#bakeoff

[yousaytomato]

Whenever there's a random hot day in the middle of April, that's because they're filming a bakeoff showstopper challenge

[ineffablelunatic]

ok ok hear me out: Tim and Sasha as the hosts of Bakeoff

[fullcravings]

The Best Chocolate For Chocolate Chip Cookies

[scumwhichwouldbeagenreuntoitself]

memetic ouvre part 1/x

[robertmitchum]

JAMES MCAVOY for GREAT BRITISH BAKE-OFF: STAND UP 2 CANCER 

[givemegifs]

[i-like-rocks22]

This is the most I have ever seen everyone collectively lose it at a technical task and it is ALL PAUL'S FAULT.

[copperbadge]

Pulled Pork…Parfait? This reminds me of Paul Hollywood’s version of s’mores on GBBO. But the important question is now that it has been committed, how does it TASTE? Any reports from the culinary front line? (It looks like something a posh deli in gentrified Brooklyn might serve. Do you think someone would be interested in licensing it from you and Scifigrl47?)

I mean, as far as I'm concerned they can have it, but Sci really did think that bit up (as far as I recall) so it's her call :D

I have to admit I'm loving the horrified reactions to the GBBO s'mores. In part because I dislike Bakeoff intensely, so people being mad at them delights me. But in much larger part because the entire thing plays into a conversation about gentrification and elevation that so many people are so clearly unready to enter into.

It has been very common in the last ten, fifteen years, in America and I think also in the UK, for a white chef to open a restaurant that "elevates" a certain kind of ethnic food. "Elevate" generally means removing strength of flavor or "unpalatable" elements like organ meats, and is hugely insulting to the culture the food derives from. Occasionally you will get chefs from nonwhite cultures making particularly gourmet or modern takes on their culture's food, but even if they aren't calling it elevated, food critics often condescendingly will. Or white patrons will get upset when asked to pay Michelin-star prices for foods they're used to seeing as "2am drunk food" or at best "cheap eats". (More on that here.)

So it's pretty amusing to me to see people losing their shit over GBBO s'mores, because a lot of people who have never encountered this are now experiencing how insulting it is for their cultural foodstuffs to be "elevated". I don't give Paul Hollywood much credit as a satirist but if he did it intentionally it would have been a brilliant troll. As is it's still quite funny to see people seethe.