Heel Holland Bakt talk #1: Is that a Christmas chocolate cake? No, a melting glacier
The first episode is in the bag! From five hundred applications to fifty bakers at a street fair, and from twenty recruits for baking camp to ten contestants in the tent: Heel Holland Bakt has got off to a flying start. The programme’s surprising lesson: too much sugar is good for no one.
The pace is fast. Blink and you’ll miss it—or take a bite of a choux bun with your eyes closed (like Janny)—and people have already been eliminated, cakes have collapsed and soufflés have been souffléed. First step: fifty bakes at a street fair. They ranged from wedding cakes trailing behind a wedding dress and Black Forest cake in the mist to cake hats and a rhubarb-and-basil cake, technically a vegetable cake, according to its maker.
One cake, an hour and a half, thirty degrees
But if we’re being strict, that street fair doesn’t really count. These cakes were brought from home, so the bakers probably spent hours, days or weeks working on them in their own familiar kitchens. Only in the second round, baking camp, does it get serious. In a mysterious baking factory, twenty contestants tasted the ingredients of a round pastry, had to decorate a little cake with chocolate under Robèrt’s watchful eye, put together a soufflé and, as the grand finale, make a chocolate Christmas cake in an hour and a half. The obstacle: it was unbearably hot, because the recordings were (of course) made during the hottest days of the year.
Save what you can
As ballet legend Sonia Gaskell taught her pupils: if you fall, girls, always make something of it. So what do you do when you already have one foot in the baking tent and your chocolate Christmas cake collapses at the last minute? Save whatever can be saved. Cake not baked through in the middle? Just scoop out the swampy centre and call it a wreath. Is your bake no longer holding its neat shape? Patch it up with chocolate cream and add edible Christmas trees as a form of damage control. Or call your melted chocolate pudding a ‘glacier cake’, with a nod to melting polar ice caps, and keep a poker face.
The most convincing example: a plastic surgeon who saved his Christmas goo with a fresh layer of whipped cream and some grated chocolate. No art, perhaps, because in his practice he can probably turn even the worst cellulite-covered bottoms into firm, shapely behinds. Unfortunately, it wasn’t good enough for an apron with his name on it.
Less sugar, less Janny
Another transformation: presenter Janny has lost a dramatic amount of weight. How does she keep her figure so slim when she has to taste fifty cakes in one day and face signature bakes and technical challenges over the next ten weeks? Janny watches her sugar intake. Several contestants were reprimanded for an overly sweet Christmas cake or too much sugar in their soufflé. The lesson for next week: the amount of sugar can be cut in half, if only to help Janny fit into her skinny jeans.
Highlight
Singing a song from Groningen, slightly off-key, while simultaneously spatulating a soufflé—now that’s something never before seen on Dutch television. Thank you, Ben!
Low point
Toe-curling embarrassment as real estate lawyer Warhsa tries to hide her melted mousse under a slice of cake. No one is falling for that.
Next episode
Finally, the tent! Something immediately goes wrong, as we saw in the preview. We’re also curious whether contestant Alina from Limburg will be subtitled from now on (think: Boer Zoekt Vrouw), and whether teacher Anouk will remain as cool-headed as she seems (her secret: yoga).
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