Queen of Cakes Jane Asher hangs up her oven gloves
AT The age of 69, actress-cum- baker Jane Asher has decided she can no longer have her cake and eat it.
For despite the explosion of interest in baking generated by TV shows such as The Great British Bake Off, Sir Paul McCartney’s one- time fiancee has closed the cake-making business she founded a quarter- of-acentury ago.
‘i knew i couldn’t keep it going for ever,’ she tells me. ‘it is a bit sad, but it’s 25 years and it seemed a good time to do it. i’ve been finding it increasingly difficult to keep as much of an eye on it and take as much part in it as i like to do because of going back into acting.’
Asher, who made her screen debut in the 1952 film Mandy, began baking as a hobby. ‘if you’d said to me 40 years ago “You’ll be writing books about baking and running a shop”, i just wouldn’t have believed it,’ she says. Specialising in ornate edible creations — ‘i suppose my showbiz side came into it,’ she jokes — her Chelsea shop, which she has also closed, earned her the moniker Queen of Cakes and attracted numerous high- profile admirers, including Cilla Black and Prince Charles.
She recalls one commission, a fruitcake shaped like the Albert Memorial, which she made to mark the start of the monument’s restoration.
The Queen cut into it three years later at the re-opening ceremony. ‘As you can imagine, that was a rather hair-raising moment,’ she says. ‘even though a good fruitcake does keep for years.’
Asher, who has three adult children with her husband, the cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, will continue to keep a finger in the pie, however, with her bakeware range for Poundland. ‘ That will keep going, of course, and baking will always, i’m sure, be a big part of my life.’