Whoopsie! Uh oh! Jinkies! This certainly is a pickle. So, you know the show Great British Bake Off? Of course you do, it’s an American treasure. For years, we as a society have watched in delight as Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood, and Prue whats-her-name judge amateur contestants as they attempt various baking challenges. There is the signature, the technical, and of course, the creme de la creme, the showstopper challenge. Today, we will be profiling two enormous GBBO fans who have become so enamored with the show that they have begun to attempt their own challenges as a way to strengthen their relationship. Unfortunately, their first attempt at a showstopper went up in flames, both literally and metaphorically.

“I’m not sure exactly what happened,” explained one half of the mega-fan couple, Stacy. “I was simply pouring the caramel on top of the cake we had spent hours working on when all of a sudden my phone started ringing. I was so surprised to be receiving a call that I immediately dropped what I was doing, flinging caramel everywhere. Next thing I knew, Keith was running into the room holding a fire alarm in his hand, beckoning to the small fire that had started on the stove.”

“Yeah I kind of panicked,” Keith told us outside the smoldering remains of their home, covered in a blanket and sipping water from a plastic cup. “I had never seen the smoke alarm go off before and I didn’t know what to do, so I took it off the wall and went to show it to Stacy. That’s when I saw the fire spreading and I knew our cake, and more importantly our home, was in trouble. Big trouble.”

Trouble indeed. According to the firefighters we spoke with, this was one of the worst baking-related incidents they had seen in years. “We get these types of calls all of the time,” one of them told me in a quick sidebar. “Everyone thinks they can make the perfect bake like the people they see on TV. I’ll tell you right now, with all of the fires I’ve put out, most people definitely can’t.”

“Overall I would say it was a mistake to try the showstopper first,” Stacy told us later at the hospital. “Once the house is rebuilt and the PTSD of this whole affair wears off, maybe we’ll try a signature or even a technical, but not a showstopper.”

Whatever works for them, I suppose.