Will Harris gets himself in a tizz over baking

“See you? You need to have a word with yourself.” C, my Glaswegian colleague, has never been one to mince her words. She rolls her eyes at me and takes a swig of her bitter lemon. “It’s not my fault,” I splutter, attempting to drag on my coat with one hand while simultaneously draining half a pint of cider. “I would stay longer, but this is a genuine emergency.”

And then I am gone, out of the pub and pounding down the street. As the city blurs past, and the pavement disappears beneath my feet, I consider the logic of the situation; I have just left behind a work drinks party with that rarest and most elusive of things – a free bar – in order to sprint home in time for this week’s episode of The Great British Bake Off. This is not an exaggeration. I am literally gasping for breath, sweat pouring down my face sprinting home. Maybe I do need to have a word with myself.

“I am not a natural patissier, and yet somehow I can’t stay out of the kitchen”

Since it returned to our screens last month, #GBBO (as The Great British Bake Off is known to the Twitterati) has become an unhealthy highlight of my week. After 28 years of lacklustre viewing, I feel the BBC is finally offering something with everything I want from a television programme. By which I mean cakes! Pies! Mel and Sue! Women crying because they’ve managed to drop their cake and/or pie on the floor! A sexually-ambiguous, East London trendster with requisite floppy fringe! Quiche!

You can see my problem. Even away from the TV screen, I get far too
over-excited about #GBBO; far too over-wrought for what is, quite frankly,
just a gentler version of Masterchef interspersed with the odd piece to camera on the history of the macaroon.

If that weren’t bad enough, #GBBO has also made me act in unusual ways. I have started baking myself, which is great except for the fact that every recipe I attempt ends in disaster.

My cupcakes sank in the middle. My brownies got stuck in the pan. I slaved for hours on a show-stopping Black Forest gateau, presented it with great ceremony at a dinner party,
and immediately knocked a glass of Sauvignon Blanc over it (when I’d wanted it to be moist, that wasn’t what I had in mind). I am not, we should conclude from this, a natural patissier, and yet somehow I can’t stay out of the kitchen.

There’s something comforting about baking; not just in the end result, but in the whole process. Measuring the ingredients. Combining them one at a time. I think it’s something to do with following the recipe, sort of like wet Lego that you can eat at the end. Or cry over, depending on your hand-eye coordination.