Great British Bake Off: do women make better bakers?
As last night's pastry challenge showed, this series is all about the women. So let the oestrogen reign supreme in the kitchen, says Sarah Rainey.
8:20AM BST 02 Oct 2013
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For the 1.9 million men who tune in to The Great British Bake Off each week, the series just got a whole lot more appealing. Last night, puff pastry proved to be poor Glenn’s nemesis, as the English teacher from Devon was eliminated from the show, leaving - for only the second time in Bake Off history - an all female quarter-final.
As clichés go, this series has been a particularly girly one, so it’s no surprise that Ruby, Beca, Christine, Frances and Kimberley have sailed through to this stage of the competition.
Rob was the only man to win Star Baker (in week one, for his dreamy chocolate and raspberry cake), with the crown remaining firmly in the ladies’ hands ever since. From tackling towers of biscuits to flourishing with their filo pies, it has been the Bake Off’s fabulous females who have won all the praise.
True, the challenges may have played into their hands, with plaited breadsticks, delicate meringue islands and teeny-tiny petit fours hardly proving light work for Mark the carpenter, Toby the web programmer or Rob the space satellite designer.
Truer still, the judging may have been swayed in their favour, with some viewers suggesting that, when it comes to pretty philosophy student Ruby, Paul Hollywood is sweet on a little more than her brioche.
And it was the girls’ wily tricks - from Frances's fancy props to Christine’s homemade baking tools - that ensured they triumphed with their technicals and shone with their showstoppers. But the fact remains: series four of the Bake Off has been one for the girls.
The contestants are a varied, but undeniably feminine, bunch. There’s Beca the military wife (in the choir, of course); Christine the glamorous granny; Frances the clothes designer; psychologist Kimberly, a self-proclaimed “flavour magpie”; and, of course, 20-year-old Ruby, who has been bombarded with marriage proposals since she first fluttered her eyelashes and showed those porcelain cheeks in week one.
Whatever happens in the remaining three episodes, it’s going to make quite a change from last year’s all-male final. Last time we had this much oestrogen in the Bake Off tent (when Jo Wheatley won in series two), standards were so high that it took the judges hours to pick a winner.
Rolling pins at the ready, ladies: let the catfight begin.
