‘The Great British Baking Show’ Quarterfinals Are “Caramel” Gold

The Great British Baking Show brings us “Caramel Week’ for the Season 17 quarterfinals, and for once, it feels like that’s the right place for it. Like “Chocolate Week" and “Dairy Week,” caramel is a wet ingredient and a fiddly one at that. Recently, the series seemed to have convinced itself that these wet weeks should go fourth, right after the Cake/Biscuit/Bread trio, but the truth was, that was too early, when there were still too many contestants that couldn’t handle it. The proper place for these weeks is towards the end, and swapping “Caramel Week” out to put it at the end so that “Audience Choice Week” could come early was the right move.

Now, Caramel is really just boiled sugar, and the different levels of caramel are made from the different lengths of time it cooks. Most of the time, the show doesn't differentiate between the different levels of Caramel, but perhaps because we saved it for the Top Five, this year’s a little different. The Signature, for example, focuses on golden syrup, which is not quite caramel, but sort of its cousin, if you will, like white chocolate is to chocolate.

Once again, it seems likely that Nigella is responsible for this change in tactic, or perhaps her arrival simply inspired the production to find new ways to tackle challenges. Either way, it's time to dive in.