-turn-pressure cooker could have done with some of Selasi’s chill, as watching Candice purse her lips in ready-to-kill concentration, Andrew follow his minute-by-minute plan, and Jane, well, scatter flour here and there makes my hands sweat just like an exam term library.

Unlike my pre-exam existence, though, the remaining bakers are certainly well-proven through the series and deserving their spots as the final trinity of bakers. However, just as there was a lot of faltering in the semis, the final is also spotted with bakes not quite fit for the regal theme of the finale.

The last signature of the series kicks the final off in style with a family-sized, at least three-tiered filled meringue crown. It’s a field day for Candice, who, of course, adds a fourth layer to her bake (nothing less than a miniature crown), does two different meringues when one would be enough, glitters her pistachios, soaks strawberries in prosecco, dusts physalis with gold, and tops it all off with an innocent little “I thought I’d reigned it in”. Candice’s Hermione Granger antics are forgiven, though, as she pulls it all off in impeccable style and receives a more than well-earned Hollywood handshake.

It’s not all about complexity and being the tent’s signature SWAT, though. When Jane sticks to layers of raspberry, strawberry, blueberry and nectarine, I fear for her mental health – there’s something potentially self-harming in choosing such simplicity for a national baking final. However, the simple flavours apparently manage to start some sort of fireworks on the judges’ taste buds, as they earn Jane a proper Roman clasp of a handshake.

That said, not everything is suddenly worthy of a coveted Hollywood handshake. Andrew starts off with dropping his bowl, continues by pouring his praline onto the wrong side of the baking paper, and is left munching on his meringue when the two others enjoy their hand action with Paul. The outcome doesn’t really come as a surprise, though: a crunchy caramel cassis cake sounds mouth-watering, but when the explicit aim of the challenge is to balance out the sweetness of the meringue with a tangier filling, stuffing one’s crown with praline isn’t exactly a stroke of engineering genius.

The technical is something of a Bake Off rarity in not launching the bakers into an existential crisis pondering the very nature of the bake; not knowing the concept of a Victoria sponge would be a headline worthy failure. Of course, there’s a twist to the story, in the form of a total absence of any instructions whatsoever.

With that, baking the technical becomes a lot like sitting Tripos exams. You spend the whole year doing your chosen topics, but when the notes are taken away, you suddenly have no idea of how things should be: medium or large eggs? Differentiation or integration? Jam with or without bits? Wittgenstein or Kierkegaard? We’ve all been there. Much to their credit, the baking trio tackle the challenge with more finesse than your average prosecco-soaked finalist. With the complaints centring around dripping jam, grainy buttercream, and pastry which is a slightly too dark shade of golden brown, I’m left wishing my exam flaws were as minor.

While the technical may be a simple classic, the showstopper is anything but. The bakers have five hours to produce a picnic fit for the Queen, complete with sausage rolls, mini quiches, savoury scones, fruit and custard tarts (twelve of each), and a chocolate cake thrown in for good measure. Luckily for some, it is not the Queen, but their perhaps more forgiving friends and family waiting outside the tent to tuck into the picnic display.

Andrew’s overworked and undercooked pastry, smoked cheddar and paprika scones without flavour, and soggy bottomed strawberry and pistachio tarts ensure that he doesn’t earn a handshake this time round either, and the only royally fit bake in his picnic basket is his gran’s chocolate cake. I’m wondering if the uomo universale Andrew putting Tudor pies onto a da Vincian rotating device and loading a ferris wheel with mini mousse cakes has been possessed by an evil lookalike spirit dedicated to hampering the road to victory.

Jane manages to roll out a more regal display. Her red fruit and elderflower tarts, chocolate cake filled with a cream surprise, and even the deliciousness of her apple and thyme sausage rolls with raw pastry balance out her – it pains me to say it – epic failure with the chocolate collar for her cake. If you fail with something on the Bake Off once – as Jane did with her chocolate collar in botanical week, nearly leaving the tent for it – it should be taken as a hint not to try the same again rather than as encouragement to incorporate it into the most important bake of the most important week.

Candice’s basket, on the other hand, is filled with impeccable bakes; who minds the absence of cheese flavour in a scone or a slightly overbaked tart, when you can find perfection in a chocolate orange and cardamom cake, bacon, mushroom, and black pudding sausage rolls, or salmon and asparagus quiches? The only thing I’m slightly dubious about is whether Candice would actually go ahead and serve the Queen sausage rolls shaped as little piggies with noses and crackling for curly tails.

As such, the final is nowhere near as close as previous ones have been. A deserving winner, you have to love Candice for wearing one of the most counterintuitive baking attires of the whole series – heels and lipstick, come on – as well as for asking Andrew to grab her jugs and for Mary to taste her sticky carpet. Oh, and for baking a more or less perfect bake or two.

That said, there was no baker in series seven whose pastry I wouldn’t puff, whose buns I wouldn’t prove, or whose dough I wouldn’t dip my finger into, despite the occasional soggy bottom and even some sub-optimal pastry in the final. Okay, maybe I wouldn’t have had the heart to eat Val’s lonely bread elephant seeing as it was already going into the ark alone…