THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF 2025: WEEK TWO – BISCUIT WEEK

admin — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 14:13:34 +0000

Dunk yourself happy – it’s Biscuit Week!

Leighton had it all to play for this week after serving up a Cake Week showstopper that was on the wonk with a sponge that was described by Prue as ‘very tough’. Not a good look.

Iain gained the title of Comeback King in Cake Week after salvaging what pretty much everyone thought was going to result in BinGate 2.0 and producing what Paul described as an ‘incredible’ showstopper.

A calmer week than last week for these two, then?

Roll the titles

**** SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details of the outcomes of each of the challenges, this week’s star baker and the second of The Class of 2025 to go home. Please don’t read on if you have yet to watch the biscuit week episode and don’t want to know the outcome! ****

WHO WILL CRUMBLE UNDER THE PRESSURE OF BISCUIT WEEK?

In theory, biscuit baking is a relatively simple process made from relatively simple ingredients. But this is Bake Off, so Biscuit Week 2025 was unlikely to pass off without at least a modicum of drama.

Surely, though, it couldn’t be as dramatic as last year, which saw Jeff quit the show, Illiyan faint and Dylan fall off his stool.

Let’s dive in…

THE SIGNATURE: SLICE AND BAKE DESIGN-INSIDE BISCUITS

Continuing the arty theme we saw with the Swiss rolls in Cake Week, the eleven bakers left in the tent were tasked with making slice and bake biscuits with a picture or design running through the middle (Blackpool rock, anybody?)

It goes without saying that they weren’t given a realistic timeframe for completing this fiddly and labour intensive process! They had just two hours to make, flavour and colour their biscuit dough, craft their design out of the dough, chill it, slice it, bake their masterpieces and present them ready for judging.

TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE

Knowing that Bake Off is notorious for not giving the bakers long enough to achieve the task at hand, you’d think they might opt for a simple-design-done-well over an intricate-design-done-badly/rushed/not finished.

Jasmine, yes. Pui Man not so much. When asked by Prue if she had ever got her intricate design done in time during practice (they get the signature and showstopper challenges ahead of time so that they can practice at home), she answered: “No. Never.” Oh.

SLICE AND BAKE BISCUITS: TIPS FOR SUCCESS

As Paul said during the programme, when you add colour to biscuit dough, it becomes tricky to know when the biscuits are baked. This is why I recommend baking a batch of plain biscuits with your chosen [uncoloured] dough, first. This way, you will be able to know they are done by the colour. Take note of the time and temperature and make sure you follow this when baking coloured dough. Alternatively, choose a recipe where someone has done the legwork for you

The design you choose will dictate how many different batches of dough you will need (for colouring and flavouring purposes). You can use the same recipe for all variations. You can make a separate batch of biscuit dough for each flavour/colour. But if you are using an egg-based dough, this is tricky to scale down below one egg and so you could end up with more dough than you need*. To avoid this, you can make a single batch, divide it up and colour/flavour each portion.

* Suggesting that too much biscuit dough is even a thing has left me questioning some of my life choices.

Chill time is super important with slice and bake biscuits. Which means they’re not one for the impatient bakers among us (hi!) If you don’t let your assembled dough firm up enough, it will compress your design as you slice through it, ruining all the hard work that went into crafting your design in the first place. Always use a very sharp knife, too.

Fancy having a go? Check out my slice and bake gluten-free pinwheel biscuits recipe!

DESIGN SPOTLIGHT

So what did they create and how did they fare?

Nadia’s avocado matcha biscuits got a thumbs up for the design but were criticised for not being bold enough with the flavour. Toby’s flavours of cinnamon, honey, banana, cream cheese and peanut were a little OTT and a lesson in what happens when you throw too much at the problem. Iain’s winter-spiced biscuits filled with mincemeat ganache had me eyeing up the spice drawer and checking my dried fruit stash! And I completely disagreed with Paul’s comment on Nataliia’s biscuits not really looking like a rose. Has he never seen the white rose of Yorkshire emblem?!

All but one of the bakers presented under-baked biscuits, which probably tells us everything we need to know about whether two hours is enough time to make slice and bake biscuits with a design inside

THE TECHNICAL: CHOCOLATE & CARAMEL HOBNOBS

There were no one-dip wonders in the Biscuit Week technical as the bakers were tasked with making the marine of all biscuits – the hobnob. No taste-testing to determine the ingredients this week, but a return to the suitably vague recipe and instructions (The first step: make 12 biscuits. The second step: bake. That’s it). Baker’s instinct it is, then.

Unlike the conventional hobnob, Prue’s technical challenge for the bakers was to top the oaty classic with a thin layer of caramel before finishing with two different types of feathered chocolate design.

If you’re wondering what the caramel coloured-chocolate used by the bakers is, by the way, it’s Callebaut Gold. It’s a slightly salted, caramelised white chocolate. And it’s delicious. Which is why I use it in my black and gold chocolate cookie baking kit.

HOW HARD CAN IT BE?

Seemingly, very. Hobnobs are a crumbly biscuit but some of the bakers took this to a whole new level. Eyes, on you, Pui Man.

I was quite surprised that so few of the bakers managed to feather their chocolate neatly. Or at all in some cases – looking at you, Tom, Leighton, Jasmine, Aaron. It really isn’t difficult (says she, free from the pressure of the GBBO tent!)

Not everyone had a hard time with the challenge, though. Toby played a blinder, taking the technical win for the second week in a row.

His hobnobs were neat, uniform, evenly proportioned and well baked. Prue even said she thought Toby’s biscuit was the perfect hobnob. And the male judge?* “It’s nice.” Knock yourself out with the praise levels, Paul.

* We still love you for this, Nancy Birtwhistle!

HOW TO FEATHER ICING / CHOCOLATE

You can feather icing or chocolate. Whichever you choose, you need two contrasting colours (and a cocktail stick) to get the feathered effect.

If you are using icing, you can use fruit juice instead of water to add flavour (maybe not on a hobnob, though) and you can add a little bit of cocoa powder to one of your icings for a colour contrast.

Don’t hang around – you need to work quickly once you’ve applied the icing/chocolate to your biscuits. Get everything ready in front of you before you start decorating so that you can work at speed.

Your icing or chocolate must be fluid. If it has started to set before you drag a cocktail stick through it, you will just make an unholy mess.

Once you have completely covered your biscuits with your icing/chocolate, you need to make lines of your contrasting colour across the biscuit, working from left to right, top to bottom.

For the neatest finish, put your contrast colour into a piping bag with a small hole snipped off the end (or a small round-tipped nozzle if you have one). If you’re not overly bothered about the neatness, you can just drizzle your icing/chocolate off the back of a teaspoon.

As soon as you have piped the lines, grab your cocktail stick and drag it quickly through the icing/chocolate, going from top to bottom (starting from the left again). The narrower the gap between drags, the more detailed your feathering will be.

See, I told you it wasn’t difficult!

THE SHOWSTOPPER: BISCUIT TIME CAPSULE

And finally, for the showstopper, a highly decorated biscuit time capsule filled with at least five edible mementos. In just four hours.

Pui Man didn’t have a great signature bake as she ran out of time to complete her intricate ‘year of the ox’ design. And she came last in the technical. So she was going to need something pretty special to survive Biscuit Week. Or, as Prue said, would need someone else to do really badly!

The biggest question at the start of a biscuit structure challenge like this one is always whether the bakers will have remembered that choosing melt-in-the-mouth shortbread for their time capsule is only marginally less foolhardy than serving up a chocolate fondant on Masterchef.

TO THE FUTURE, MARTY!

The pressure was clearly on for this challenge with plenty of confidence-boosting self-talk from many of the bakers. “I can do this” (Pui Man), “Move fast but think a lot” (Tom), “I just want to do OK. Middle of the road is absolutely fine.” (Aaron).

And it’s not hard to see why when we were told by Paul that the bakers would need engineering skills, architectural skills and artistic skills to make the time capsule look amazing. And then Prue piled on the pressure by adding that the mementos inside the capsules needed to be really exquisitely decorated. Phyoosh!

FORTUNE FAVOURS THE BRAVE

Tom’s reconstruction of his Granny’s cottage promised to be an absolute knockout if it was as amazing in biscuit form as it looked in the doodle form we get to see whenever the bakers describe the bake they are about to make.

Pui Man’s four-tiered gingerbread floating restaurant design looked like exactly what she needed to save herself from being jettisoned from the tent this week. If she could pull it off.

And both Toby and Nadia made us nervous as they announced they were shunning the trusted, sturdy, construction-friendly gingerbread for their time capsules. Nadia even fessed up that she was worried her biscuit choice wouldn’t be strong enough so had chosen to make it a bit thicker. Did you clock Prue’s face? Gulp.

So with Prue looking for the bakers to be brave, the biscuits to be tasty and the design to be witty, how did they get on?

JUDGEMENT TIME

Jessica’s stained glass time capsule was a representation of places she has been and places she has lived. Prue said that she was worried Jessica had bitten off more than she would be able to chew but that she’d done a great job. The judges weren’t in love with her biscuits (quite chewy and hard work to eat) but loved the biscuit selfie with moveable parts (until Paul broke it, that is).

The judges thought Lesley’s happy memories time capsule was a very clever design, that her gingerbread flavours were good and her melt-in-the-mouth Viennese biscuits were delicious.

Leighton’s piano lacked finesse (to which he agreed) and some of his biscuits were underbaked. And Toby’s treasure chest was dry and didn’t taste nice either – described as a classic case of style over substance. Ouch!

Aaron was close to tears as he was told by Paul that he was happy with his baking but everything else, not so much.

And then there was Tom. Prue described his showstopper as absolutely perfect and Paul thought the textures, flavours and design were pretty much untouchable. Wow!

Such glowing feedback could only mean one thing. Yup, we saw our first Hollywood Handshake of series 16! It turns out that Tom’s biscuit version of his granny’s cottage was indeed every inch as good as the doodle of it.

FAREWELL TO THE SECOND BAKER OF THE CLASS OF 2025

Oh Leighton. I love how we learned that you got a Blue Peter badge as a child by collecting used tinfoil from all of your neighbours and sending it off to the programme. And that you raised money for Help The Aged in the process. But it was never going to sway the judges when you served them underbaked, ‘wet’ biscuits, was it

Well done to Pui Man for absolutely delivering when she needed to and keeping her place in the tent based on her outstanding showstopper and not because someone else had a bad bake.

Congratulations to Tom for becoming Biscuit Week 2025’s star baker *and* the first recipient of a Hollywood Handshake this year. Let us know how that conversation with your boyfriend goes, eh?*

* See my memorable moments from this week, below.

my memorable momenTS FROM BISCUIT WEEK 2025

Noel to Tom: “If you got a Hollywood Handshake, who would you call first?” Tom: “It would be my boyfriend to say, if it goes any further, are we OK with it?”

“It looks like a cat.” Paul on Toby’s slice and bake biscuits of his dog, Bex. Toby, as quick as a flash: “She’s quite cat-like.”

Prue on the hobnob technical: ”The worst problem would be too much caramel.” Umm, what?!!

Lesley: ”Normally I wouldn’t bother tempering chocolate for a biscuit but then I’m like: we’re on the Bake Off.”

Nadia: “I think this is what you do to make a bit of feathering.” She then drags a fork through thick, sloppy chocolate. “Oh no, maybe not.”

Paul on Leighton’s hobnobs: “How can you do 2cm of decoration and try and feather that? You’d need a machete!” And again: “Were you trying to pipe through a hose?”

Lesley: “This is Marly, who’s a rescue dog. He’s absolutely crazy. We took him for a walk and he found something that he shouldn’t have eaten….we took him to the vets all worried. Anyway, he’d gone and got himself stoned. He’d found some weed. And he ate it. It cost me £200 and he was lying in his bed having the best time.”

Tom, when asked about scoring a Hollywood Handshake: “More than anything I was just so happy to hear Pui Man’s feedback because she has definitely felt the stress this week.”

Until next week!

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