My Kitchen Rules Recap: Is This A Dagger I See Before Me?

It’s one of MKR’s great attractions, isn’t it: the way they make you think one team is the all-time worst bastards in history, but then as time goes on they subtly slip another team under the radar and then all of a sudden you realise OMG the bad guys were THESE guys, not THOSE guys, all along!

So it is this year. We all thought Josh and Austin were the lowest of the low — and don’t get me wrong, they are utter scum and probably literal serial killers. But then we got Ibby and Romel ruining the whole game with their cheating and we were like, huh, maybe they’re the worst. But THEN we have Piper, who doesn’t just act appallingly towards other teams, but towards HER OWN TEAMMATE. And we’re like, yep, Piper is somehow even worse than the four complete shitbags who came before her.

Anyway, today is the COLES CHALLENGE. The winning team will have their creation sold in Coles, giving shoppers all over Australia the chance to go, “Ugh, THIS is what won? Fucking hell.”

The teams arrive at Coles, where Pete and Colin, disappointingly, await. Colin informs them that they will be baking biscuits. “We’ve got great little smiles, why couldn’t you put us on a biscuit tin?” says Piper, ignoring the obvious answer: “because the biscuit tin would be sucked into the nether realms”. They won’t just be making biscuits: the biscuits will be just part of a larger dish, which means there’s every chance the best biscuit WON’T be the one chosen for sale in Coles.

The team that finishes last will have a penalty in the next cook: something like having to cook with one arm tied behind their back, or having to cook with a panicky seagull stapled to their forehead or something.

The teams set off to promote Coles with a run around the supermarket and multiple close-ups of branded products. Victor and G says they are making a “cherry kiss macaroon”, but I bet they’re actually making a macaron. I bet they, and the MKR producers, don’t know the difference.

John and Lisa are making a savoury biscuit, because as John says, “We’re not sweet people”. Good self-awareness there. Matt and Luke are making sweet potato crackers, which sounds utterly disgusting. Lyn and Sal are making brownies with dark chocolate, the worst kind of chocolate. Ibby and Romel are making a maple bacon and peanut butter biscuit, because they’re quite quite mad.

“I want to see my face on every single shelf in Coles,” says Romel, who has misunderstood the challenge: you don’t get to be on EVERY product in the shop. They’re not going to replace every piece of merchandise with MKR biscuits. There’s just no way he’ll be on every single shelf. It’s the dream of a madman.

Bianca wishes to make “naughty biscuits”. Sadly what she means by this is just putting a shitload of chocolate in them, rather than printing a nude photo of herself on every one.

Veronica and Piper are baking rocky road biscuits — but more importantly, what Piper is cooking up is BETRAYAL. Let’s not focus too much on the baking process here: this episode is not about baking, it is about the savage abuse of the bonds of friendship. It is about Piper and Veronica’s sickening abusive relationship. It is about the murky blackness of Piper’s heart.

Anyway Matt and Luke are mincing beef, whatever.

Fucking Curtis Stone, eh. Just…fuck off, Curtis Stone.

Colin tells Pete how excited he is to see all the teams cooking together for the first time. Colin has a very low threshold for excitement. Probably the alcohol. Pete is excited about how excited the winners will be over the excitement of having their biscuits on sale in Coles. There’s no doubt about it: both judges are very excited, and there’s no way to tell how much of this is due to nitrogen bubbles in their brains.

Andy and Ruby are making Peruvian cookies, because despite living in Australia they are unaware of the existence of any country that isn’t Peru. Apparently in Peru everyone eats biscuits a lot. Peru is a land of biscuits, where biscuits are central to the culture similar to cats in ancient Egypt. Nowhere else are biscuits revered so much as in Peru. Unlike everywhere else on earth, Peru is a place where biscuits are, in a nutshell, eaten.

Josh and Austin are also making biscuits but who gives a shit, you know?

There’s a weird bit where Josh asks whether humans are related to rhubarb. There is a lot of time to fill in this episode. There’s a bit of banter between Josh and Romel about bacon. A LOT of time to fill.

OH MY GOD! The cherry kiss macaroon that Victor and G are making is ACTUALLY A MACAROON! It’s not a macaron! They know the difference! It’s a miracle!

Give the prize to Victor and G right now. Just knowing the difference between a macaroon and a macaron means they deserve to win: they’re better than 99% of people who have ever appeared on Australian cooking shows.

John and Lisa are doing something gross with their gross savoury biscuit. Ugh.

Matt and Luke are cutting beef.

Josh is…I dunno.

Piper and Veronica are putting a well in the middle of their cookies, to contain the fathomless depths of evil that Piper pours into everything she does.

But Piper and Veronica are struggling to get everything done in time. Piper, ever the serpent in the garden, points out that they didn’t actually say “deep-fried banana” when naming their cookie, so they could actually just do regular banana instead. “No, I can do this,” insists Veronica, adding, “You always do this”. She DOES always do this. You’re right Veronica: Piper is fucked.

But Piper reacts with a significant look. By which I mean, a supremely bitchy look.

Meanwhile Lyn and Sal blah blah blah.

Meanwhile Romel’s hands are sore. No comment.

Biscuits seemed a lot more interesting on The Great British Bake-Off. As, to be fair, did the entire human race.

Bianca is positively orgasmic on how many different kinds of chocolate are going into her biscuit. She’s seemed so unenthusiastic about every other aspect of life, it’s a little bit unnerving to see how ecstatically she yelps and shudders over hazelnuts. It’s an eroto-religious experience for her.

Andy is going a bit mad as she cuts squares accompanied by Huey Lewis. Well played, music editor.

Josh explains what biscuits are like. You see, he eats a lot of biscuits, so if biscuits were even smaller, he could eat even more, so why not make the biscuits smaller? Eureka!

I mean… a LOT of time to fill.

Luke observes that he’s never seen a sweet potato cracker, yet he doesn’t stop to ask himself why that might be? He’s basically John Hammond at this point.

Piper continues to bully Veronica. “I think we should make an executive decision to just do normal bananas,” she says, snakily. Veronica has a vision and, like all true artists, is determined to make her vision a reality. She’s already got half the bananas cornflaked and she feels a duty to her public: cornflaked bananas they will get. It’s a fucken weird vision, I grant you: but a vision it is.

John and Lisa are serving biscuits with salmon. Perverts.

Time is running out, but that’s not of much importance because time is always running out and still everything is always fine.

Oh god, Andy is talking about much Peruvians like hundreds and thousands. Jesus.

The biscuits are finished. Everyone takes their biscuits out to the public in the shopping centre. Some of the public eat the biscuits. Some of them don’t. That is basically what happens. Riveting stuff.

Pete and Colin start eating. They like Pat and Bianca’s, so that whole chocolate orgasm thing has paid off.

They find Piper and Veronica’s weird, dry, too sweet and unpleasant. So Piper really put a lot of her personality into it. Pete pulls a hilarious face eating it. It’s awesome.

Pete and Colin try John and Lisa’s gross salmon shit. They like it because they’re freaks. “This is a serious biscuit,” says Pete, as if that’s a good thing.

They try Lyn and Sal’s brownie and yeah it’s good I guess.

Victor and G’s macaroon — NOT a macaron, well done boys! — is good too. “Quite a mature offering,” says Pete, who can’t stop sounding like a wanker in any setting.

Josh and Austin’s thingummabob is lovely, apparently: the devil oft has a pleasing face.

Andy and Ruby’s Peruvian cookie, from the country of Peru, the birthplace of cookies, where biscuits were invented: it’s OK.

Matt and Luke’s horrible sweet potato garbage: Colin thinks the cracker looks sad, but they don’t taste “too bad”. Just bad enough, then.

Ibby and Romel’s weird maple bacon peanut butter weirdness. Colin doesn’t like the look of it, and Colin is right: it’s gross.

Finally it’s over. All that’s left is the judgment, and the BETRAYAL.

The judges give their verdict, licking the butts of those who did good, spanking the butts of those who did bad. In the end, the public vote gives the grand prize of sticking your big weird faces on biscuit packets in Coles to Lyn and Sal. Hooray, I guess.

But what matters is the losers. The worst biscuits of all, of course, belong to Piper and Veronica. Piper’s first reaction to criticism is that the judges “didn’t understand” their cookie. Her second reaction is to mutter under her breath to Veronica, telling her off for not changing the recipe. Her third reaction is to say out loud that she wanted to change the recipe but that Piper “wanted to power on with the cornflakes, so we did”.

“How dare you blame Veronica, you botox-filled little snake,” says Josh, and that basically sums up the entire world’s reaction. Every other team is shocked at the way Piper keeps insisting on not only throwing Veronica under the bus, but reversing it back over her several times as well.

I mean Jesus Christ, can this woman not take responsibility for anything? Plus she has children, which is a terrifying thought. Throughout it all, Veronica just stands there looking sad like a budgie stuck under a downpipe, clearly cowed into submission by a lifetime of bullying at her “best friend’s” hands.

So yeah. Forget Josh and Austin, forget Ibby and Romel. This year’s scumbag is Piper. All the way.

Tune in tomorrow, when Piper will be a total bitch again.

LINKS! You want ’em, I got ’em. If you’d like to buy my books, here you go. If you would care to support my recapping and other projects via Patreon, here you go. And finally, why not come to my new show in the Melbourne Comedy Festival? Here you go.