Heel Holland Bakt talk #2: technique is (not) everything
Thought you had nicely pieced together the Christmas menu, only for Heel Holland Bakt to throw a spanner in the works: apparently, Christmas guests nowadays expect a real dessert cake, a cookie tree and a braided loaf at dinner. And that ‘puts some tension on the situation’, as we saw in the second episode.
Tricky episode: outside it is sweltering and sweat is pouring off the contestants in the tent. Getting into the Christmas spirit at temperatures above thirty degrees is not easy, although the contestants bravely do their best with ties, headbands and lacy outfits. First challenge: a cookie tower of at least thirty centimetres, followed by a Christmas bread star as the technical challenge and, for the finale, a dessert cake.
Put a loaf under your coat
To clear up all the confusion straight away: a dessert cake, this time the spectacle challenge of the competition, is actually a cake that you can eat for dessert. Logical, you would think, but nice that Robèrt explains it once more. In any case, the contestants got a bit of a helping hand, because Robèrt also saved Jeanette’s nougatine (‘don’t throw anything away!’) and gave Ingmar a tip about the amount of butter in his buttercream. The bread dough for the technical challenge was also ready-made, and when contestants got tangled up in the braiding, André smuggled the impossible Christmas bread star into the tent under his jacket as an example. Contestants from previous editions, who worked on daredevil delicacies using metal tubes, flowerpots and diesel generators, sat gritting their teeth on the bench.
Passion: 1, technique: 0
Patisserie is said to be a technical profession, in which you have to work very precisely. Measure twice, bake once, so to speak. Candidate Ingmar takes that very literally: in videos about his work, we see Excel files with detailed recipes, which Ingmar can apparently scale up and automatically recalculate when the proportions change. According to him, needing 4.13 eggs sometimes should not spoil the fun. The towering wind-turbine engineer takes it all rather precisely: ‘If I make a practice cake with a fifteen-centimetre base, I calculate what happens when it goes to twenty; well, area increases quadratically, so you have to scale it up by twenty divided by fifteen squared.’ Right.
When Robèrt makes some critical comments about his buttercream, that ‘does put some tension on the whole situation’, but Ingmar carries on undeterred with his mathematical approach to spritz biscuits and raspberry garnish. Unfortunately, the scientific approach costs him his place, as Ingmar is the first to leave the tent. Computer says: no.
Highlight
Prepared with love takes a little time. Absolutely not applicable to Heel Holland Bakt with its torturous deadlines, but anyway: Johan casually tosses his wisdom into the tent – and watches his vanilla cream split and the cookie tower collapse.
Low point
Who actually comes up with the names for those creations? Surely not the contestants themselves? This time: Pearamisu, Little Tree Party, Christmas with Kaatje, Happy Little Tree and a crocheted Christmas tree, involving neither a crochet hook nor a Christmas tree. Low point: purer than pure, chocolate beneath a mountain of foam, presented on… a pickup truck. With a record by André van Duin, or not? In short: confusing.
Next episode
The bakers continue with the December theme; next Sunday they will bake for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. In case you thought a tray of apple turnovers and doughnuts from a market stall would be enough: apparently not.
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