It is the Love Island of autumn, the Antiques Roadshow for millennials, the only thing keeping the United Kingdom united – it is the Great British Bake Off. The time has come, once again, for me to become unhealthily emotionally invested in the baking of some cakes.

There are few things more quintessentially British than Bake Off. Whilst the amateurs are panicking in a Union Jack-lined tent in the grounds of a posh manor, I get the distinct impression that – like a rat in New York City – a cup of tea is never more than six feet from the contestants at any given time.

While the Covid-19 epidemic has halted some of the biggest events of the year – holidays, Holy Days, and Freshers’ Week – it seems that the Bake Off is untouchable. The show is like a cockroach crawling from the smoking wreckage of a nuclear apocalypse, except with cake. Thankfully, remaining survivors Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith are still judging this year. Every outfit Prue wears is a lesson in colour theory, while Paul Hollywood has the eyes of an apex predator in shark-infested waters, giving off the distinct impression that he could bite a contestant at any time. 

Noel Fielding returns this year as host, but Sandy Toksvig is replaced by Matt Lucas. Noel appears to have just wandered into the tent, like some kind of stray dog, comfortable as he snoops around the contestants. Matt, on the other hand, seems like an avid Bake Off fan who somehow snuck past security and was mistaken for somebody else. Then, before he knew it he was pushed in front of the cameras by a producer, somebody was yelling action and he was hosting the show. 

All the contestants, judges, hosts and crew submitted to bubbling-up so they could participate, spending two weeks isolated in hotel rooms so that the Bake Off tent could suspend your disbelief and envision a Bake Off without Covid. This quarantine however produced its own comical effects, with cast and crew members displaying open-eyed, slightly crazed looks of wonder at being allowed outside. Everybody seems genuinely surprised to find themselves there – maybe they were the only ones who agreed to go without seeing their family and friends for seven weeks. 

You begin to wonder if some of the contestants are regretting their decision, with Laura telling the not-so-heartwarming story of crying over her dinner the night before she left for the competition. On the opposite end of that spectrum – Dave the “armoured security guard” (sure, Dave) has abandoned his wife while she is pregnant with their first child during a pandemic to go bake some cakes. 

As the contestants get to baking I begin to wonder how on earth Channel 4 managed to source so much flour in July (a sentence which a year ago would not have made sense). Battenbergs were the first bake of the competition, which are those checkerboard colourful cakes covered in marzipan for those unfamiliar. I have never eaten a Battenberg, but I have had French Fancies, and that’s close enough for me. In what could be construed as a terrible start to Bake Off, nobody in the tent likes Battenbergs either. Lottie, who looks like she stepped straight out of Skins and who listens to Viking metal (because of course) speaks for all the contestants as she observes, “baking marzipan is not a skill I need, I think, moving forward.”

There is nothing like the technical challenge to reinforce my (possibly too-strong) opinion that recipes should come with photographs, as I realise I have no idea what a pineapple upside-down cake looks like. It is during this challenge that Sura manages to inject some much needed drama into the tent as she knocks Dave’s cakes flying just before judging, and is more distraught about it than Dave seems to be. Conspiracy theorists would call it sabotage, I call it comedy. It quickly becomes apparent that Sura doesn’t need to play dirty to win, and is the tearful victor of the challenge.

This week’s showstopper challenge, which used to be just making normal if slightly-more-decorated-than-usual cakes, was instead making 3D cake busts because it’s 2020 and at this point, why not? Sura decides to recreate David Attenborough because, “he is a ledge”. In this she speaks for the nation, nay the world. 

My favourites in this challenge however are Rowan and Peter, the dynamic duo I did not expect. Rowan is a music teacher, who decided to make a ‘let them eat cake’ Marie Antionette bust, topped with a choux pastry wig. He laughs at his own madness to the camera, holding a delicate teacup, “who in their right mind?” he chuckles, *sips*. 

Peter is a twenty-year-old accountancy student, who listens to his cakes for them to tell him they’re baked (he assures us that this is a valid baking technique based on the sound of uncooked batter boiling, but I am skeptical). Peter decides to make a bust of Sir Chris Hoy. He chose Sir Chris not necessarily because he is a cycling fan, but because if he puts him in goggles and a helmet then he doesn’t have to recreate hair or eyes. This is called ‘thinking like a winner’. We could learn things from this young Prince William lookalike. 

Rowan sighs, “not quite what I had planned but what is?”, as he steps away from a Marie Antoinette cake that looks like an actual china doll. Peter’s Sir Chris had such a simple design that he couldn’t make it unrecognizable if he tried, but all the other bakes looked like the Witch of the Waste in Howl’s Moving Castle after she had her magic drained. Marc’s Ziggy Stardust can only be described as what would happen if David Bowie was mixed with an Orc and then the skin began to melt.

Although at times it felt as though the show was rubbing it in your face that contestants could hug each other, hold each other’s hands and breathe all over one another, I must say it made me genuinely emotional to watch. It was also strange to see a set up where reminders of the pandemic weren’t everywhere, no plexiglass screens, no masks or social distancing. Though it was a bit surreal during a time when Covid is impossible to forget, it was nice to tune in to a show where the tent walls seem to keep the pandemic at bay, even just for an hour.