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GKBO-Hayley-Madeleine

Pop CultureOctober 21, 2019

Meet the bakers of The Great Kiwi Bake Off 2019

GKBO-Hayley-Madeleine

Hold on to your sponge nubbins, New Zealand’s loveliest reality show Great Kiwi Bake Off  is back for a second serving. Before the show’s return on November 3, Tara Ward takes a sneak peek at 2019’s contestants. 

Lay me down on a soft bed of whipped cream and swab my forehead with a sausage roll, because Great Kiwi Bake Off is returning to our screens. The loveliest show in all the land has risen like the perfect souffle that it is, and come the first Sunday in November, a fresh batch of enthusiastic Kiwis will enter the GKBO tent to battle it out to become New Zealand’s best amateur baker.

When I say ‘battle’, I mean they’ll chuck some eggs and flour into a bowl, say nice things about their fellow competitors, and then present baking masterpieces to blow our tiny, sugar deprived minds. They’ll spend the next eight weeks waving their spongy flaps and keeping their buns tight, and honestly, life just got good again.

The Great Kiwi Bake Off’s Sue Fleischl, Hayley Sproull, Dean Brettschneider and Madeleine Sami

Just as Clayton took Scone Week to a new level with his futuristic ‘Scone Sandwich’, this year’s GKBO promises to be bigger and better than ever before. Episodes are now 90 minutes long, with three, yes, THREE different bakes. If that’s not enough to crack your chocolate log, hosts Madeleine Sami and Hayley Sproull return to spread joy throughout the baking tent, while FleischlSchneider team up to take another judgey stroll down the unctuous boulevard of baking hopes and dreams.

So who are the plucky Kiwis about to throw their bread hats into the GKBO ring? Who will be the salty top and the soggy bottom? Who will throw caution to the caramel wind, who will be stabbed in the back by chocolate shards, and who will crumble quicker than a biscuit birdhouse? Absolute scenes, I tell you, and they can’t come quick enough. Let’s meet these brave souls.

Ana (52, Wellington)

Ana Hetem from The Great Kiwi Bake Off.

Ana’s a life coach from Brazil, which means I love her already. She promises to bring some “laughs” to the competition, which is all good and well until you’re given one measly hour to transform a Victoria sponge into a tree branch, and then who’s laughing? Not me, friends. Not me.

Emma (19, Otorohanga)

Emma Barker from The Great Kiwi Bake Off.

Emma is this year’s youngest contestant, and doesn’t like following recipes. I love a baker who flies by the seat of their doughy pants, but will Emma’s lackadaisical approach be a recipe for success, or an unmitigated disaster? Only the pastry swans of the future know the truth.

Louise (26, Wellington)

Louise Ing from The Great Kiwi Bake Off.

Louise works as a building regulatory consultant, which means she’s skilled at paying attention to detail. If the judges try to confuse the bakers with a vague recipe, Louise is here to say “think again, FleischlSchneider”. Actually, Louise is here to “have fun and see how it goes”, which is pretty much the same thing where pineapple upside-down cakes are concerned.

Anna (28, Napier)

Anna Howley from The Great Kiwi Bake Off.

The hills are alive for Anna, who should go straight to the finals for being the only contestant to mention both Dame Julie Andrews and the word ‘moist’ in her baker bio. Full marks, Star Baker, Anna’s work here is done.

Trevor (47, Havelock North)

Trevor Hall from The Great Kiwi Bake Off.

Trevor is this year’s Jeff, sans the ice blue contacts. Trevor’s an “efficiency coach” which sounds both amazing and terrifying, so nobody tell him I submitted this piece three days past my deadline. Also calls himself a “cream doughnut”, which seems fine.

Donna (58, Milton)

Donna Ridings from The Great Kiwi Bake Off.

Health and safety advisor Donna reckons she can create anything from the contents of any pantry. She must be a magician, because my pantry contains half a loaf of mouldy bread, three stale pretzels and a tiny jar of mustard that expired in 2014. Hey Donna, I just met you and this is crazy, but here’s my number, so call me maybe.

Heather (24, Mount Linton Station)

Heather Andrew from The Great Kiwi Bake Off.

Southlander Heather’s ‘death row’ treat would be a jam doughnut, some chocolate self-saucing pudding and a banana chocolate paleo loaf. This sounds amazing, please lock me up and send me down ASAP.

Ethan (21, Christchurch)

Ethan Laby from The Great Kiwi Bake Off.

Accounting student Ethan hails from Christchurch, a city known for its fine dining. Ethan favours traditional baking, so you won’t get any crazy scone sandwich shenanigans here. Pure and simple is the way forward, and Ethan knows it, HearSay knows it, even Annabel’s broccoli coffee from last season knows it.

Anadil (25, Auckland)

Anadil Sameen from The Great Kiwi Bake Off.

Civil Engineer Anadil learned to bake by watching online videos. I learned to cut my kid’s fringe by watching YouTube, but the less we say about that, the better. Anyway, come Architectural Week this civil engineer should shine like warm pie covered in egg glaze, and I can’t wait to see Anadil’s full size recreation of the Auckland Harbour Bridge made from lolly cake and pastry twists.

Naomi (37, Auckland)

Naomi Toilalo from The Great Kiwi Bake Off.

Her baking hero is Paul Hollywood, she spent hours watching season one of GKBO, and reckons she’s “a bit nutty and gooey in the middle”. You’re among friends, Naomi, so may the forces of GKBO be with you.

Keep going!
A 2016 photo of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (Image: apo.co.nz)
A 2016 photo of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (Image: apo.co.nz)

Pop CultureOctober 21, 2019

A 12 year old reviews the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra

A 2016 photo of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (Image: apo.co.nz)
A 2016 photo of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (Image: apo.co.nz)

Madeleine Chapman took her piano-playing nephew Harper to see the orchestra for the first time. 

Madeleine: When I was very small, I used to sit in the hallway at home with my closest siblings and we would ask our brother Bernard, a teenager at the time, to play songs on the piano. We would name a song we liked from the radio, try to sing the melody, then Bernard would play something resembling it on the piano. He had taught himself how to play.

Nearly two decades later, I often find myself sitting on the floor next to a piano, asking Bernard’s son Harper to play a song. He’s 12 years old and taught himself how to play by watching Youtube tutorials. It’s strange and exciting to see a tween showing such a genuine interest in classical music, while also taking advantage of technology to help him learn (he now gets lessons from a real-life human too).

Being an aunty means desperately throwing money at any glimmer of interest your nieces and nephews have and trying to be a Cool Aunt. Once it became clear that Harper’s interest in music wasn’t a passing phase, I wanted to take him to see an orchestra play. Turns out, if you want to throw money somewhere, the orchestra will happily catch a lot of it.

On Thursday, Harper flew from Wellington to Auckland to see the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra perform Boléro as part of their New Zealand Herald Premier Series. Here’s his review.

Harper: My aunty gave me two Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra performances to choose from, Boléro and Zarathustra. She showed gave me a slight glimpse of what each orchestra sounded like. In the end I chose Boléro because the music sounded very harmonic and unpredictable. This is what I like. The other one had popular pieces from well known composers that would probably be played all the time. I wanted to hear something different.

I had never actually been to see a proper orchestra so it was quite the experience. The Auckland Town Hall was very grand. When we arrived, it was very crowded. All the people seemed very high class. A lot were past middle aged. My aunty pointed out a famous author but I hadn’t heard of him.

We took in snacks and drinks from the dairy across the road but when we sat down I didn’t see anyone else with any drinks. We had to be really quiet with them.

I thoroughly enjoyed how the orchestra hooked us in with their sweet harmonic sound. On the left they had high instruments playing in high octaves and on the right there were big, low instruments like drums and cellos. The piano and the conductor were in the middle. The conductor was very excited and jumping around a lot. It was a bit funny, he would make gestures at certain players to make them sound better.

APO and white hair (Image: Madeleine Chapman)

I listen to a lot of Erik Satie, Debussy, Chopin, and Rachmaninoff, and I like to play songs composed by them. But the way I play doesn’t connect to the listener or me as much as how they performed their songs.

My favorite part was Ravel’s “Piano Concerto in G Major, II; Adagio assai”. It was very touching, the pianist actually had a tear when he finished playing it. And another one I liked was “Boléro”. It was like a small flower blossoming, repeating over and over and getting louder and louder.

I really liked the cellists and the pianist. I liked how the cellists plucked at the strings, the violinists did that too. And I liked how the pianist connected with the music. He smiled in the upbeat parts and looked sad during the low parts.

The music was all great but there was just so much clapping that it kept disrupting my thoughts on the pieces. It felt like the audience clapped for like five minutes after one piece. I stopped and restarted clapping three times just because everyone was clapping for so long.

I liked that there were intervals but the songs went by really fast, like when you have fun and time goes by quickly. The show was two hours but it felt like less than one hour. People left quickly afterwards. If they had kept playing I would have stayed.

Overall, I was touched by the music. Sometimes I listen to music on my phone or the TV and then when I put my headphones on it sounds way nicer. Hearing it played live was a whole other level. I would definitely go again but I think they should put cushions on the seats.

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