It’s December, that time of year when my imagination runs wild, shopping trips are frequent, and plans get out of control, all in service of one big goal:
Cookies.
Cookies are my first baking love, arguably my favorite food, and if reports are to be believed, my first word. There’s no time of year when one can’t make cookies (at least, not in my religious tradition), but at the holidays, I — and the culture at large — give myself permission to go way overboard, to bake way more cookies than seems healthful, normal, or sane.
In America, the holiday season kicks off around Thanksgiving. And (in America) that kickoff coincided this year with the finale of the latest season of what is aired here as “The Great British Baking Show” but known to fans and Brits simply as “Bake Off.” (If you like the show, haven’t finished the season, and care about such things, be forewarned: I’m going to talk about the finale.)
It’ll come as no surprise that I adore this show. For one thing, every episode is full of a glut baking feats that no one would describe as healthful, normal, or sane. Imagine ten people finishing off a weekend of frying a gross of donuts and perfecting ten Victoria sponges by creating 10 separate four-layer celebration cakes. It’s sheer madness.
If you’ve recommended the show, or had it recommended to you, I’d bet that “nutso baking grandiosity” is not the aspect you’ve most noted or heard about. I’ve said it, heard it, discussed it a thousand times: everyone’s just so nice! It’s not like American food competition shows. They all support each other so much!
I’ve been reconsidering this assessment. While I think it’s mostly true, I am no longer convinced that this unique “niceness” is why the show is compelling. The American crafting show Making It! has clearly cribbed this lets-all-be-friends model for its maker competition, and while that show is fun in its own way (the variety of crafts, charming hosts Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman), the “niceness” of it all can be as cloying as a too-treacled tart.
There’s no drama in any show without stakes. After several seasons of watching and loving Bake Off, I’m beginning to see that the stakes are personal; the drama comes from the way that each contestant is in a heated battle against themselves. Sometimes that means living up to one’s own high standards (as with this season’s Jürgen — more on him below). Sometimes it means facing up to stupid, avoidable mistakes. Sometimes the conflict is all in the contestant’s head — I am bad at this, I don’t belong here, they are going to hate this, this looks like dog shite. Every season there is at least one contestant who takes this self-doubt to such an extreme that I find myself on the edge of my couch cushions, wanting nothing more than to reach through the screen and give them a good shake. Or hug.
Of course, in addition to drama, the show is always a delight to the senses. The eyes, mostly; if you have a good taste or smell imagination, that sense is rewarded too. This most recent season has been a particular delight to the ears as well — a wide variety of spectacular accents, British and otherwise, were on display. One of those accents belonged to winner Giuseppe (unsurprisingly, the accent is Italian). Giuseppe was one of those contestants who brings a ruler to the tent, and is able to create beautiful, uniform little cakes and pastries with an engineer’s precision1. In one of the tenser moments of the finale, Giuseppe realizes that his oven is not preheated. He had set it, but had then forgotten to hit some kind of confirmation button — a technology problem, he might argue, but one that occurred after an entire season of using the very same oven without issue.
Screwing yourself over because you misused your tools, and then blaming the tools for not working the way you imagined they would…is any conflict more universally relatable?
One thing might be: not giving oneself proper credit even for one’s greatest gifts. Consider this season’s Lizzie, who insisted week after week that “finesse” was not her thing, even as she was improving her finesse factor week over week. Consider Jürgen (my favorite this season, and imho, its most consistently wise and wonderful baker; the below image of his fellow contestants reacting to the announcement that he wouldn’t be in the final suggests that they felt the same way). Several times over the course of the season, he lamented his own lack of presentation skills, despite rarely getting that comment from the judges; when he was proud of his creations, he would say so, but he often found them below his own high standards. Consider Crystelle, who SEVERAL times over the course of the season declared her bake a disaster only to have it roundly praised by Paul & Pru.
On television and in movies, conflict is key. We usually watch people face external threats, like crime lords or horrible bosses or dragon attacks. Reality TV largely follows suit, with the creation of villainous personalities and warring factions. But in our real lives, we face no conflict as repeated, none more constantly, reliably troubling as the enemy within. And that might make Bake Off the most relatable show of all time, whether you’re a baker or just an eater.
For me, the tendency to magnify faults and resist owning my skills is familiar in both generally and very specifically. In the kitchen, if I follow a recipe and get compliments on the results, I inevitably demur — the genius is the recipe’s, not mine. Nevermind that it takes a certain set of skills to hie to a recipe at all, and another set to follow it in a way that yields the expected results. Just last week I caught myself trying to tell a group of people that it had been “really easy” to make focaccia from scratch. I stopped myself; it’s easy if you are used to baking more complicated breads. Notably, the wonderful Crystelle tanked her own chances at winning the Bake Off finale by ruining a focaccia.
I’ve had several roommates who, seeing me bake all manner of things, tasting those things, and noting how I love Bake Off, tell me that I should be on the show. I insist that I could not hack it. Sure, I know a lot about baking. Sure, I have experience with a lot of different recipes. But I have none of that engineer’s precision. I don’t make things the same size or shape; I get impatient and want to rush to the finish line. I don’t think it matters that much that everything looks uniform, so I don’t try that hard; thus I have no practice with detail, and I tell myself I don’t posses the skill.
For some reason, I decided that this would be the year I put that theory to the test, at least in the cookie department. I would tackle my nemesis cookie… and I’d really try this time.
I’m talking of course about the carefully, artfully iced, cut-out sugar cookie.
Here’s what offends me about this particular baked good: sugar cookies are boring to eat. Tasty, sure, but give me chocolate chips, or fruit, spices, or peanut butter. If I’m going to keep it simple, give me my grandmother’s shortbreads, rich in butter and almond flour — I make them almost every year. You toss them in powdered sugar. No precision required.
So, to add on top of this relatively boring cookie a full-on, multi-step sugar painting? That you’re just gonna turn around and eat in a few seconds? It goes against some deeply rooted personal instinct.
Or did I just think that because I’d never made a cut-out, artfully iced sugar cookie that I was happy with?
I texted my BFF, Mary Kate, who is not really an avid baker, but whom I know has made such beautiful cookies. How did you learn? I asked her. A class and lots of YouTube videos, was her reply. So I watched most of an hour-long YouTube tutorial and set aside an afternoon. I told myself I wouldn’t hurry, no matter how tempted I was.
I made up the colors and the design myself. I didn’t worry about being overly Christmas-y, or too complex. Most importantly, I named my inner villains and I faced them down: the rushing to the finish line, the perfectionism, the dilemma of “opportunity cost”2, the fear that I’m wasting precious time and money on something that doesn’t matter and will be ugly anyway and probably not even taste that good and and and…
And they came out really cute.
For the bakers and the curious: here are some of the other cookies I have planned for this season so far.
Susan Spungen’s Moroccan Inspired Pistachio Cookies
Sohla El-Waylly’s Fruity Beltways
The Peppermint Bark cookies from the Milk Jar Bakebook by Courtenay Cowan
And this is the sugar cookie recipe I used, via Smitten Kitchen/Deb Perelman
…will I bake them all? Will I make even more? Stay tuned for an update, probably…
Giuseppe is, in fact, an engineer.
As in, I’m choosing to make these cookies over others on my list