Heel Holland Bakt #9: we can’t look at another cake
At Esther’s, the powdered sugar is on the windowsill, Anouk lives by a schedule on the kitchen cabinet, and everything at Jeanette’s revolves entirely around test baking, recipes, and filming. Yayyy, it’s the final episode of Heel Holland Bakt 2019-2020 and the three finalists are as tense as a spring. Finalists ready? Let’s bake!
How do you prepare for a final like this? Besides collecting baking tins, baking plans, and baking supplies, as all the contestants do, Esther carefully puts together her kitchen outfit: these heels or those? ‘I do need to be able to run in them,’ she says. While chefs and pastry chefs end up choosing safety shoes or those hideous Crocs for that reason, Esther click-clacks into the baking tent in a pair of hefty seventies heels.
Rustic look
Communication courses explain it clearly: give feedback using the sandwich method. So first say something nice, then mention the ‘area for improvement,’ and finish with something nice again. Want to know how it works? Look at the judges’ assessments in this Heel Holland Bakt finale. ‘It’s a substantial size,’ says Janny, ‘it’s not completely neat, but fortunately there’s gold on it.’ And she says that about cube-shaped pastries that look like cooked toasted sandwiches, because the filling is dripping out. Esther replies: ‘I just went for a rustic look.’ Strong argument—we’ll remember that the next time we have to present baking disasters at home. Jeanette has tears in her eyes, because her cube pastries have sunk even more than Esther’s. Rustic, Jeanette! That’s the magic word!
Surprise!
A constellation of chocolate petals, a little cookie-dough heart with raspberries, and warm chocolate sauce… that’s the technical challenge, the surprise cake. Those petals have to take on their round shape inside a piece of sewer pipe, stand above the mini cake, and then, when they melt, open up like the water lilies at Efteling.
And then the showstopper challenge: a one-and-a-half-metre cake. How do you come up with that? And how do you get a one-and-a-half-metre cake out of such a (Robèrt points it out with his hands) tiny oven? Anouk shows how you can interpret the challenge: a coffin full of cake, covered with a thick, generous layer of marzipan. The other two ladies make a rolled cake. Robèrt is honest about it: he would have liked to see a little more spectacle. But still: a one-and-a-half-metre cake! How do you get that out of those tiny ovens?
Man and sheep
As tradition dictates, the final cake is shared with family, friends, acquaintances, and… sheep? Yes, Jeanette has brought part of her flock along. Everyone calmly and contentedly grazes on the cake and sponge, because it really isn’t all that exciting. The judges say so in their assessment: she baked consistently throughout the season, so the prize goes to… Anouk. She wins a glass cake dome. Was all that effort worth it? Esther’s daughters are at least relieved, because after all those weeks they really couldn’t look at another cake. And neither could we, a little, because this was certainly not the most exciting season in the history of Heel Holland Bakt. Is the Great British Bake Off actually being broadcast in the Netherlands this year too?
Highlight
The ladies remain kind to one another throughout the competition, including in the finale. They start the baking contest with a group hug.
Low point
‘A one-and-a-half-metre cake?’ André wonders. ‘Are you going to get inside it, Janny?’
