Why is TV obsessed with baking?

If there's a better way to spend a chilly evening than supine on the sofa, tub of M&S Extremely Chocolatey Mini Bites balanced on one's gently wobbling stomach, laughing hard at Kirstie Allsopp's buns, then I demand to hear it.

With the country's appetite for onscreen baking showing no sign of satiation, her new series, Kirstie's Handmade Britain – the first episode of which sees the erstwhile property guru attempt to make scones, eclairs and fruit cake – Allsopp is leaping into a rather packed patisserie.

There's lovely Lorraine Pascale, a former model with a nifty line in modish mojito genoises, Eric Lanlard, a floppy-fringed Frenchman who lists Brooklyn Beckham's first birthday cake and a "global fanbase" on his CV, and of course, AGA-hearted Mary Berry and her evil sidekick Paul Hollywood, the king and queen of the greatest baking show of all, The Great British Bake Off.

You can't get a soggy-bottomed tart or a manky macaroon past these two, and we can't get enough: the recent series final attracted more than 5 million viewers. Perhaps it's no surprise, in these overcooked times, that we take such comfort in cupcakes – especially with TV taking the hard work out of baking. With Kirstie in the kitchen, the nation may as well hang up its oven gloves because, as I often remark through a mouthful of Kipling crumbs, it's far easier to see the strange beauty of a collapsing clafoutis through the magnifying prism of a television screen.

But given the most interesting bit of baking is in the eating – the thrill of squeezing an enormous mixing spoon of buttery cake batter into your gob, the bits that "just fell off" while cutting the brownies – why are we all so transfixed by it on the telly? Which takes us back, perhaps inevitably, to Kirstie's buns. Allsopp's efforts do indeed, as she sadly observes, look like "dog poo". And if I said I took no pleasure in this judgment, I would be lying.

One of the reasons so many confident cooks crumble at the first sniff of vanilla essence is that baking takes no prisoners. You can either do it, or you can't – and the smallest of mistakes can result in gloriously spectacular failure that makes great viewing for the voyeuristic sofa chef. We all know what a burnt scone or a sunken sponge looks like, even if, to us, Betty Crocker's just that blonde one off Mad Men.

Who didn't rub their hands in glee as Sue Perkins jauntily explained that the Bake Off contestants' next challenge would be foccacia ("notoriously difficult to make correctly")? Or tut at Ian's decision not to add any more liquid to his dough, which Paul Hollwood seized upon like a whippet on a sausage roll, announcing triumphantly "Someone's not been following my recipe!". No wonder poor independent-minded Ian got booted off at the end of the episode.

Of course, this sweet-toothed schadenfreude doesn't explain the popularity of beautiful bakers such as Lorraine and Eric. The pleasure here is more of an escapist nature: there's a certain thrill in watching Lorraine's elegant fingers icing her fondant fancies, even as we tuck into an Exceedingly Good imitation. (It's been claimed some people regard these shows as a guilt-free way to indulge their love of cakes, but that sounds to me like trying to fight an alcohol problem with re-runs of Keith Floyd.)

The masterful way that Eric handles a whisk, meanwhile, imbues me with a sense of quiet satisfaction, and the brief belief that I too could pronounce mille feuille correctly, if I ever turned off the television for long enough to hold a conversation. In fact, in terms of self-satisfaction, these shows really do take the biscuit. Baking for real would surely only lead to disappointment.

So why, after so many years languishing in the Delia doldrums is baking back on our screens – and has it inspired any of you to actually get busy with the beaters?