'The Great British Bake Off': People can't handle the tension of pastry week

It’s always tense in The Great British Bake Off tent, but pastry week upped the ante with the most nail-biting episode yet.

The bakers worked their way through tricky tasks to make pasties and eclairs, culminating in an incredibly tough showstopper that saw them build pastry cages to house delicate tarts.

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Even watching the challenge was a white-knuckle experience, but the contestants looked too terrified to even breathe near their pastry cages – and it ended in disaster for two of them, with their structures collapsing in a heap of crumbs.

Linda’s yellow and red striped cage and Mark’s bottle-shaped build were the showstopper casualties, leaving viewers devastated for them as their chances at acing the task crumbled.

Both had to present a few broken pieces of their cages lying across the tarts they’d made, with judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith making it clear that they had lost some serious points because of their pastry issues and put themselves in the danger zone for being voted out.

In fact, viewers weren’t quite convinced of how necessary a pastry cage for a tart even was.

However, Peter, Laura, Hermine, Lottie and Dave all managed to hold their nerve and presented some seriously impressive pastry builds.

Laura in particular won praise for her intricate pastry case and beautifully-decorated key lime pie, with Hollywood telling her she had excelled herself.

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This week’s technical challenge was not for the faint-hearted, either.

Eclairs were on the menu, but the bakers had a difficult time getting the fillings to stay in their choux buns and there was stiff competition for last place.

However, although quite a few contestants struggled with their pasties, there were triumphs from Lottie with a toad in the hole version, Hermine’s tagine-inspired bake, and a near-perfect cheese and onion pasty from Laura.

The Great British Bake Off continues on Tuesdays at 8pm on Channel 4.