Queen of cakes Mary Berry has confessed to Laura Heads it isn’t only novice bakers who make a dog’s dinner out of things – she does too.
The 79-year-old revealed things don’t always go to plan when cooking in the spotlight as she recounted a story of an unfortunate incident involving the Graham Norton Show.
Speaking at a packed cookery master class at the Flavours of Herefordshire Festival she said: “The day before I was due to appear they rang me and said would I like to bake a cake.
“It was my very best chocolate fudge cake and I had it on the top resting, at the time my granddaughter had a spaniel puppy, and I had just turned my back to get a piping bag.
“As I turned around the puppy leapt up and took a piece out of the side.
“I thought, I have no time to make another cake, and I still had ganache in the fridge so I just filled the hole!
Make do
“I wrote Happy New Year on the top and took it in to Graham Norton.
“When things go wrong, you make do and mend!”
And it appears mishaps happen more often that she would like us to think.
“Once I was doing a demo at a WI group in Cornwall with my daughter Annabel who was about seven or eight at the time,” she said.
“There were about 400 women in the audience and all the way down the hall were pedestals of flowers the women had been doing earlier.
“As I was doing my thing I had the lid off the oil and I managed to knock it all down my dress, Annabel just burst into tears.
“Then I was using a food processor to demonstrate an all-in-one chocolate cake.
“I turned it on and it shot all down over me, Annabel again started crying.
“Needless to say I’ve now learnt to check the lids on everything!
“All the way through the rest of the demonstration I kept thinking bad things come in threes and I was trying to work out the third.
“At the end, as everyone was packing up a man was carrying his wife’s flowers to the car park.
“All of a sudden he tripped and he knocked all the flowers and the water went all over me.
“I just said to him thank you so much, I thought I might have had a car crash so I was so pleased to be drenched!”
Speaking exclusively to Mature Times after the event Mary said her top tips to eating well and staying healthy in old age were to eat “a little bit of everything”.
“I’m not one of those people who goes for this diet, or half fat stuff,” she said.
“I would say just to eat a little bit of everything in moderation.
“I use full-fat everything, we must support our farmers, there’s no excuse for using a substitute.
“As long as you’re sensible with it and only indulge a little there is no problem, you just have to have everything in proportion.
“If I’m tasting cakes on Bake Off, and I have to try all of them, then I make sure to have a salad or soup for lunch.”
Speaking of the ever popular Great British Bake Off, the baking queen said fans will continue to be gripped to the edge of their seat throughout the rest of the series.
“I think we have the best team ever this year, we have 12 really great bakers.
“There are so many really excellent people and they are baking better than ever.
“My aim in the tent is to encourage people to improve their baking skills, and I don’t want them to cry!
“If somebody seems a bit upset then I go over or I tell Sue and Mel to go over and give them a bit of help.
“We do have a great deal of fun with Mel and Sue, they are real fun.”
More than 11,000 people had entered to be a part of the latest series of the popular cookery show.
Mary also revealed some secrets behind the second series of her latest show, Mary Berry Cooks.
“When we filmed the first series of Mary Berry Cooks it was all at my house and we had a camera in every room,” she said.
Chaos
“My husband and children and grandchildren had to climb over all the equipment and it was chaos, so although I loved doing the show I agreed to the second series only as long as we could use someone else’s kitchen!
“When you see the show it looked just like my kitchen, you would never know, it is ridiculous, they redecorated this woman’s kitchen to look just like mine.
“They had similar wallpaper, the same everything.
“We did come back to film in our garden, and with our vegetables though. “I love doing the show, I’m doing all my favourite recipes, I’m thoroughly enjoying it.”
