Bake Off's Prue Leith makes startling revelation about how she really feels about baking

Never one to sugarcoat her words, The Great British Bake Off judge said she 'prefers savoury cooking to baking'

Sabrina Barr
Thursday 13 September 2018 16:30 BST
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Prue Leith
Prue Leith

She’s a judge on TV’s most popular baking show – so it’s natural to assume Prue Leith is a keen cake maker in her spare time.

And while it’s true that Leith made her name as a chef, cookery writer and restaurateur, The Great British Bake Off star has revealed that she doesn’t love baking as much as many of the show's fans suppose.

Attending an event at a new cookery school in Cornwall, Leith was asked when she first discovered her passion for baking. Rather than sugarcoat her answer, Leith admitted: “I don’t have a passion for baking.”

“I have a passion for eating cakes, but I am more interested in savoury cooking than baking,” she added, according to Cornwall Live.

Leith was making an appearance at Truro School in Cornwall to launch a new pop-up cookery school in connection with Leiths School of Food and Wine, which she founded in 1975 with Caroline Waldegrave.

While she may prefer to cook up a savoury storm in the kitchen, her latest cookery book has taken some inspiration from the amateur bakers that she’s encountered in the Bake Off tent.

Her book, Prue, contains a chapter on desserts that Leith states are all “worth the calories”, as she is often heard to say on the show.

She also explained how her first attempt at baking – making Christmas cakes at school in South Africa, where she grew up – went awry.

“At that time I didn’t know royal icing needed glycerine or else it goes very hard,” she said.

“I rolled out my icing and painted three kings on top of the icing and was very proud.”

Despite the pride that Leith felt in her creation, her family were unable to cut the hardened cake on Christmas Day and had to resort to eating the cake upside down.

Last year, after her first stint as a judge on Bake Off, Leith caused uproar when she accidentally tweeted out the name of the series winner before the episode had aired on TV.

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