After surviving another week under the big tent of the Great Canadian Baking Challenge, Oak Bay’s Jude Somers plans dessert tonight on CBC. Somers filmed the show as a contestant this summer.
Based on the British format, CBC show brings together 10 amateur bakers from across the country to compete in a series of themed culinary challenges as they celebrate their diverse backgrounds, families and communities. Each episode features three rounds including the Signature Bake, the Technical Bake and the Show Stopper. After the bakes are tasted and critiqued, the judges decide who is the week’s Star Baker and who goes home. The final three bakers compete for the Great Canadian Baking Show title.
More than three dozen friends of all ages came out for the event last week to cheer on the Oak Bay baker in the Sports View Lounge.
From sage to seaweed, each baker infused focaccia with flavours that showcased his or her individuality for the signature challenge.
Somers made it through with Italy shaped focaccia loaf topped with herbs, garlic and olives. She finished a solid second in the technical challenge – Montreal style bagels.
Somers seemed perfectly poised for the showstopper – a sweet bread centrepiece – with a plan to use her modelling skills honed in her career as an animator. She crafted “Jude’s Paint Pot” an edible sculpture of braided bread with a pot in the middle and paint brushes popping up. The filling was lemon curd, blueberry and raspberry with paint brush bristles of chocolate dough.
The bagels may have saved her when judges Bruno Feldeisen and Rochelle Adonis found unbaked dough in middle and “issues” with the flavour of her fillings.
Sabrina was named star baker and Sinclair was sent home. Watch the full bread episode here.
Somers invites residents to come along and watch again Nov. 15 as the Sportsview Lounge at Oak Bay Recreation Centre plans to have it on the big screen.
“I’ll be watching there with some friends but there’ll be room for others who might find it fun,” she said.
Dessert Week allows the top eight bakers to shine in a series of sweet challenges on Wednesday, Nov. 15 at 8 p.m. on CBC.
The bakers tackle elegant tarts, a delicate technical challenge and whip up meringue where the T.V. teaser shows Somers admitting she has to just “accept the soggy bottom”
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