Season 8
8 episodes
44 min. per episode
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Aspiring bakers face fierce competition and personal challenges, blending creativity and resilience in a deliciously high-stakes showdown.
Episodes
The ten new home bakers are introduced to competition life in the tent with what is the tradition of the first week, cakes. They are given two hours to complete the signature, which is for each to make a love cake, the highlights of which are some sort of nut flour, and a wide variety of spices and aromatics. They are also given two hours to complete the technical, of which only someone from Winnipeg would have heard: a shmoo cake. The bakers have to be careful in the dichotomy of the angel food cake base against the addition of nuts (pecans), whipped cream, and caramel, the weight and fat contained in such ingredients which could easily deflate the air incorporated into the beating of the egg whites. And they are given double the time of fours hours to complete the showstopper, which is for each to make a split cake. It is characterized by the interior of the cake being even more decorated than the exterior. The bakers have to weigh the pros and cons of splitting the cake before or after decorating the exterior. After these three challenges, Ann and Alan make the announcements of the first star baker and the first competitor to leave the tent for the season.
It's Cookie Week once again, and the nine remaining bakers start with a signature of ten Stuffed Cookies, the technical is a dozen elevated Pink Raspberry Wafer cookies, finally the showstopper is a Cookie Map with two different cookies.
The bakers are swapping in their usual sugar for salt (and as one baker remarks a lot of garlic) as a primary ingredient in the show's first ever Savoury Week. In the two hour signature and three and half hour showstopper, they will each be preparing a pastry filled ethnic classic: a dozen samosas (with a side condiment) and a wellington, respectively. They are not limited to the traditional fillings, but both challenges have the same potential problem in excessive moisture in the filling potentially sogging out the pastry, which for the latter can possibly be prevented by a barrier between the primary filling and the pastry. The wellington also has the issue of often different cooking times for the filling and for the pastry themselves. In both challenges, the bakers are not restricted to the classic fillings but Bruno and Kyla are looking for the hallmarks of what they know a samosa and a wellington to be. And for the two and a half hour technical, they will each be making eight cream cheese garlic buns, best known as Korean street food. Beyond some bakers not knowing what they are, they all have the additional challenge of doing something they've probably never done, namely make their own cream cheese.
Everyone in the tent is hyped up on caffeine in the show's first ever Coffee and Tea Week. They are going the coffee route for the signature in having two hours for each to make a tiramisu. While Bruno and Kyla are expecting that punch of coffee flavor, they are allowing the bakers greater breadth on other flavors incorporated than what may be in a traditional tiramisu. They are switching to tea for the two hour technical in Kyla asking them each to make a South African melktert, translated as milk tart. While this custard filled tart does not traditionally contain tea, the pared down recipe that Kyla provides them contains a custard layer flavored with a tea of South Africa, rooibos. And they don't even need to use either coffee or tea for the three and three-quarter hour showstopper as they are each preparing a Swedish fika, which is not a baked good but rather a custom of what North Americans would consider an elevated coffee break or tea party. Each baker must prepare a set of at least three items, a cake component, a biscuit or cookie component, and a bread roll component.
The show is experiencing another first, namely the first ever Arts and Crafts Week, where the focus will be combining baking and crafting. They will have two and quarter hours for the signature, each to make a foccacia painting, foccacia their canvass, the toppings their paint. They have to be careful not to overload their palette which may weigh down what is supposed to be the airy and pillowy end product. They will have two and half hours for the technical, each to make an origami entremet. The origami element is the frame to mold the entremet, the folding and thus shape of the mold specified by Kyla in the recipe. And they will have four hours for the showstopper, each to make a cartoon cake. The primary characteristic of such is to place black outlines strategically to make the cake look two-dimensional.
A group of amateur Canadian bakers are convened for a baking competition. There is a theme to each week's competition, generally in the vein of the type of goods the competitors are to bake.