Monz recaps Great Australian Bake Off: Episode 4

ABOUT BLOODY TIME.

We’re stuffed around for so long, guys. We’ve had fancy patterns in cakes, itty bitty biscuits and fancy French choux.  But as the 9 remaining bakers walk into the bakeoff shed tent, finally, they’re baking for STRAYAAAAAA.

Because it’s PIE WEEK.

Australians eat 270 million pies a year so I can’t BELIEVE it’s taken four weeks for the bakers to worship at the altar of this national dish. They’re given two hours to make six identical pies and no one even makes a Life of Pi joke, or even calls Matt Moran the Lord Of The Pies and I’m sad, because that’s a missed pun opportunity if ever I’ve seen one.

But, the bakers don’t disappoint. There are chicken, ham, bacon, pork, mushroom and beef pie, and they all need to get in my pie hole. Stat.

Early-frontrunner-and- easily-in-the-final-two-Jasmin is making a pork pie with a hidden quail egg in the middle. “How will you get the quail yolk to sit in the middle of the egg?” Says Maggie, while Jasmin looks at her blankly. “It’s a trick question.”

Here’s a trick question for YOU, Maggie. What’s the best thing to put in a pie?  Your teeth. LOL.

But the GLARING oversight is the lack of tomato sauce. Comedian Mel Buttle does the rightful, honorable, AUSTRALIAN thing of questioning it. Buttle sidles up to Angela’s steaming hot country pies and fantasises about ripping the lid off and put a shitbomb of sauce in that thing.

BUT, to my SHOCK. Angela tells her that’s NOT the way to do things.

“It’s a bit bogan,” she says.

Luckily for her, judges don’t see this infraction. But I’m shocked. Angela? You’re a country baker. You’re a TRUCKDRIVER FOR GOD’S SAKE YOU PUT SAUCE ON EVERYTHING.  First none of the bakers eat the cake batter out of the mixers, no one licks the spoons, and now there’s no sauce in the pie ep?  Is there anyone on this show I can trust?

Meanwhile, quail egg Jasmin is struggling to meet deadline AND LOOK: LOOK. THIS IS WHY THIS SHOW IS THE BEST.  EVERYONE RUNS OVER TO HELP HER.

Everyone’s pies look stonkingly good. They are all packed with so much meat and veg as to be almost unrecognisable. No cartilage. No gristle. No miscellaneous tube thing that could be an aeorta in amongst the meat. So technically not really Australian pies then.

TECHNICAL CHALLENGE.

The bakers are asked to make a Maggie recipe. Oh no.  Knock the top off the verjuice and pour some out for these guys because if it’s anything like week one’s Constitution Cake, it will be the death of them.

Ah. It’s a chocolate and hazelnut blood orange meringue with a vino cotto pastry. AND SHUT THE FRONT DOOR LOOK AT IT.

Basically, it’s designed to leave the bakers in so much emotional turmoil that all you can do at the end of making this beauty, is emotionally eat the entire thing.

Janice bombs, Jasmin-I’ve-basically-won-this-already comes first, and the others cling to each other and make a pack that after this show, they will screen print novelty t-shirts that say “I survived the Chocolate Meringe of 2015″.

SHOWSTOPPER TIME.

The bakers are making a deep dish fruit pie, a humongous thing that must feed a family of seven, or just me after I’ve been to the gym and I’m like “I DESERVE this.”

Like every other showstopper, the pie needs to say something about them.

So Janice announces  she is making something called a Compost Pie, and thus seals her fate.

The others are trying to decide how to make their pies beautiful, as if a pie is something you admire and not just shovel into your mouth with icecream.  It’s HARD to make a pie look good, though.  Still, they persist. Suzie Sparkles decides against glitter but vows to plaster her Apple and Pear pie with pastry lovehearts. (God i love this woman. Not just for the moussed hair and the eyeliner, but her determination to the overdecorate everything is just the best).

James puts teeny tiny little letters on his pie that should spell ADORABLE because that’s what it is. And Angela is making 300 pastry leaves to pile on her pie, which she claims is therapeutic.

300 PASTRY LEAVES LIKE IT’S NBD. AND THIS IS WHY ANGELA WILL PROBS WIN THIS WHOLE THING

There are some absolutely gobsmacking pies in here, guys. Its heartbreaking to just watch this on TV.  Why don’t we have a smellogram yet? We have touchscreens for things, can’t there be a smellscreen? I sniffed my screen anyway but the closest I come these days to baking is looking at the little tree freshner in my car.

And so the showstopping showcase is like something out of a Beatrix Potter book. Apple and blackberry pies, pear pies, all the fruit pies.  Angela’s Fruit and Almond Pie looks so good that even Donna Hay is fully sickly jealous, and Maggie asks her for her RECIPE.

And thus she cements herself with immunity forever more and her oven torch shall not be extinguished this week, because anyone who swaps recipes with Maggie Beer is pretty much winning at life, and also, any woman that claims making 300 pastry leaves under a deadline on a reality cooking show is “therapeutic” needs to spark some joy in her life in another way, so well done Angela, you get Star Baker.

And we say goodbye to Janice, whose compost pie will have aptly ended up right there.

GOODBYE Janice. We’ll miss you. You seemed sweet and I liked you but now your oven torch is extinguished.

But the lingering question remains, Australia.

Are there people out there who think a pie is better WITHOUT sauce? Who are you? What are your reasons?  Are you ok? Do we need to start a #bakeoffau #bigred #campaign on #socialmedia? Do I need to hoist a red flag up in my yard? Put my sauce bottles out in front of the TV?

54 pies and not a single bottle of sauce. Outrageous.

We know you’re hungry so here are all the pies from this week’s ep (BYO pie server and stretchy pants):