Although to be fair, British TV cooks have a history of clunking cultural appropriation. Jamie Oliver, for instance, is paella non grata in Spain after his inauthentic recipe.

In a small jug, mix the cocoa powder, vanilla, red food colouring and hot water together to form a paste. Add this to the bowl and mix well until combined. Since being a contestant on series 8 of GBBO, Liam has been busy being a judge on Junior Bake Off and presenting Bake Off: The Professionals. Cheeky Treats is full of fun ideas and tip-top creations.It is everything else that is wrong. Just look at the challenges, which increasingly feel as though they belong in a show called The Great British Cook Off. So far in this series they have had to make pizza, tacos (with steak, refried beans and guacamole fillings) and spring rolls (consisting of a ridiculous 29 ingredients.) The spring rolls this week also required a dipping sauce, whose ingredient quantities weren’t specified by Prue Leith’s instructions – leaving the bakers to freewheel combinations of fish oil, soy sauce and other flavourings. Watching it, you genuinely had to remind yourself: this is a baking competition! For Halloween week, they had to make an edible hanging lantern, which also had to double up as a piñata. Why? Here’s the thing. Even if the bakers’ creations are disappointing, Bake Off has never been a place to tear people down. It’s Bake Off! A programme that has been all about celebrating the good rather than dwelling on the bad. If you want harsh critiques, there are plenty of other shows that already cater for you. But this is nothing compared with what has been going on in the showstoppers. The concepts for this challenge have been getting increasingly wild for years, but now it feels as if the production team are seeing how far they can take it for a bet. For cake week, the bakers had to make a 3D replica of a house they once lived in. For pastry week, they were yet again having to do three-dimensional design, with pie scenes inspired by their favourite nursery rhyme or childhood story. For Halloween week (which aired two weeks before Halloween for no reason), they had to make an edible hanging lantern, which had to double up as a piñata. Why?

And yet Bake Off has long been a proving ground for a kinder, more diverse and inclusive Britain. Think of Mary Berry reduced to happy tears after Nadiya Hussain won Bake Off in 2014, despite the nasty Islamophobic jibe the Daily Mail columnist Amanda Platell wrote about the diversity of the show’s contestants, including the Bangladeshi-heritage national treasure. Spoon the remaining icing into the piping bag fitted with a medium closed star nozzle and pipe 8 rosettes around the top edge of the cake. But more about the orangutan. “He’s saying: ‘This is my home. Preserve it’,” says Syabira. I don’t pretend to have the baking expertise of judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith, but surely a talking sponge-based ape should stop not just a show but any human doing anything – except standing with their amazed cake hole open. And that is why, in my view, Syabira is a worthy winner. Recipes are organised by type. There are 25 baker's signature bake recipes which do not seem to have been 'dumbed down'. (It would have been good if the bakers could have been named). In addition, there are 7 judge's recipes and 14 step-by-step guides to creating showstoppers. The remainder is contributed by members of the bake-off team and seems to belong to the same company. Assemble the cake. Remove one bowl of the icing from the fridge. Using a large, serrated knife, level the sponges, keeping any offcuts for the decoration. Slice each sponge in half horizontally so you have 6 thin sponges. Smear a little of the icing onto the middle of a cake plate or cake stand and top with the first sponge.

Series 11

More striking is the fact that the three finalists are immigrants to this often mean-spirited polity. Abdul is Pakistani, Syabira made a first-week cake in the form of her native Malaysian home, while Sandro was born in Angola and now lives in London’s East End. He never imagined that someone like him would get to present his stuff on the gingham altar. Review:"A staple of any baker's recipe collection, this book is absolutely fantastic for anyone with even a passing interest in baking as the recipes are simple and very easy to follow. Perfect for someone with a busy life or not much time as almost all the recipes use the one bowl method. Everything I've tried has turned out great and I absolutely swear by the basic traybake recipe - it's amazing! There is a variety of recipes including simple layered cakes, biscuits, cheesecakes and even some more challenging recipes for more adventurous bakers like a Battenburg. If you know your way around the kitchen, why not try out your bakes on family and friends? If they don't have a sweet tooth, there are plenty of savoury recipes, too.

Her use of flavours has been exceptional, defying the judge’s initial expectations. And then there are her showstoppers! I’m still thinking about her double helix from last week. Not just because of the design, but because she dropped little facts about it while assembling the layers, because the concepts were so well thought through: “If you untangle your genetic structure, which is your helix, you will have 67 billion miles of DNA,” she said. “How mad is that?”

The best Great British Bake Off cookbooks

Using half of the remaining icing, spread a second thin, even layer over the top of the cake and smooth it with a palette knife.