These days we’re all getting a bit too soft
Bake Off judge Dame Prue Leith talks cancel culture, speaking her mind and why she’d rather make cassoulet than a cake
Dame Prue Leith is refreshingly honest. “I should be careful with what I say, but I am generally very indiscreet and bad at keeping a secret,” says the 82-year-old Great British Bake Off judge. “As you know, I’m the only one who has ever leaked the winner of Bake Off.”
Indeed, hours before it aired, in 2017, Prue mistakenly tweeted about contestant Sophie Faldo’s victory.
“I’ll never get over it – it was such a horrible experience,” she says.
But Prue is certainly no stranger to controversy.
Last month, following the release of her memoir I’ll Try Anything Once, a childhood story about Prue and her mother drowning a litter of kittens hit the headlines.
“Twitter was full of people saying they’ll never watch Bake Off again. Well, first, it wasn’t me who was drowning them – it was my mother – and secondly, I was 11 years old and it was absolutely traumatic.
“I wrote about it in the book, about what a horrible experience it was. But people keep ringing me up about the kittens. And that is because I was too indiscreet and put it into my autobiography,” explains the South African-born restaurateur, who founded cookery school Leith’s School of Food and Wine in 1975.
“But I don’t think you can write a memoir and leave out the interesting bits. It would be the most banal, boring book if you didn’t write anything that someone could twist on Twitter.”
Bake Off is currently back on our screens, with the final airing next week. And hosts Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas also found themselves in hot water recently, after a skit during the Mexican Week episode, which saw them accused of cultural appropriation.
Prue has since said that “there would have been absolutely no intention to offend. That’s not the spirit of the show”. However she is also concerned about the rise of cancel culture.
“We are getting a bit too soft if nobody can stand a bit of teasing,” says Prue. “I worry about cancel culture. People are so frightened. It’s such a horrible experience to be trolled and castigated by total strangers.” Prue has been a judge alongside Paul Hollywood on the show since 2017, after replacing Mary Berry.
She says she rarely watches the show herself, although her husband, retired clothes designer John Playfair, 74, is a fan.
The couple live near Moreton-in-Marsh in the Cotswolds.
“I feel I’ve already seen it,” says Prue. “Also, because I’m so vain, all I can think of when I’m watching it is, ‘I can see my double chin’.
“It is a wonderful job. Good fun too. There’s a wonderful atmosphere and lovely company. And I like Paul a lot. I enjoy it when I am doing it and I rather spoil it by looking back at it and thinking, ‘Oh, I could have done that better’. But my husband is an addict. He watches them all. Sometimes he forces me to watch it with him.”
When it comes to her own baking,
John is her harshest critic. “When I was in the audition process for Bake Off, Paul and I had to judge a technical challenge that saw contestants create a Gugelhupf, which is an Austrian spiced rich yeasted cake. So I thought, ‘Well I’ll make a perfect one and they’ll be so impressed’. “I made it. It looked wonderful, smelled wonderful, but when I took it out, John noticed it had caramelised and stuck to the tin. “‘This will never get past Paul Hollywood’, he told me. “So, shame-faced, I left it at home. We had trifle made from Gugelhupf for weeks afterwards.”
But baking disasters only make her a better judge, says Prue, who was made a Dame in the Queen’s Birthday Honours last year, recognised for food, broadcasting and charity.
“I often make bad cakes that end up in trifles,” she laughs.
“When we used to have chickens, they would end up as chicken feed too. But it means I can relate when contestants have a soggy bottom.”
Prue has written more than 60 books, and last month saw the release of her latest – Bliss On Toast – a compilation of delicious recipes that each use toast as their base.
“Toast needs a revival,” she says. “There were a huge number of people baking over lockdown, making sourdough for the first time and so on. But you can make toast from any bread – from wholemeal to rye.”
Indeed, Prue says now more than ever we need to consign less food to the rubbish bin.
“I’m absolutely obsessed with not throwing food away. Did you know that we throw 40 per cent of our food away? And sometimes as much as 60 per cent if you count what is lost on the farm because it’s rejected by supermarkets or it’s not sold.
“I think the great trick with leftovers is to use them the next day. Because they’re at their best then. We should be capitalising on this feast of flavour.”
Delicious homemade food needn’t be expensive, she adds.
“None of the recipes in the book cost much more than £1 to make. And when you think that school meals tend to cost around £2.50, I’d quite like dinner ladies to start thinking of serving things on toast to ensure more kids are fed,” says Prue, who is about to embark on a one-woman theatre tour, before diving back into filming the next instalments of Bake Off.
“I’ll probably be so exhausted that I will be under the soil,” she jokes, adding that despite enjoying the sweet treats she gets to tuck into, you’re more likely to find her dishing out cassoulet than cake.
“I do love a good pudding, especially a boozy one, but I’m actually much keener on savoury food,” says Prue, who has two grown-up children.
“My favourite thing to do is to be at the end of a table of family, in front of a cauldron full of cassoulet.”
■■Bliss on Toast by Prue Leith (£14.99, Bloomsbury) is out now
‘‘ I baked a cake to take to the show but my husband said it wouldn’t impress Paul