With the semi-finals here, the Bake Off tent has gone from bubbly and fun to deadly silent. As the remaining quartet wait to be simmered down to a trio, it’s no wonder the bakers seem to be crumbling under the GBBO pressure cooker: Jane says she spends her nights tossing and turning thinking about bakes and Selasi is having dreams of baking in the final in a dress. Unfortunately, there is no cross-dressing to be seen in the semis, but even without the extra wardrobe effort to manage, patisserie week is no piece of cake. Perhaps I spoke too early when drooling over the fabuleuse quality of last week, because this week the bakers are definitely slipping – incompréhensible!

The signature asks for 24 savoury palmiers in two flavours, s’il vous plait. Even mere ‘soggy’ and ‘over-filled’, as triggered by Jane and Candice’s bakes, are disappointing comments at the semi-final stage, but they pale in comparison to what Selasi faces. Granted, the sun-dried tomato, onion, pepper, and Parmesan, and salmon, spinach and mushroom palmiers not only sound mouth-watering but are also recognised as such by the judges. But, even clever flavourings cannot season away the unacceptability of ‘raw’ and ‘untidy’ (and not just ‘a bit informal’).

There are some fine antics fit for a star baker as well, though: Andrew’s goat’s-cheesy elephant ears and herby treble clefs with fresh herbs may be a bit too crispy and not quite buttery enough, but it doesn’t stop Paul from declaring his love for the ginger Cantab’s palmiers. What makes the feat extra impressive is how Andrew gets away with re-starting the notoriously time-consuming puff pastry an hour into the challenge. Oh how I’d like to puff his pastry…

The technical moves further into the high-end range of patisserie with the elusive savarin: in Jane’s words, a “round yeasty cake thing”, or in more educated terms, a yeasted cake featuring soaked-through syrup and caramel, chocolate, crème Chantilly, and fruit decorations. There is a blast from the past as Andrew and Jane face their nemesis: caramel. While Andrew overcomes his anatomically, um, interesting ‘jousting’ pole from last week, Jane’s attempts at caramel end up crystallising time after time. Now that says something of the quality of the rest of her savarin as it nevertheless becomes king of the savarin hill. Poor Selasi’s attempt at French finesse, on the other hand, turns out inconsistent in all aspects, with even – shock horror – the orange membrane left in. The performance has the judges looking like they would happily chop off a membrane of a more human form – and in my humble opinion, quite justifiably so.

The showstopper ventures into marathon territory, with a formidable four and a half hours to produce 36 fondant fancies in two flavours. As if it wasn’t already enough of a show-stopping challenge to achieve ultimate gloss, smoothness, and flat sides multiple times over, in the Real World the sponge is made the day before to allow for cooling and setting. However, in the apparently not-so-real-world of the Bake Off tent, the sponge has to come straight out of the oven and into the decoration process.

My chance to scream out a cinematographic ‘noooo’ is provided by Jane. A fondant fancy 101, a smooth fondant finish requires a base of buttercream all over the sponge, but Jane happily only covers the tops of her bakes in an effort to save time when she is not even running late – a real shame, as the pistachio and raspberry and lemon curd fancies would really tickle my fondant fancy if they didn’t come out looking like multi-coloured models of acne with every single crumb shining through the fondant.

Candice, thank goodness, brings some consolation to the tent with her chocolate praline and almond liqueur soaked cherry bakewell fancies. As always, she adds her trademark not-so-little extra, this time with a hidden cherry in the bakewell fancies. What’s more, she proves wrong Mary’s doubts about said cherry bleeding all over the sponge.

For a semi-final, the ingredients of patisserie week include disappointing doses of faltering, and I’m left crossing my fingers for more finesse in the final. Okay, perhaps I’m being overly harsh, as nothing would stop me from tucking into Selasi’s palmiers and enjoying them with, quite literally, raw pleasure…