THE EVIL BREAD
Bake Off’s Helena Garcia has written a new book putting a spooky twist on baked treats in time for Halloween. She tells ELLA WALKER about her ghoulish goodies
‘I’M wasted here,” shrieks Helena Garcia. The former Great British Bake Off contestant is lamenting the fact all the children on her street have had the gall to grow up and become teenagers – they no longer care for her spectacular Halloween endeavours.
“Last year I made a real effort, and not one knocked on my door,” she says, in mock despair.
Unfortunately this year, thanks to the spectre of Covid-19, trick or treating looks to be a total no-go. That doesn’t mean you must forgo the magic of All Hallows’ Eve entirely – just pick up Helena’s debut cookbook, The Wicked Baker.
It offers many a ghoulish – but tasty – way to celebrate, and features bakes that, without exception, have a “spooky twist”. Some are just plain ingenious, like her Cousin Itt baklava, whose Addams Family shroud of floor-length hair is recreated using Greek pastry kataifi (“Basically shredded filo”).
Born in Spain, Helena went to high school in Las Vegas, ostensibly to learn English, but it was there, surrounded by desert and high rollers, that she picked up her penchant for baking, and for “flavours like cinnamon and maple, pecan and pumpkin puree.
Her interest in Halloween, however, is less the gaudiness of America’s blowout and more to do with the aesthetic of “Celtic festivals and paganism, magical plants and anything witchy.”
And while she might like the gothic, slightly macabre e side of things, fun and wit run just as strong in her. “I just want nt to be able to have the best time me possible,” says Helena. “Humour is very important tant in my life. It’s in my bakes and everything else.”
A good example is the e time she famously told Prue Leith: “They come to me ‘cause e I’m dead,” when the judge reached d to pluck a fly from her hair. She’s since ince even made a cameo appearance in US horror comedy medy series, What We Do In The Shadows.
“At the time, when you’re [in the Bake ake Off te tent], you’re like, e, ‘This is th the most stressful ul thing I’ I’ve ever done and nd I can’t bear it’,” she e continues. “And then you’re away from it and you’re like, ‘That was the e most amazing experience’. ce’.
Having a bit of a lark with baking – be it in the construction or the decorating – is key for Helena.
“That’s the funnest bit,” t,” she says. “You can bake a cake just to eat it, or make something out of it that you will enjoy and be really proud of.”
■ The Wicked Baker: Cakes And Treats To Die For by Helena elena Garcia, photography by Patricia ia Niven, is published by Quadrille, , £12.99.