The Great British Bake Off, and all of its spin-offs around the world, are perhaps one of the strangest TV success stories. On paper, a bunch of amateur bakers competing in an extremely low-stakes reality competition, making the kinds of delicious treats you’d be fed by a delightful grandma, do not sound like the necessary ingredients for high octane television.
Nevertheless, what we’re served is the most delightful cake, perfect television. Wholesome, funny, gently exciting – sometimes even inspirational and moving, Bake Off’s success comes down to the joy that the contestants hold for baking, and the show’s ability to share that joy with the audience.
No matter where you watch the show, it tends to follow a certain recipe when it comes to casting – and I think it’s time to break down the staples of a good season of Bake Off. And from what we’ve seen of the latest season of The Great Australian Bake Off, they’re adhering pretty closely to some of these classic tropes – with a few new ones thrown into the mix.
The Christmas Boy
Hark! Is that the sound of a very good boy who simply loves Christmas? One of the most bizarre and overwhelmingly wholesome Bake Off tropes is the number of boys who bake cakes themed around that most wonderful time of the year. The 2020 GBBO winner, Peter Sawkins, is perhaps the most recent example, famously using “Christmas flavours” and decorations on several of his bakes. (In Australia, our Christmas flavours are prawns, heatstroke, and repressed anger.) However, Sawkins does not celebrate Christmas through baking alone, with several bright eyed boys preceding him in various seasons. (We all loved Henry, didn’t we?) And there’s nothing wrong with a Christmas Boy; they’re terminally delightful.
Grandmother Chaos
Despite a lifetime of experience, a stoic attitude forged through the pain of existence, and knowing more about baking than many people on this round Earth, many of the older women contestants are avatars of chaos and mishap in the Bake Off tent. This is often demonstrated through a somewhat elastic relationship with time, a cavalier attitude to measurements, and frequent run-ins with the concept of physics (if a cake starts to topple, a chaos grandma is often behind it). Think of wonderful Karen, or Maggie, or Diana of bingate.
But the Grandmother Chaos type is usually oblivious to the drama she creates; she doesn’t live for the drama, she simply is it. She’s also usually a remarkable baker, pulling victory out of the jaws of anarchy week after week. Grandmother Chaos has also been young, and also not a woman before – yet they all retain the vibe of an elderly matriarch.
Some Guy With a Hat
Hey, there’s often some guy with a hat. Their baking is usually fine, they’re usually fine, but the main thing is that they’re wearing a hat inside. Sure, it’s a tent, so maybe it’s more of a liminal zone than a normal house, but it doesn’t stop the hat from sticking out. It’s a rarer trope than some of the others, but one of the most quickly identifiable: it’s a guy wearing a hat.
The Traveller
This person went somewhere once – perhaps exotic, perhaps simply influential in a culinary way, and it blew their tiny brains, changed them in an irrevocable way. Remember all those hippy movies from the 70s where an uptight businessman does acid and then gives it all up for a life of free love on the road? This is kinda what happened to the traveller trope, except it’s more that they tried turmeric somewhere, and now all their baking is about recreating that one perfect moment of cuisine. Taking them back to the year they threw caution to the wind and bit into a “pineapple”.
The Engineer
This contestant often is an actual engineer, or studying to be one, or in some kind of engineer adjacent field (bridge appreciation?): think Giuseppe who won the last season of GBBO. But sometimes the Engineer is a scientist, who seem to frequently turn up on Bake Offs – like Sunny, who won the last season of Australian Bake Off, or Haydn this season, or GBBO’s Jürgen the physicist. These contestants approach baking with the attitude of someone erecting a tall building: it’s precise, it’s considered, it’s often as much a work of logistics as it is pastry. The Engineer will usually go far, as they have a plan, and a knowledge of angles.
The ‘trade’ of the season
To borrow a RuPaul’s Drag Race term, the “trade” of the season is the unexpected hottie, the absolutely gorgeous contestant. I’m not talking about merely handsome or beautiful – every Bake Off tent has been full of lovely looking people – I’m talking about a ridiculously sexy idiot who makes everyone go a bit weird, including the judges. Chigs in the last season of GBBO is the most recent example of this. You just don’t expect a person that sexy to be on a baking competition. Hot AND able to cook? Hopefully they’re also functionally illiterate, so they’re not literally perfect.
The Prodigy
Somehow, there’s always one baker who only started baking like six months ago. The aforementioned Chigs is one of these, but it’s a common trope. It’s a great story for the show, because it means they get to make a big deal about how far they’ve come along in such a short time. It’s also sometimes funny, because they’ll be told to “whip cream” and have a complete breakdown because they’ve never done it before. Also known as: the Baking Virgin.
An Actual Child
There’s always a literal child, a tiny baby, who often has the same vibe as the Prodigy – due to their extremely limited years on this Earth – but also sometimes they’re unspeakably awkward and wearing an odd combination of clothes. They are often adopted by other contestants.
Noel Fielding’s Best Friend
One of the best parts of the British version is the very personable host, Noel Fielding, and the fun that he has with the contestants. Once every blue moon, he will find a kindred spirit, someone who he genuinely seems to love, and who will often end up baking cakes for Noel’s children.
The latest season of The Great Australian Bake Off is airing on Foxtel now
