Well we are missing one of our faithful hosts this week as Alison is down with a bug. We missed her, but Meredith stepped up as the undersecretary of baking excellence and kept Sheldon straight on all things baking this week.  Sheldon actually did bake some bread for the first time this week, but made a rookie mistake... proofed it in a room that was a bit too cold.  Crust was great, crumb was dense though, but it was tasty. Meredith tries Tropical Smoothie Cafe on Alison and Sheldon's recommendation and she gives her assessment.  A very classic British dessert week as they are the master of the pudds.  We learn a lot about the history of the pudding from savory meat puddings in the 1400's to a "haggis" type meal a few centuries later... to finally introducing the sweet versions of puddings and introducing more ones that we may recognize such as fig, plum, spotted dick, and more.  A number of lessons in baking as well, from the importance of how ingredients are mixed to the timing of a souffle they covered a lot of techniques. The signature was pretty simple... "make a pudding" but make it unique.  We saw a mix of things like sticky toffee pudding ... but mixed with tropical fruit, apple plum pudding, and a unique peach and blueberry "boy bait". Edd had a rough go as did Jas, Ruth and Miranda shined. Technical pulled out a lemon souffle!  The bakers were staggered as you basically had 2 minutes to serve it to get it "fresh".  The bakers really struggled some... Miranda shined the most, and Jas pulled out a 2nd... ruth faltered and David... missed a major ingredient and totally blew it. In the showstopper - 3 puddings were on the table:  a crumble, a bread pudding, and a suet pudding. There were a lot of good attempts... but nobody crushed it. Edd's was a mess, Ruth overdid the ginger, Jas had some issues, as did David.   In the end, we did not agree with the judges.  We felt that they put too much weight on the technical and maybe prior weeks. Assessment: Challenges: 4-5 Bakers 2-3 Judges: 3 Learn 4-5 Hosts: 4 Overall: 3 - slightly stodgy