This one also contains a couple spoilers for: GBBO series 15, and Spring Baking seasons 8 and 10!

Spring Baking Championship 2025! I’ve been so excited for the new season. The Baking Championship is my favorite show, and I haven’t watched it since Summer 2024. I don’t watch the Halloween seasons (not my thing), and when Holiday aired in November/December, I was so sick with pregnancy nausea that I couldn’t even stand to think about food, let alone watch a whole show about it. So now I’ll have two seasons of Holiday to watch this winter, yay!

But in any case, Spring is quite possibly my favorite season of the Championship, for sentimental reasons. I first started watching the show in early 2023 after my third child was born: my husband was on leave from work and minding our girls, so I just laid on the couch all day long snuggling the newborn, watching the previous year’s season of Spring Baking (the infamous season 8) on the HBO Max app on my phone. I was immediately hooked, and watched all the seasons back to back; to my delight, season 9 dropped shortly after I first got into the show. And soon after that, they started the Summer Baking Championship, too, which is good but IMO not quite as great yet as Spring and Holiday. I have watched all of all three of these (except the aforementioned 2024 Holiday season), so I consider myself something of an expert by now.

All of this to perhaps give credence to the following observations.

There is a great group of contestants this year! I’m so excited to see what they can do. Based on the premiere, my official prediction for this season’s winner is: Lisa, and I predict the runners-up will be Priya and either Jon’Nae or Raveena.

Lisa is fierce! Her lemon-lavender tart in the Preheat was beautiful and sounded delicious, and her pie in the Main Heat was probably the best-looking pie I’ve seen on this show (I think pies must be so hard to decorate well!).

But, my four personal favorites and the ones that I am most rooting for:

Kari. When I first saw her, I immediately thought to myself: “That’s a recovering addict.” I guess it takes one to know one, lol. I love that she’s loud and proud about her seven years and two months! Some people find it annoying when a person in recovery makes their recovery their whole personality; but, we have to remember that, for some people, using substances was their entire personality, and as a replacement, recovery is a much better one to have. I would love to see Kari win the whole thing. Plus, her hair is super cool and beautifully done with the violet highlights. I just love when someone over 30 wears an unnatural hair color.

Corey: He just seems so likeable and chill and nice! And, he’s from DC, so geographically the closest to me of all the contestants. Also, I love that he did a pecan pie and managed to make it springy (and got his conductor fingers from Nancy!).

Jon’Nae: I just have a feeling that she’s got a lot more up her sleeve than we’ve even seen thus far. She also seems like a lovely individual, and the camera adores her – she has such a warm and bright vibe about her. There’s a reason why she was the first one they introduced!

Paul: of course I am going to root for the straight French guy. I like to see straight guys excel in baking, because it’s typically considered to be a feminine art! And, I loved Romy (season 8) and Alex (season 10), and thought both of these deserved to win, and Paul seems to be carrying on their legacy.

A few other random observations:

Obviously the pressing question we all have right now is, why did Lauren leave?! I hate to see a contestant quit! She was doing so well – her pie got a really good critique! If she’d done terribly it would make more sense, but she was a potential winner! I read somewhere that she apparently “got sick and couldn’t continue,” but that seems awfully… vague? Mysterious? Of course, it’s no one’s business but her own what she has going on in her life, but I can’t help being curious! This is going to drive me crazy, as was the case with Jeff from last year’s GBBO.

However, I am glad that her resignation allowed Kareem to stay on. Instantly when I watched Kareem walk onto the set, my brain was like: “he’s going home first” (after watching so much of this show, I have a spidey sense about these things), which made me sad, because he’s just a delightful character. So I was unsurprised to see him in the bottom two, and prepared myself to say goodbye to him. I really, really hope he can refine his craft and stay on the show until the end.

The challenges in this episode were great! Sometimes in the past the challenges have been weird, but I loved both of these. The flower one was fun for me because, as you know, I love associating people with things (“what kind of x would you be if you were an x?” is like my favorite game). (As for me, if I were a spring flower, I’d be a grape hyacinth.) And the Main Heat was really brilliant and original, with all the different honeys!

One comment about some of the comments I’ve seen: people need to leave Kardea Brown alone! She is a great judge and an awesome person! I like her as a judge way better than Carla Hall! I did love Lorraine (her back-and-forth head-butting with Nancy was hilarious), but Kardea is just as good in a different way. She’s actually my favorite Food Network star. She’s an entirely self-made girl from the South who got her start selling homemade sauces out of the trunk of her car, or something, and is now rich and famous; and her personality is just a ray of sunshine. I cannot believe how much complaining she gets, what the heck people?!

Speaking of the judging: I noticed in this episode that the judges, specifically Nancy who’s usually nitpicky about things being seasonal appropriate, were not nearly as much so this time. Hot toddy, apple pie, and pecan pie, and not one of them called out for being too fall/wintry? I was expecting complaints about that, but, hey, cool, I’m here for it. I did think it was silly that Nancy complained about the red center of Paul’s daisy. I thought it was creative, and with genetic engineering these days, flowers can come in whatever color we want! Also, Duff was harsh this episode! “Be smarter next time” — damn! I guess he’s been at this so long now that he’s done trying to sugarcoat things.

My high point: Kari winning the main heat! Yass queen!

My low point: Kareem not quite nailing the Main Heat. I thought the judgment about his decoration was a bit harsh – that pie had some giant, neon-bright flowers on it, it was hardly boring! – but to be fair, coffee and sage honey just doesn’t sound like a winning flavor combo, to me. He’s so inventive and colorful, I really want him to go far!

The dessert that I would most have liked to eat: Julian’s walnut-honey pie with whipped blond chocolate ganache! Please bring me a piece immediately.

.