Baking allows me to look after my mental health
Bake Off star Nadiya Hussain talks to PRUDENCE WADE about finally doing a baking book and the pressure of being a role model
SHE might have found fame on a baking show, but Nadiya Hussain has never written a book just about breads, cakes, pastries and cookies. “It’s funny, because people just made the assumption that I had already done it,” Nadiya says with a laugh. “But five years later, finally writing a book that’s just about baking is really exciting... It’s dedicated to some of the bakes I really, love.”
Since winning the sixth series of The Great British Bake Off in 2015, the 35-year-old has cemented herself as a national treasure, through presenting her own BBC shows and writing cookbooks. As this is her fifth, Nadiya knows how things work, but says choosing which recipes to use was trickier than normal.
“It’s tough, when baking is the thing you love to do the most,” Nadiya says, words tumbling out at a million miles an hour. “I could’ve written and written and written... There could be volumes, which isn’t a bad thing entirely, I suppose.”
Each bake had to be “something I believe in”, she adds, “and every recipe I test at home – it takes weeks, months”. It might sound arduous, but Nadiya says it’s “my favourite bit, because that’s when I make them the best they can be”.
As we’ve come to expect from Nadiya’s cooking, the bakes are accessible, delicious, and draw inspirations from all over the world – but it wasn’t always like that. It’s only really the past five years she’s seen more of the world, but this never hindered her creativity.
“Because I didn’t travel before,
I only had my imagination and the internet,” she explains. “I think I still very much do that, even though I do travel a lot more. I still take inspiration from just being curious about different cuisines. I like to take their version and turn it into something a bit different.”
Nadiya is particularly proud of her latest book though, because “there are lots of different things in there that make you feel like you’re travelling all over the world” – no bad thing when international travel isn’t quite as easy as it used to be for the vast majority of us right now.
Baking has had quite the year too though, and Nadiya understands why it’s used as a form of therapy.
“We spend so much time on the important, busy aspects of our life that we neglect the other bits: our mental health,” she says.
She has been outspoken about her own struggles on that front, and says: “Baking allows me to look after the part of me that I neglect, which is my mental health.” Nadiya appreciates how baking requires you to concentrate on one thing, particularly as she admits to having “a really overactive mind” – something keenly felt in how quickly she talks, racing through a range of different subjects. It’s fair to say she’s done a lot to help open up conversations around mental health, particularly in British Asian communities, and for that she’s often been called a role model – although it’s a label Nadiya’s shied away from since becoming a public figure.
Her approach has changed over the years, however: “I know I’m a first-generation British Bangladeshi woman of colour. When you are lucky enough to be all of those things, you do have a responsibility to all of those groups, I suppose.”
She’s aware “there aren’t that many people like me” in the worlds of publishing and television – and while growing up, she says: “I would never have looked at the telly and thought I really want to do that job, because I never saw anyone like me doing it, it didn’t feel like the right place for me.”
This isn’t to say the responsibility of being a role model doesn’t “weigh heavy on me”, she admits, but is more hopeful and positive about it than she once might have been. “I don’t take it lightly, because I know it’s one responsibility I have to embrace, at the same time as being slightly afraid of it.”
Luckily, any time she feels overwhelmed, there are more recipes to try and cakes to bake. “I certainly don’t have room to complain,” she says with a giggle. “I might have the best job in the world.”
Nadiya Bakes by Nadiya Hussain, photography by Chris Terry, is published by Michael Joseph, priced £22.
Nadiya Bakes is available to watch now on BBC iPlayer.