The Great British Bake-Off 2016: Tears and triumphs as judges get tough on new bakers

There were baking disasters, tears and the pre-requisite culinary inspired innuendo on the first episode of The Great British Bake Off as the new contestants faced the judges for the first time.

Baking legends Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry revealed they have upped the ante, revealing that they intend to get tough on anyone who presents them with a soggy bottom or a crumbly cream horn.

Sporting a new hair-do, Mary Berry looked more angelic than ever. But co-presenter Hollywood had a distinctly gleeful glint in his eye as he announced that the bakers will go "back to basics", with simpler tasks. But, he added, the judging will be tougher than ever, as the new series aims to raise the baking bar.

"Over the years our challenges have got a little bit more difficult," he explained. "What we want to do is take it back to basics a little bit. But that doesn't mean that the judging is going to get any easier. In fact, it's going to get harder."

The 50-year-old showed he meant business as he put the new batch of bakers to the test with lemon drizzle cake, jaffa cakes and mirror-glazed bakes. The bakers were already cracking under the pressure of cake week and in a Bake-Off first, four of them binned their disastrous first attempts and started again.

After her genoese cakes failed to rise, Candice, a 31-year-old PE teacher, hurled them at the wall of the Bake Off tent in disgust, complaining: "They're like rubber."

Tom, who works for the Royal Society of Arts, was left with a soggy cake mixture after he failed to mix in the flour properly. Starting from scratch again he said: "Bits of it were soufflé, other bits were pancake."

Welsh hairdresser Louise Williams, 46, fought back tears as Hollywood told her that her cake was 'great inside, terrible outside'.

It was all too much for 23-year-old teaching assistant Benjamina, who had a meltdown over her runny mixture. Comic co-presenter Sue Perkins felt compelled to give her a pep talk as she started over again. "Every second spent crying is a second less to show how good you are at baking," she advised the newbie

Church pastor Lee Banfield's bake-off dreams were over before they started after a disagreement over whether his jaffa cakes qualified as jaffa cakes. Paul and Mary declared that his offering didn't make the grade because the chocolate topping failed to reach the sides.

His lemon drizzle cake also failed to impress after another false start, with Paul describing it as "awful". If that wasn't enough, the 67-year-old contestant was then pulled up for his lacklustre mirror cake which was deemed to 'basic' to be a showstopper.

The first baker to be booted off the show, former builder-turned-theologist Banfield said he would never make Jaffa Cakes again. "I'm disappointed to be the first off but I've always enjoyed baking and at church I do regular baking demonstrations. I won't show the congregation how to make a Jaffa cake, I am not going to repeat that experience – I'll buy them a pack instead," he added.

While Selsai won the technical challenge with his perfect jaffa cakes, Jane was crowned the first star baker of the series in honour of her sumptuous bakes.

Meanwhile, Twitter went into a Bake Off frenzy as fans of the popular show tuned in to meet the new baking stars battling it out to become this year's bake off champion.