When I got to France I realized I didn't know very much about food at all. I'd never had a real cake. I'd had those cakes from cake mixes or the ones that have a lot of baking powder in them. A really good French cake doesn't have anything like that in it - it's all egg power.
I'm a good cook, but I can't bake.
I have a terrible tendency to lick my fingers when I cook. So much so that I got a telling off from my pastry teacher years ago, who said it would hinder my prospects.
Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat.
I didn't actually know what a treasure 'The Great British Bake Off' was, so I just thought, 'oh it'll be fun to do that, I'd like to do that.' Then when I went and had to have an audition and meet Paul Hollywood, I suddenly thought, 'this is really important.'
I'd love to own a bakery at some point. My grandmother could help me run it - she is an amazing baker! I'd also love to do a cookbook.
I tried the Crisco, and I hated it. Hated it! I couldn't roll it out. I'm a butter girl for my pie crusts.
I've baked more cakes since I've been on 'Bake Off' than I have in my life.
You don't have to do everything from scratch. Nobody wants to make puff pastry!
I can't even cook an egg. The only thing I can do well is baking bread. I love it and find it incredibly therapeutic.
A pie dough comes together exactly like a biscuit only there is very, very little liquid and no leavening involved. Other than that, the same rules apply. My best advice: handle the dough as little as possible.
My mother 'gave teas' the way other mothers breathed. Her own mother 'gave teas.' All of their friends 'gave teas,' each involving butter cookies extruded from a metal press and pastel bonbons ordered from See's.
I have no burning ambitions, and I can honestly say the thing I love most is 'Bake Off.' That will always come first.
I used to love Danish. My father used to make a Boston cream pie. You never see that anymore.
My grandmother taught me how to make the basic pate brise pastry crust when I was young. The one thing I learned simply by eating her endless variations on delicious tarts for dinner every night is that this dough can be used for just about anything - sweet or savory.
A pasty costly-made, Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay, Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks Imbedded and injellied.
Because I've done a lot of television, I'm sort of a generalist. I'm not a pastry cook, but I've had to learn a certain amount about it. I'm not a baker, though I've had to learn how to do it. I'm sort of a general cook.
I have never baked. I have cooked thousands of meals big and small, but I have never cooked a cookie. I have never roasted a cake, or a pie.
I'm bad at baking.
I do not know how I developed the interest for baking. If I am not shooting, I head back home and start baking my favourite cakes and cookies.
I won a prize for 'best sponge cake' at the Clacton Festival 2005. Having said that, I was only up against three other cakes.
I could quite happily run a florist or a bake shop.
Civilisation was built around wheat, around people settling down and not being nomadic. Baking is one of the oldest professions.
The process of making a wedding cake is complex on its own, from designing, mis-en-place, baking, frosting, structuring, decorating, to delivering.
I'm a very bad baker.
