'The Great British Baking Show' Season 8, Episode 8 Recap: Dessert Week

It's Top 5 Week on The Great British Baking Show Season 8 (or Series 11 if you prefer). It's the week the series has unofficially dubbed the quarter-finals since the show's second series (the one that's never aired over here.) Fittingly, it's Dessert Week, another show staple that's been a theme nearly every season since that second series as well. Only Season 5 (Series 8), the first one out of the gate after moving from the BBC to Channel 4, skipped doing a Dessert round.

Dessert used to be one of the easier themes for the contestants. Though its first appearance was as the "quarter-final" challenge in Series 2, after that, it moved down the scheduled, coming as early as Week 3 back before the Cake-Biscuit-Bread triumvirate became GBBO's undisputed set of opening challenges. It's the first time since moving to Channel 4 that it's arrived so late in the game and considering it affords Matt Lucas the excuse to do his best impersonation of a Bakewell tart, I'd say it's not a moment too soon.

One reason Dessert Week used to come so early is that it's mostly a mix of cakes and tarts, with the occasional creme caramel/creme brulee type flights of fancy. This is the world of the tiramisu, the Spanische Windtorte, roulades, and the ice cream bombe. (Yes, this was also the theme the week of the famous Bingate Baked Alaskas.) This season's Signature starts with cheesecake, the first time the show has done them since the year Nadiya won. A dozen mini cheesecakes, any flavor, with any type of scratch-made bases. With all our remaining contestants having been Star Baker this season (a first!), let's see who succeeds when it comes to my all-time favorite dessert. As always, the Signature is judged on a pass/fail metric.