It's truly fascinating how certain memories stick with us. Take, for instance, the creation of the Bread Lion in the 2015 Bake Off's bread week. Paul Jagger crafted this magnificent piece out of three kinds of dough and it emerged from the oven as an Aslanesque beauty. Wise, benevolent yet with a hint of danger, and Hollywood himself called it "one of the best things I've seen in bread, ever". Yet, Jagger didn't receive the star baker title or even a Hollywood handshake. Since then, I've known no true peace.

Reverence for Bakers in the Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking World

When it comes to Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking, I approach it with a certain seriousness. These bakers, who can transform raw ingredients into delicious creations like light, fluffy cakes with meringue or transform various elements into intricate designs like a writhing Slytherin snake or a hyperrealistic stallion-head Patronus, deserve to be revered as gods. Just think of the detail in a cake with a Gryffindor scarf knitted out of icing or rice paper and malted mousse lilies seemingly levitating in front of a white horse. It's hard not to believe that divine forces are at work.

The Opening Round

In the opening round, 18 strangers are divided into pairs. Usually, one is a baker-type and the other a pastry chef-type. They are given six hours to create a 2ft-high showstopper based on the Harry Potter wizarding world. Some of the creations are truly astonishing, like popcorn and mousse-filled snitches, peanut butter and salted caramel-stuffed spiders, and shiny hand-tempered chocolate bodies. The whole process is overseen by the Weasley twins, James and Oliver Phelps, who are incredibly nice. But as you watch, their identicalness becomes more remarkable. One couple, Zoe and Jordan, are incorporating technology into their showstopper, a celebration of Hufflepuff house with a badger cake on top of an evocation of Platform 9¾ and surrounded by apple crumble trunks. They even have a plan in case it doesn't work - they'll throw the edible Hogwarts invitation letters at the judges!

The Judges and the Outcome

The judges, Carla Hall and Jozef Youssef, are well-known in the US cooking show circuit and are culinary forces to be reckoned with. They have the difficult task of deciding who earns a ticket for the Hogwarts Express and who "hasn't done quite enough". One result in particular has pushed the Bread Lion off my list of raging injustices. The amount of talent, patience, and perfectionism shown by these bakers makes me weep great ganache tears and vow to do better in 2025. Just better in all aspects.