Batten down the Battenburg

The winner of The Great British Bake Off, 31-year-old Frances Quinn, was handed over to Mr Kipling’s dwarfish minions yesterday evening to work in his underground cake catacombs.

In the traditional ceremony, Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood solemnly shaved Quinn’s head, before placing a perfectly crafted French Fancy on it and kissing her on both eyelids. She was then handed over to Kipling’s homunculi who ceremoniously loaded her into a sedan chair and carried her off to a cave near Burwash, East Sussex, where she will devote her existence entirely to thinking up new cakes.

Little is known about life in Kipling’s subterranean world, but it is understood that his baking factory is a huge cavern where his giant fondant-encased brain hovers above a cake production line staffed by a mix of past Bake Off winners and Big Brother housemates with Troglodytes continually reading selected chapters from 'Plain Tales From The Hills' and 'The Man Who Would Be King' over the PA system.

 

Paul Hollywood said: “Those who enter the Bake Off understand that this is their ultimate reward. Once they have embarked on the spiritual path of baking, high quality confectionary, poetry and short stories become the only absolutes.”