Leave the Seventies Where They Belong

 As you get older, nostalgia becomes a favourite pastime; one that I’m guilty of. I confess that when I write my blog and I’m feeling a bit low, overwhelmed or just tired of life, it can very comforting to pop on those rose tinted specs and look back. I tell you about long hot summers and carefree childhood days. I tell you about games, stories and food that I remember fondly, from before my joints ached, got a fish in my eye and a brain that is full of holes. 

This nostalgia is a dangerous beast, though, because it stops us remembering the truth. The people who are outraged at the Sainsbury’s advert are cross because they are rampant racists and can’t ever remember seeing anyone is the UK with skin that doesn’t freckle. I know I wasn’t going to mention it but it’s a hot topic in our house, where, even during the night someone is having to watch comments on stories about Christmas adverts and is becoming very disillusioned with the human race. 

I wasn’t going to write about that.

I wanted to write about Bake Off. 

The semi finals were shown last night and if you were watching and not tasting then the wrong person went (spoilers approaching). It is very difficult to judge Bake Off from your sofa because you only have one of the senses you would normally use to judge cake available.

Personally, I’m here for the ‘looks a mess, tastes delicious’ cake but I think some people will have been unhappy. From the beginning I thought Hermine might have won (who am I kidding, we all know this is Peter’s trophy) because she had classic cooking skills. She could bake like a French person, which should have given her an advantage in Patisserie weeks. Unfortunately, though, Pru and Paul had their time travelling specs on when they set the challenges. Instead of small, perfectly formed fraisiers, entremets and madelines they went straight back to the seventies and set a Rum Baba challenge. There is a reason no one eats Rum Baba any more. Then there was the horn, put in just to give those playing innuendo bingo some fun (it’s never as much fun if you can see it coming) and finally a showstopper cube cakes, made with enough sheets of boiled up cow bone to make a rubber ball to bounce to the moon.

Gelatine and rum babas are definitely things that should be left in the Seventies along with jokes about whether a bloke’s impressive horn fits his briefs. We remember Benny Hill and the Carry on films fondly because we’ve managed to block from our minds the bits that were all about shaming and degrading young women.