The technical bake asked for six of what the brand-averse Beeb has to daintily call "chocolate teacakes": biscuit bases, marshmallow middles, chocolate coatings. Tunnock's teacakes, in other words. Tunnock's, Tunnock's, Tunnock's. Ooh, I could murder a box of Tunnock's right now actually. Delicious Tunnocky Tunnock's. Tunnock's.
Making Tunnock's teacakes (why would you make your own, when every box of Tunnock's is sweet, gooey perfection? Utter madness) is difficult – especially if you're in a tent in the middle of another scorching British summer, and it's currently 35C.
Step one: pour melted choc into rubber moulds, and wait for it to set. Except, at 35C, it doesn't. "We don't have room temperature," said James, staring into the middle distance like Paul Newman in The Towering Inferno.
This was Cathryn's final test, and she failed it. "Cathryn has chosen not to chill her domes," observed Mel or Sue saucily on the voiceover. Everyone else had twigged that, while refrigerating chocolate breaks a golden rule – it makes your Tunnock's dull when they should look polished – it was better than the alternative.
Cathryn demonstrated this when her sticky domes refused to pop out of their rubber casings. At the last minute she stuffed them in the freezer, but it was too late. Her Tunnock's were fatally discombobulated.
Lovely Cathryn, undone by even lovelier Tunnock's teacakes. What bitter irony. It was just as well that, with the competitive edge gone, the bakes in the showstopper round were such fun.
Mel told the bakers to "take the normal gingerbread house to another level", an instruction that was assumed not just to mean converting the gingerbread loft of a regular gingerbread house into a surprisingly roomy gingerbread en suite master bedroom. No, this was an opportunity for creativity to run amok.
Danny announced that her gingerbread Big Ben would be two feet tall. John, armed with pro-quality architectural drawings, was going to re-create the Colosseum from more than 100 pieces of gingerbread. Cathryn promised a chocolate, orange and gingerbread Buckingham Palace, while James was building a barn. A gingerbread barn.
Brendan's fantasy Disney birdhouse sounded conservative in comparison but, as usual, his wiles had put him five steps ahead. Almost every contestant had written gingerbread cheques their baking couldn't cash. As they hastily backtracked, Brendan pressed remorselessly on with his fine details.
James gathered his gingerbread struts and found his barn plan was impossible to build. Most of it would have to go. "It's a... derelict barn," he said, improvising, as Brendan put mascara on his fondant bluebirds.
Danny's tower looked like a pile of squashed cardboard boxes stuck together with porridge and left in the rain. She accidentally snapped one of the segments. Brendan looked up briefly before getting back to manicuring his coconut lawn.
Cathryn admitted she was "downsizing" Buck Pal. Brendan finished off the icing-rope fence.
But then, a surprise, as Paul and Mary valued the finished properties. Instead of simply drawing a thatchy pattern on the top of his gingerbread house, Brendan had tried to find a thatch-like foodstuff and ended up plastering bite-sized Shredded Wheat onto it. The result looked like a gingerbread house that shouldn't have Shredded Wheat stuck to it, but does. "I'm somewhat disappointed that we've got a... breakfast cereal as the tiles," said Mary, surveying this colossal baked faux pas.
Contestants and judges had been joking about how much better than the rest Brendan was, but – with James's casually brilliant derelict barn, complete with caramel cobwebs, winning him the star baker accolade – that gingerbread misjudgement means it's not so clear-cut.