Nadiya rises to baking challenge

Nadiya Hussain talks to Prudence Wade about why she’s finally written a book on cakes

It’s really funny, because people just madethe assumption that I hadalready done it,” Nadiya Hussain says with a laugh. “But fiveyears later, finally writing a book that’s just about baking is really exciting… It’s abook dedicated to someofthe bakes I really, really love.”

Since winning the sixth series of The Great British Bake Off back in 2015, the 35-year-old has cemented herself as a national treasure, through writing cookbooks and presenting her own BBC shows. As this is her fifth cookbook, Nadiya well and truly knows how things work by now – but she says choosing which recipes to include was trickier than normal.

“It’s tough, honestly, when baking is the thing you do and the thing you love to do the most,” she says. “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 that I believe in”, she adds, “and every single recipe I test at home – I do each one and it takes me weeks, months of testing”. It might sound arduous, but Nadiya calls it “my most favourite bit, because that’s when I develop them and make them the best they can be”.

As we’ve come to expect from Nadiya’s cooking, the bakes are accessible, delicious, and draw their inspirations from all over the world. Before the pandemic, she says she took many of her inspirations from travelling – 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 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.

Baking has had quite the year too, though, and Nadiya understands why it’s used as a form of therapy. She has been outspoken about her own personal struggles on that front, and says: “Baking allows me to look after the part of me that I neglect, which is my mental health.”

She appreciates how baking requires you to concentrate on one thing, particularly as she admits to having “a really overactive mind”.

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. This is a label she’s shied away from, though (“I felt like a wanted to do was cook and bake and always be known for that”).

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 the worlds of publishing and television – and 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.”

Luckily, any time she feels overwhelmed, there are more 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.