The Great British Bake Off's 4 biggest moments from the first ever Mexican week

The Great British Bake Off introduced a brand new theme week with a Mexican-themed episode - but how did the contestants fare with the challenges?

Mexican week meant grappling with some completely new concepts for most of the bakers, who started out with an enriched dough bread task, moved on to a taco technical, and created a tres leches celebration cake in the showstopper.

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Mexico arrives in the tent

We all know Bake Off loves a theme week, and this time, for the first time ever, they looked to Mexico for inspiration.

Many of the bakers confessed they were completely clueless when it came to Mexican baking, but the challenge played to some of their strengths - Syabira's adventurous flavours and Janusz's sense of design - while others simply overdid it with the chilli powder.

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However, the theme offered the chance to test some key skills in the form of enriched doughs, imaginative designs and punchy flavours.

With no bakers sent home last week and the threat of double elimination looming, it was all to bake for in this week's competition.

Steak splits the crowd

The technical task went savoury with steak tacos, which always throws up extra stumbling blocks for the contestants who must also prove their cooking skills.

But it wasn't just the spicing and seasoning of the dish that was the problem, as the bakers had the tricky task of cooking the steak to judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith's liking.

As Kevin put it: "Everyone's got an opinion on steak, and everyone thinks you've done it wrong."

He was correct, as Hollywood went to judge one particularly rare taco and said: "That cow is still mooing."

Syabira's sweetcorn love

Mexican food obviously meant one thing to Syabira, who took the theme of sweetcorn and ran with it.

Her enriched bread was formed into corn on the cob shapes and flavoured with sweetcorn, which certainly made a lot more sense than her showstopper.

Syabira's celebration cake was sweetcorn flavoured, contained kernels of corn, and even had a sweetcorn icing - which didn't quite make for a triumph.

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Making the cake left her in tears and Hollywood looked pretty close to joining her in the judging.

Leith said: "It's such a surprise, it tastes like sweetcorn. I mean, we ask you to be imaginative, well that is imaginative."

But Hollywood told her: "It's not for me, I'm afraid."

Incredible showstoppers

The Mexican theme brief was to create a colourful tres leches cake of at least four layers in the showstopper, with bakers turning in efforts worthy of any grand final.

Particularly beautiful were Sandro's, Maxy's and Janusz's brightly-coloured cakes that were more like works of art than something edible.

Maxy won praise from the judges for her cake tasting every bit as good as it looked, while Dawn's design might have been simple but was labelled "heaven" by Leith and even brought a twinkle to Hollywood's eye.

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

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