Ballerina to baker
Annabel can taste victory
When The Great Kiwi Bake Off contestant Annabel Coulter was a young girl, all she ever dreamt about was one day becoming a ballerina. But at the tender age of 13, that fantasy crumbled when she tore the cartilage in her hip, prematurely ending her promising dance career. “I’d already been dancing for an hour and was warming up for my next class, when I stood up from doing the splits and felt a big pop in my hip,” recalls the Timaruborn beauty, 19. “I’d torn my labrum, the cartilage that covers the socket of your hip. Once you’ve done that, you can never get back to the full extent of your flexibility and strength.
“It’s something that never heals fully. It tears down the nerve and it dies. I knew I couldn’t ever go back, which was really hard.” Annabel had always imagined herself performing for the Royal New Zealand Ballet and when that was no longer an option, it took her over a year to come to terms with it. “It was devastating,” she tells. “I was really passionate about dancing, but luckily, I had baking to fall back on.” And the teen has certainly made the most of her second talent, wowing the judges with her creations on the TVNZ 2 competition.
Tutusweet!
Annabel’s love of baking started when she would spend the day helping her grandmother May Coulter in the kitchen as a child. “I used to go to her house in Geraldine and she’d teach me all of her recipes,” she recalls. “I fell in love with it then and it kept growing.
“The first thing I remember cooking with Gran was pavlova. I’d hold the hand beater and I was only just able to control it. Then after it was baked, I stole a wee bit off the side that had crisped up and that was the moment I fell in love with it. I was like, ‘That’s delicious!’”
Sadly, Annabel’s beloved grandmother passed away when she was only 12 years old, but Gran did leave behind her treasured recipe book as a gift to her granddaughter.
“I have all her handwritten recipes, which is really nice to look back on and use – and to change them to make my own recipes. I’m really grateful that I have that part of her. She’d be pretty proud of me now. She would have loved to watch the show.”
And no doubt she was watching over Annabel when she won the title of Star Baker for the second week with her delicious kiwifruit and lime pavlova.
Although she’s the youngest person on the show, the bubbly brunette is proving to be quite the competitor.
“I’m really happy with how it’s going,” Annabel grins. “I just wanted to challenge myself – and I’ve always wondered if I was actually any good or if my friends and family were just being nice to me!”
Also giving Annabel doubts was the fact she’s glutenintolerant, meaning she can’t actually taste test the majority of her creations.
“It’s been on and off since I was diagnosed at seven, but I’ve been gluten-free for the past five years, which is kind of odd for a baker,” Annabel laughs. “But it’s pushed me to try to bake gluten-free, so I’m grateful for that.
“It’s definitely a whole new world, although sometimes I do treat myself and eat a little bit of the non-gluten-free baking just to make sure my parents aren’t lying to me when they say it’s good!”
However, with the judges Sue Fleischl and Dean Brettschneider continually heaping praise on her, making Annabel a hot favourite to appear in the final bake-off, the youngster can stop worrying so much about her abilities and start dreaming about a future where she gets to create lots of tasty treats.
Annabel enthuses, “I’d love to have my own dessert place, where people can come just for dessert and order as many as they want. When I go to a restaurant, it’s the first thing on the menu I look at!”