Liam Bakes, review: this charming Bake Off contestant has got his own series and it is a hoot
The Bake Off break-out continues. After Nadiya Hussain got her own programme, Liam Charles is the latest pin-up in TV’s flour power revolution to go it alone. And despite Prue Leith being particularly complimentary of his creations, he didn’t even make it to last year’s semi-final – which was the first to air on Channel 4. (Sophie Faldo, whose victory last year was famously pre-tweeted by Leith, may be wondering what happened to her commission.)
Anyway, Liam Bakes (Channel 4) is upon us and it’s a hoot. The key ingredient of all Charles’s recipes is charisma. This mystery product is not available in the shops, and cannot be faked. And Charles’s charm takes the form of much intricate arm-waving, styled somewhere between a prima ballerina and an airport runway controller.
Other essential ingredients? A light dusting of bluster adds flavour. “I feel like if you’re confident with mess, it’s art,” he reasoned. He said this after drizzling some icing over his “next-level eclairs” in the manner of Jackson Pollock. Another of Charles’s kitchen staples is lashings of cheeky self-regard. “These are pretty much me in a bake,” he advised of his self-styled cola choux. Similarly, with his salted nutter cake, a tottering cream-cladded stack of sponges, he said: “Being a slice of me, people can taste me.”
Fronted by a 21-year-old and set among the graffiti-daubed streets of Hackney, this was an accessible baking series aimed beyond the classic Middle England viewers. And to press the idea that anyone can bake, he enlisted novice helpers. An old school mate dropped by to work on the mega choccy cupcakes. And his sister was sous-chef in the creation of an Anglo-Jamaican mash-up he called a patty quiche. The result was sugary TV that is good for the soul.
