The most joyful thing about this series of The Great British Bake Off – apart, possibly, from Kim-Joy herself – was that as we entered the final, the average viewer would have been equally content whichever of the three remaining competitors won.
They strode into the tent together. Well, Ruby strode. Kim-Joy walked, and Rahul looked like he was being escorted by an invisible guard towards a burning stake and felt it no more than he deserved. It is his way. While all are worthy finalists, it is Rahul who has probably garnered the most attention and emotional investment over the weeks. There are those who saw his unremitting gloom, his certainty of failure and permanent air of doomy anxiety as a pose or a ploy. The rest of us simply saw ourselves.
When he noted after being made star baker that “As soon as something good happens, something bad comes behind it”, we nodded. When he told the camera at the end of a bad week with Scandivanian bakes “I don’t deserve to be here any more”, we felt represented. From now on, when we stare into the abyss we can see Rahul staring back and describing his prevailing mood as “very dooming”.
But who could begrudge magnificent Ruby a win? She eats pain for breakfast and only gets stronger with every mouthful. Or Kim-Joy who will ice you a wonderland and stuff your mouth with golden toffee crackle through her laughter and her tears?
The customary opener, the signature bake, was a dozen doughnuts – six ring, six filled. Kim-Joy got busy with an amaretto diplomat filling and tiny bee decorations. Ruby went hell for leather with two different flavoured doughs and a piping bagful of dulce de leche. And Rahul – has never had a doughnut. He went for a mango crème patisserie filling (his piping bag burst) and buttercream flowers atop the rings “to make them look like wreaths.” It was all very Rahul and never more so than at the end when they were, against the odds and his fervent belief, pronounced delicious.
The technical was flatbreads over an open fire, which was – excuse me while I dip into professional jargon for a moment, but needs must – a really stupid idea that tested only contestants’ camping skills and I will be registering a complaint with the Paul Hollywood ombudsman later today, but at least it got Kim-Joy her first technical win of the series.
Then the showstopper – which Rahul did have to stop with because in the heat of the tent one of his storage jars exploded. Just his. No one else’s. I suspect, because I carry Rahul in my heart, that in some deep way this soothed him. Pessimists are always relieved when disaster finally strikes. It’s the closest we get to happiness. He tidied up while the other two participants got on with creating their magical landscape desserts (choux mountains, passionfruit sponge hills, pistachio unicorns and praline dust paths for our Ruby, the lost city of Atlantis in gingerbread for Kim-Joy), and had extra time added for his bake – a 200-piece recreation of a Victorian garden - at the end.
And… he won. He probably still, three months after filming ended, doesn’t believe it but we do. The man who came from Kolkata to study for his PhD here seven years ago and began baking at the suggestion of his surrogate family here (“Look,” says his ‘dad’ pointing at a childhood photo of Rahul, “You’re not even smiling then!”) as a way to meet people and make friends is handed the trophy. And you realise that a world in which he wasn’t would have felt very dooming indeed.
