The team is SO excited that the holiday episodes are here!  First we kick off talking about the scrummy adventures of the week.  Meredith was under the weather so most of her week was "soup based" but she had some delicious ones.  Alison has a "sus" encounter with a bake sale purchase.  Sheldon and Alison are also obsessed with a national chain's Gingerbread smoothie. We discussed a couple of articles that were interesting. Sabirya discusses how proud it made her to showcase the flavors of her heritage.  Another article asks Prue why she feels there will NOT be a "tournament of champions" style bakeoff season.  Her reason made for some good conversation! On the episode this week, it's the cast of the BBC hit "It's a Sin".  Meredith has seen this show and she absolutely loves it.  The four people that joined - Olly, Nathaniel, Lydia, and Shaun.  We were not sure what to expect, but we all agreed by the end that this episode reenergized GBBO for us.  They were fantastic and all of the bakes were super!  Plus - what fun. The Signature - Leftover Pie.   Some similar ingredients were used for a few, but Olly delivered on a vegetarian delight.  Different approaches on the crust as well between short and flaky varieties.  All of the flavors ended up being very good, but an old nemesis showed up for one and a surprise in the accolades department! The technical brought the yule log home.  Again, amazing performances with the bakers making what would often end up with some disasters on a regular bakeoff episode almost look easy for these contestants! we do feel some assistance may have been given as they only had a short time to create the goods, but man they were good!   Finally in the showstopper - creating a Christmas tree from either meringue or biscuit.  Different approaches here from each, but what we saw delivered were some great bakes.  Just a few elements separated the field and Paul stated that he would eat every single one of the bakes again.  Now THAT is a compliment.  What a FANTASTIC episode!   Next episode we take on the "Festive" episode with some of the bakers from other seasons returning.  Then in the coming weeks, we dive into the AMERICAN bake off seasonal episodes that are airing now on the Roku channel (which is totally FREE to watch!)