CAUTION: SPOILERS for this episode of BCNG!

Posting this a day late, sorry! Can you believe I completely forgot that this show was on last night? It’s hard to believe, but I simply forgot about Baking Championship because (a) as mentioned, I’m just not quite as excited about Next Gen as I usually am about baking shows, and (b) my husband and I were super immersed in the finale of a different show (more on that forthcoming).

So, last week was the “tryouts,” and now the real competition begins. It was nice to see the set looking all bright and bold and exciting again. Last week it definitely looked kind of, well, not there yet, and I was feeling mildly disappointed; but now, at last, it looks like the Baking Championship set that we know and love.

Family favorite desserts, decorated to give a nod to family traditions. What would yours be? This is sad, and embarrassing to admit as a SAHM, but: my family doesn’t really have any such desserts.

My parents – neither of them have a lot of cozy childhood memories, whether of food or just in general, I think. There was a lot of sadness in their home lives. And, being boomers, both of them have always been deeply entrenched in diet culture. So, ours wasn’t exactly a “grandma’s chocolate chip cookies”-type household.

The only sweet treat that I remember being made semi-regularly in my childhood home was my mom’s chocolate fudge, which I’ve written about on here before. I’ve tried to make this fudge myself exactly one time, as an adult, and it failed epically. So I don’t feel I’ve earned the right to say that I’d re-create that on TV.

My husband didn’t inherit any special recipes, either. His mother, who’s an artist and decorator, prefers other hobbies over being in the kitchen, and his father, according to the stories I’ve heard, just slapped together all kinds of manly dishes like pork chops, meat loaf, mushrooms, and sauerkraut, but didn’t make desserts. So, my husband and I, we just don’t come from those kinds of families.

Which feels shitty, because I feel like I ought to be that kind of mom, and I’m failing if I’m not.

Now that I have my own kids, I do bake with them occasionally. I’m trying to make it happen. I would really like to have some Traditional Family Recipes that my kids will remember with nostalgia one day… but, for us, it’s just not like that. Not yet, at least.

In our house, baking is always kind of… an experiment. It’s not like we bake tried-and-true recipes because we want the resulting product. It’s more like a time filler – “let’s try this for fun” – or a specific, targeted seasonal/educational activity, like when we made apple pastry “roses” on St. Thérèse’s feast day, or gingerbread cookies at Christmas.

As much as I love to watch baking shows, in my own daily life I kinda struggle with the idea of baking, tbh; it just doesn’t seem practical. All that money spent on ingredients, all that precious time spent, all that mess made in the kitchen, just for an end result that, if it even gets eaten, won’t provide us with much nutritional value. I know it’s not a great way to think, but as someone with creative Te in socionics, I have a really hard time doing stuff that doesn’t have a greater purpose or serve some function. “So what” is a question I’m always wrestling with. It can be kind of demotivating.

Probably the only actual dessert that I “bake” semi-regularly nowadays is a summer berry icebox cake that I make every year around the Fourth of July. I love it because I’m a terrible baker, and an icebox cake doesn’t actually require any baking, hahaha. So, maybe I’d recreate something like that, for a “family recipe”-themed challenge, if I were a contestant on this show: blueberries and strawberries with white chocolate and vanilla layers. Maybe I’d decorate it with some Catholic theme, like arranging the berries in the shape of rosary beads (kind of like the edible rosaries that I make with the kids every year on the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, out of stuff like Cheerios and M&Ms). Curious to know what you all would make for this challenge!

Anyway, enough about me. This week, halfway through the challenge, Kardea invited the kids to join her in a short “dance break,” and whoever had the best moves ended up winning five extra minutes for their bake time. This would have been unbearably cringey if it were adults, and I kinda take issue with rewarding the bakers for something entirely not baking related… but with kids, it was pretty funny. Cameron from Philly ended up winning – “I locked in,” he said proudly afterwards, which made me giggle like a maniac. But Abby and Cameron didn’t really end up needing the extra five minutes for their chocolate chip blondies, so Cameron passed the prize on to Leila and Melody, who were struggling to finish their chocolate-raspberry-pistachio cake in time. How gracious! What a little gentleman. And it really helped Leila and Melody, because they spent that extra five minutes making that pink cake look gorgeous. With those raspberries perched pertly on top of the little buttercream swirls. Well done, girls.

It’s funny: I’m not as into this show as I am the adult versions, but my husband actually seems to like it better. He likes that there’s no angst and melodrama, lol. (Imagine that!) And he’s really rooting for Taanvi and Kavya, the goofballs. (Kavya especially reminds him of our younger daughter, our goblin, who’s always bouncing around and asking random questions like that: “what happens if the cameraman needs to go to the bathroom?”) When they were in the bottom two, my husband literally had to hide his face behind a pillow until it was over, so full of dread was he at the thought of them going home. Thankfully, they made it through to next week.

Although, I feel bad for Olivia and Norah. I was pretty sure it was going to be them going home, I mean, come on. Two and a half hours and all they produced was a mediocre cookie. (What a shame – chocolate cherry thumbprint does sound phenomenal, and the presentation was about as fancy as could be for a simple cookie!) But, the fact that they were the only ones who refused to dance in the dance break – lol, I related to that so hard. That definitely would have been me.

Also of note this week:

– Genesis and Akbar. After struggling through the challenge and barely finishing with some rather sloppy decorations, their German chocolate cake ended up being one of the best-tasting on the set. These two seem to really know their stuff!

– Leia and Kiera obviously brought their A game again, with that stunning little Meyer lemon cake that looked like two adults made it. I think they might actually be adult professional bakers in clever disguises.

– Taanvi and Kavya did peaches again. Second consecutive peach dessert. Do you think this will become a thing, for them?

– Little Harper and Holland with the berry-flavored whipped cream was a peak baking show moment.

– And, can we talk about Abigail and Kenneth? How much butter did he put into their cake? He didn’t know! “What do you mean, you don’t know?!” LMAO, do you think they’re like that at home? Their little tractor design on their cake was so cute though, and no one commented on this particular detail but I loved the black and yellow sprinkles around the bottom border. Very original. What a team, what a delight: Kenneth the little ray of sunshine with a lisp, and tough, take-no-shit farm girl Abigail. I love these two, and would happily watch a reality show about their life on the farm.

Which brings us to nine teams remaining. Next week, I’ll try to be on time. Let’s go:

Superlatives from the judges: 1, Duff telling Harper & Holland that that was the “best looking kladkakka he’d ever seen” (running total: 2)

Kid who most deserved a hug: Genesis, after accidentally baking her chocolate cakes with no dry ingredients! The way those things bubbled and gurgled in the oven like they’d come to life, lol. For real though, I’ve done this before, and it’s devastating.

Kid who most deserved a high five: Cameron, for passing on his “Five Extra Minutes” to Leila and Melody.

The dessert that I would most have liked to eat: Definitely Jovie & Lenore’s Cherry Cream Cheese Pie. I might be misusing the modern slang here, because I’m at that age now, but I’m pretty sure today’s youth would say that Jovie and Lenore “ate and left no crumbs.” Gooey cherries, nice thick cream cheese filling layer, and graham cracker crust. With the little guitar on top! This one spoke to my heart. I might just try to copycat this at home — next time I find a good-enough reason to go to all the trouble of baking something.