[Note: This article contains mild spoilers for this week’s episode of The Great British Baking Show.]
The Great British Baking Show returned to Netflix this week, bringing with it all the things we’ve come to associate with the massively successful cooking competition show: Wholesomeness, silly puns, absolutely scrumptious-looking baked goods, and an overriding sense of people being decent to each other.
Oh, and nightmares! They have nightmares now.
See, it was Cake Week in the tent for the premiere, with the show’s producers setting one of the most evil tasks they’ve ever assigned to an incoming crew of bakers: Craft a “cake bust” depicting their personal celebrity hero. And hey, some of the results were okay! Rowan’s Marie Antoinette looked surprisingly great, while Mark’s Charles Darwin was actively non-embarrassing. (He took the pro move of doing Darwin as a statue, which definitely took some of the “don’t make cake eyes look horrifying” pressure off.)
But then also there was this:
And this:
And, sweet Jesus, this:
And, just to be clear: If someone came up to us and told us to bake a cake that looked like Lupita N’yongo, we’re not saying we would not also end up producing a glass-eyed nightmare creature. (In fact, we’d probably just eat all the cake batter and run away from the tent, screaming.) Even ignoring the genuinely amazing fondant work (that looks, genuinely like fabric), it takes serious craft to make something this uncanny valley off-putting. Just look at all the creases in Dave’s Tom DeLonge!
Really, though, the very best thing about the whole episode was watching judges Paul and Prue try, with a straight face, to state that they definitely knew who all these celebrities were, and that they definitely recognized them. “That certainly looks like former Blink-182 and well-known UFO enthusiast Tom DeLonge, and not an escapee from a real-life Simpsons factory.” (We’re paraphrasing.)
We regret to inform you that Dave did not receive a Paul Hollywood handshake for his fine and important work.