Prue Leith says she is still learning lots about baking – thanks to fellow judge Paul Hollywood. Despite a lifetime in the business and being a Great British Bake Off judge 84-year-old Prue insists there is still much she can pick up. She said: “I’ve learnt a lot from Paul. Mostly from listening to him judging. I mean, it’s easy for me because I’m there, too. What always surprised me is he would often say of a soggy cake: ‘This is overbaked…’ And I’d say: ‘But it’s not, it’s underbaked, because it’s soft. It’s too soft.’ And he’d say: ‘No, it’s got too much liquid in it and it hasn’t been able to escape, but it’s actually overbaked.’ And I’d say: ‘How do you tell?’ He’d say: ‘Well, the cake is not crumbling as it should.’ You know how he scratches it with a fork? If it’s well-baked, it will still crumble like that even if it’s too wet. I do learn stuff all the time from him. And to watch Paul kneading something or plaiting bread, for example, is absolute magic. It’s like watching a Chinese noodle chef knitting noodles. It’s magic to watch because he’s so fast and he’s so good. So, yeah, I’ve learned a lot.” Prue also told how she also ends up asking for some of the recipes from the UK and US versions of the show. She added: “I quite often nick other people’s recipes. I mean, some of the recipes are mine. You know the technicals are either Paul’s or mine. “But the signature ones I quite often nick the recipe because it’s so good. And, the other day, we had a chocolate cake [on the American Baking Show ] – it was unbelievably good – so I nicked the recipe. I said to the home economist, the girl who bakes these things, and she said: ‘This is the best chocolate cake I’ve ever met.’ She and I had agreed before this the best chocolate cake was one of Paul’s – his Devil’s Food Cake. And so I said to Paul, I’ve found a better chocolate cake and it’s that one. He tasted it and he said: ‘You’re right. It is.’ So, we both learned something.” Last week the Mirror told how Prue had stepped back from the celebrity version of the show so she could have more time off from filming. She expected to have to leave the Channel 4 series but bosses worked the schedule around her. Prue said: “I was getting really tired. It meant we were filming from April to the end of August without a break and, although we got days off in each week, they were never the weekends. We were always filming at the weekend. And I was just… you know. I was in a new house and I hardly saw the garden, I hardly saw my family and I never had a summer holiday. I thought I might have to leave altogether because I didn’t realise there’d be an option. “And so, I went to the producers and said, ‘I think I’ll have to quit…’ and they said: ‘Oh, don’t quit altogether. Don’t quit so you can have a holiday. If you want a holiday, let’s organise it so you can have a holiday’.” * The new series of The Great British Bake Off starts tonight(Tuesday) on Channel 4 at 8pm. Follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads
Subscribe
Login
0 Comments
