It’s big in Japan

 Paul Holywood has a series that Channel 4 want you to watch on catch up, the department of trade want to brag about the new soy sauce markets they’ve created and Slough have a Japanese garden that you should visit to eat your lunch. The first two are certainly true and the third is almost all we could talk about after this week’s Bake Off.

In our house, we love Bake Off, think Japan is the most beautiful place with ever visited and have a weird soft spot for Slough.

This week’s episode was a bit of a disappointment, as one of our favourites left. We called him Ben but his name was Marquelle (although not one of those strange Irish names but apparently just Mark L). We couldn’t understand it because we thought that Ben would know everything about Japanese Patisserie. His avocado cake with hidden baby avocados was the most kawaii bake I’ve seen and if it was inedible then it was probably more Japanese than most. 

Before the show aired, we thought about what to bake. My son suggested a chiffon cake but I decided on a mille crepe cake because I’d had a nice one in Kyoto. It was lemon flavoured because matcha is a taste I’m not planning on acquiring, just as I won’t be adding red bean paste or bonito flakes to anything I bake.

The other reason this episode was disappointing is because we’ve got to the stage where we are invested in the bakers. We don’t want any of them to go. Except Lottie. The hatred for Lottie is about to start, because no one like a young confident woman, especially one who is funny.  (Just to be clear: I don’t want Lottie to go either). Hermine (pronounced like the fur) was my tip from the beginning - the dark horse that would be overlooked until the end, when she’d suddenly win, despite never having star baker and always being in the bottom three, prompting racists to get very upset. If you hadn’t been to Japan or been a young person immersed in the cutsie culture of anime then her cake looked just how we would have imagined Japan. I expect, though, that the favourite to win is Peter, which would be cute, as he is a super fan.

Hermine talked about her inspiration for the week. Japan was obviously a place she had never been, or thought about. It’s somewhere that middle aged, middle class couples or teens obsessed with Picachu, visit. It’s not somewhere a French speaking, London accountant from Benin in West Africa with a young family would be very interested in. She has, however, been to Slough.

My daughter lived in Slough and it was her first patch as a new reporter. This makes us oddly fond of the place.  Hermine said that her cake was based on the Japanese garden where she sat to eat her lunch.

“What?” My daughter shouted at the telly.

Her phone was out and she was tapping away, looking for evidence of Slough’s best kept secret. 

“No, I can’t find a Japanese garden. It can only be Herschel Park because that’s the only park you might stop and eat your lunch.”

It’s difficult to imagine a place less likely to be a Japanese inspiration but cuteness and perfection are so big in Japan that I’d love to see what the Japanese would make of Slough. I’m sure they’d hang some lampshades from an ugly alley and paint cute faces on them.