What Baking Competition Shows Can Teach You About Your Inner Critic
I adore the Great British Bake Off (GBBO). If you haven’t seen it, a bunch of amateur bakers come together every weekend for a few months to test their baking skills and burst into tears over puff pastry, all in the hopes in being declared the winner of a fancy glass cake stand. Sure, some contestants go on to write cookbooks and so on, but unlike American reality competition shows, they actually are there to make friends.
And yet when a cake doesn’t turn out as intended, the bakers have emotional meltdowns. On the few occasions where the judges declare something perfect, they’re over the moon.
Watching GBBO as a perfectionist is both bad and good. When a bust of Freddy Mercury rendered in cake has structural integrity issues, there are 2 possible perfectionist reactions. The first is to feel relieved that even the best bakers in Britain aren’t perfect, so maybe you don’t have to be either. The second is to see it as an example of why you shouldn’t try to extend your skills because you’ll fail miserably.
To be fair, some of the challenges on GBBO are downright ridiculous. A bread sculpture? Seriously? But those overly ambitious projects are there to help the judges eliminate someone because they’re all really good bakers.
Which brings us to Nailed It, an American baking competition show (on Netflix) where people who barely know how to bake try to recreate masterpieces that even the GBBO champions would balk at. It is a gloriously fun mess.
The contestants modify recipes, make substitutions, and completely forget steps. (In my experience, most bad cooks and bakers are those that improvise when they don’t really understand what they’re going for in the first place.) Their decorating skills are nonexistent to start with, so of course they’re going to have trouble with fondant and molding chocolate.
The judges (including Mr Chocolate himself, Jacques Torres) are just so damn nice about it all. They watch the bakers working and laugh with them, not at them. The actual judging involves a lot of giggling from everyone involved because the closest anyone gets to replicating the original is kinda, sorta, but not really.
Even so, the judges (especially Jacques Torres) find something nice to say. Maybe it tastes good, maybe they’re impressed at the candy the baker used in place of the fondant embellishments they were supposed to add. They’re just so proud that the contestants did the thing no matter how badly it turned out.
Where the judges on GBBO are kind, but often disappointed in and for the contestants, the Nailed It judges greet everything with affectionate amusement.
Your inner critic probably doesn’t sound just like GBBO’s Paul Hollywood, but it also completely does. It’s his job to point out all the mistakes and let the other judge say something encouraging. He pushes people to improve their skills, but isn’t a cheerleader.
Now imagine if your inner critic was more like Jacques Torres. Where Paul Hollywood expects you to succeed, Jacques Torres expects you to try your best. Jacques Torres doesn’t care if you mess up. In fact, he finds it adorable, and he admires you for trying in the first place.
If you haven’t watched these shows, check them out on Netflix. Then the next time your inner critic starts being a jerk, replace them with an imaginary Jacques Torres. Then tell us about it in the comments.