SUGAR & SPICE

Sarah-Kate finds a new guilty pleasure

If I want brain candy after a busy day at work, I watch home-renovation shows, although I renovated my own home and hated every second of it, so why I find it entertaining to watch other people do it is beyond me.

But watching home-building shows is the Ginger’s guilty pleasure too – or so I thought until I came in from the office the other evening to find him watching something completely different.

No, it wasn’t sexpots strutting in sky-high heels, brandishing whips. Quite the opposite. It was a stylish octogenarian with pearls and nice nails watching a silver fox plait an elaborate fruit loaf. The sexiest thing about it was the icing that dribbled delicately down the sides when applied with the silver fox’s bare hands.

My beloved was watching The Great British Bake Off. And it wasn’t his first time.

Now I absolutely loathe cooking-competition shows because they’re too much like real life. Cooking for some of us is stressful enough in the comfort of our own homes. The very thought of doing it at the same time as other people with an end result of being judged for your efforts? I’d rather put myself in the microwave on high for 10 minutes.

But before I could change the channel back to Selling HousesAustralia, the Ginger snatched the remote and said, “No, it’s a masterclass.”

In this form of the show, the BakeOff judges Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry don’t have anything to do with a competition – they just bake stuff. There’s no stress. In fact, if your saliva glands weren’t working overtime, you would slip into the loveliest of comas such is the gentle pace and tender repartee.

Paul, with his olive skin and twinkly blue eyes, is obviously something of a drawcard. And his apricot couronne? I have to say, watching him twist his tube of dough into a crown with one deft flick of each wrist did get me a little hot under the collar. And if I am ever in the mood for a French Christmas loaf stuffed with marzipan, fruit and nuts, I’ll make one. And wear it everywhere.

But my heart belongs to Mary. When I’m 84, I want to have a rocking manicure and neatly set hair, and be making my own butter and slathering it on absolutely everything in sight before popping a bite delicately into my perfectly made-up lips. You can’t get elegance like that out of the freezer section in the supermarket.

Watching her make tuile shapes for French wafer biscuits, then filling them with chocolate mousse is about the most soothing experience a person can have outside a ritzy spa. The only problem with being in love with Mary is that she’s fattening. I mean, you can watch LoveitorListIt and not want to rip down the wall between the living room and the kitchen. But you can’t watch Mary fashion a lemon cake with cheesecake icing and sit there nibbling a carrot stick.

But that hair, those nails, that cheeky smile! She may just be worth going up a size.