Being (Imaginatively) on the Great British Baking Show

          Making a black-bottom banana cream pie for lunch with friends, I plunged head-first into imaginary participation in the Great British Baking Show.

            I was making a vanilla custard for the cream layer because that's what my recipe called for, but now I could hear Mary, one of the two judges on the show, saying to one of my imaginary fellow contestants, "Andy, tell us what you're doing for your banana cream pie," and he says, "I'm using a brandy and coffee custard over a maple-infused chocolate ganache." Another contestant says she is making a passion fruit and pineapple custard to continue the tropical theme suggested by the banana. I began to think my vanilla custard unimaginative. When Mary and Paul, the other judge, ask me about my pie, Paul says, "I love the banana flavor. Are you sure it'll compete well with the strong chocolate ganache of your filling?" challenging my judgement with steel-blue eyes.

            "It worked at home," I say, lamely, just like the bakers on the show, and he says, "Good luck."

             "What we're looking for," I heard Paul say as I crushed chocolate wafers with the rolling pin for my crust, "is a delicate crust, perfectly baked, without a hint of sogginess, and a cream filling of flavors that perfectly complement the bananas. Everything beautifully decorated."

            My crust, I thought, pressing its top evenly around the pie plate, looked good, and my bananas were at perfect ripeness, but I worried as I poured the custard over the banana-filled chocolate-black crust. "The custard is overcooked," I heard Paul say with his straightforward, pull-no-punches judgement.

            But then Mary steps in with her usual tact. "The taste is fantastic," she says, smiling at me apologetically. "But I'm afraid the custard is a bit overcooked."

            I looked briefly at the imaginary TV camera as I dribbled chocolate ganache lines over the custard and said, worriedly, "I think I got the ganache too thick. It's not flowing off the spoon very easily." I drew a toothpick through the lines of ganache, creating a marbleized pattern. Looking at it critically, I saw that the spacing between rows wasn't even. I had seen Great British Baking Show contestants covering mistakes (cracks in the cake, unevenly baked eclairs), so I laid a row of bananas in the too-big spaces between rows of ganache, turning the mistake into a design element.

            My ride to the luncheon would be here in twenty minutes. "Twenty minutes, bakers," I heard the show's host, Sue Perkins, calling. "You have twenty minutes before Paul and Mary go bananas." Like the TV bakers, I felt the tension.

            I filled my pastry bag with whipped cream and tried one cake-decorating tip after another, hearing Mary say, gently, to a contestant on one of the shows, "We asked for rosettes, and we got shells." I piped rosettes around the edge of my pie. Paul: "The rosettes are not perfect. Some are bigger than others," so I squeezed more whipped cream on top of too-small rosettes.

            The luncheon was a meeting of six friends who get together monthly to read poetry. This time we read and discussed Marge Piercy's poetry, then had lunch (homemade pizza and salad). Then we read some more of Piercy's poems. Then we went back to the table for dessert.

            "How beautiful!" my own judges (pie eaters) exclaimed as I carried the pie in. 

They admired its black marbled design and white rosette border on the cream-yellow, banana-slice-decorated filling.

            On the Great British Baking Show, contestants always look worried as Paul and Mary cut into their creations. Will it have turned out right? I had the same qualms. I sliced the pie – so far so good – but had a hard time working my spatula under the crust. I worried it had burned, but it hadn't. The custard, not being undercooked, stayed in place when I transferred a piece of pie to a plate. The pie looked as good on the plate as it did in the pie pan. ("Nice layers," Paul and Mary whispered in my ear.)

            "This is delicious," my judges said, biting into their pie.

            "Star baker!" someone pronounced.

            I'm not sure Paul and Mary would have agreed, but I also don't think I would have been told not to return. On the contrary, I was asked to bring dessert next month. "In fact," my friends and baking show judges said, "you can always bring the desserts."

            As far as I'm concerned, that's as good as star baker.