Was ‘The Great British Baking Show’ “Car Crash” Steamed Pudding Challenge Really the Worst Technical Ever?

We were promised there would be no more disasters on this season of The Great British Baking Show. The Netflix reality competition series had gone back to basics, they said. Everything was supposed to be happy and jolly and grand this year! And then The Great British Baking Show “Desserts Week” happened.

**Spoilers for The Great British Baking Show “Dessert Week,” now streaming on Netflix.**

After struggling their way through a Crème Caramel Signature Challenge, all six remaining bakers flopped hard during the Technical Challenge. Judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith wanted the bakers to make Six Steamed Orange and Ginger Treacle Puddings each and instead got a mostly inedible mess of underbaked sponge, burned syrup, and so-so custard.

Prue revealed that The Great British Baking Show “Desserts Week” Technical Challenge was “the worst think I have ever judged,” while Paul couldn’t stop mocking the bakers for their failures. “Consider yourself roasted!” he crowed. But was it really that bad? Could The Great British Baking Show “Desserts Week” Treacle Pudding Technical Challenge truly be the worst challenge in Bake Off history? Yes, and yes. It was so bad that it neatly ousted the disastrous “Maids of Honour” debacle out of that bottom spot.

So how did The Great British Baking Show “Desserts Week” Technical Challenge wind up a “car crash”? And was it the bakers’ fault? Or someone else’s?

We’re officially more than halfway through the 2023 season of The Great British Baking Show, known as Collection or Season 11 on Netflix and Series 14 in the UK. The challenges are supposed to be getting more difficult, but they should still be manageable for the the six remaining bakers: Cristy Sharp, Dan Hunter, Josh Smalley, Matty Edgell, Saku Chandrasekara, and Tasha Stones. However, the bakers stressed over their aforementioned Crème Caramels and skirted disaster with their Meringue Bombe-encased Showstoppers. Still, nothing was as bad as what took place during this week’s “Technical Challenge.”

At first, all seemed well enough. Paul Hollywood had set the challenge and gave the bakers the following advice: “This recipe has three very distinctive textures. You’ve got to get them all right for it to work.” That’s it. Nothing about bake time or, more importantly, time management.

After letting the bakers know that Paul wanted them to make Six Individual Orange and Ginger Treacle Puddings, Great British Baking Show co-host Noel Fielding sarcastically joked, “You have an hour and a half, which is plenty of time.” As if to underline just how short that time frame was, fellow co-host Alison Hammond later jested, “I love a quickie!”

We then cut to Paul and Prue’s private little tent where Prue gushed over one of her favorite desserts while Paul explained exactly where the bakers could trip up. “The killer thing with this, I think, is timing,” he said. “Now we’ve allowed twenty minutes with the syrup, getting it right. And then they have to think of the sponge and it’s critical they get the bake right. Forty minutes minimum.” In an hour and a half of allotted time to prep, bake, and make two sauces. Right.

So what went wrong for the bakers? Ignoring the fact that Matty and caramel do not mix, everyone struggled with the bake time. Each and every single baker put their puddings in the oven with about a half hour to go, assuming that a twenty minute bake would be enough for the petite puddings. Only Tasha realized that the bain marie, aka a steam bath, they were asked to use was slowing the baking time down. She removed the puddings from the bain marie, put them in the oven alone, and cranked up the heat. And what do you know? Tasha was the only one who served Paul and Prue anything remotely edible.

As soon as the bakers began flipping their puddings out to serve, it was clear something had gone horribly wrong. The usually perfect Josh flipped his bake over to reveal an uncooked soupy sludge. Cristy moaned that she couldn’t serve her liquid creation as it would make the judges ill. Saku gasped in horror as the curse visited her next. Matty laughed as half of his first pudding spilled all over his bench. As giggles took over the tent, Noel complained, “This is a car crash.” Jokes about the judges needed straws or flasks accompanied the death march to the gingham table.

Just as he did with 2019’s terrible Technical Challenge, Paul Hollywood attempted to turn around and leave the tent rather than sample the puddings. “That is disgusting,” he said, before doing his worst on the bakers. In voiceover, however, Alison really hammered home how badly the bakers had done: “Paul and Prue will now rank the bakers from worst to least worst.” NOT BEST!

In the end, Tasha came in first because she produced something edible, but Paul was quick to slam each and every baker for their performance. So much so, his ire carried over the next day during the Showstopper. “I’ve lost all faith,” Paul would go on to say. (Ouch!)

My hot take is that while the bakers undeniably choked on The Great British Baking Show “Desserts Week,” the production failed, too. If timing was that important for success, Paul should have made that his word of advice. Furthermore, the bakers probably should have been given at least two hours to make the puddings work. A ninety minute time limit signals that the bake should be on the brief side. Sure, the whole point of a Technical Challenge is to keep bakers in the dark, so they can show their know-how, but The Great British Baking Show went out of it way to further confound the bakers.

If every baker is failing at this state in the competition, then the party to blame is whoever concocted such an impossible challenge. For a season that started off so strongly — with straight-forward Technical Challenges that everyone mastered — The Great British Baking Show “Desserts Week” Treacle Pudding challenge is a failure for everyone involved in the show, not just the bakers.