Nadiya Hussain made the nation cry with her GBBO win [Wenn/BBC]. Her final piece, a tiered lemon drizzle cake decorated with a sari decked in the colors of the Union Jack, impressed judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood, with the hard-to-please Berry saying it was “perfect”.
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The final challenge of the day, and the series, was the showstopper.
The medic, who is a senior house officer in intensive care at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester and is now training to be an anaesthetist, said he’d been inundated with baking requests from co-workers.
Like Nadiya, Ian has been Star Baker three times, with a streak of consecutive wins at the beginning of the series.
It started with an understandable curiosity about the lack of pudding in her life.
Speaking about how she was initially consumed by the baking bug, she told Chris: ‘We don’t traditionally have dessert in our culture so it wasn’t something I was brought up with.
“At the end of the filming I took the cake out to my family’s table and we all had a slice”.
But instead of recognising Nadiya’s flawless final bake, a few people have claimed that the final was “too PC”. He ended up baking the best carrot cake Paul and Mary have ever had – which is pretty unreal when you think about it.
Yet the Luton-born mum still shook her head seemingly in disbelief each time she was praised for her work. When she came last in the technical bake in the first week, I wouldn’t have imagined her in the final, but as the weeks went on she grew. “But I feel I have tested my abilities and come out a much stronger, confident person the other side”.
“I’m never going to say: I don’t think I can”, she said.
Nadiya has known about her victory since June, when the show was filmed – but has had to keep schtum since then so as not to give anything away, as did her family.
The music is getting faster and faster, icing is being frantically piped, someone is fretting next to an oven: the Great British Bake Off is undeniably dramatic.
Nadiya emerged as the victor despite coming last in the technical challenge in the very first episode.
“But what’s also been fascinating is that here is a woman from a Muslim background who is doing something quintessentially British while wearing a headscarf”.
“I had no idea that this would become a talking point on social media”.
“After all, there is no shame in making a mistake”.
Nadiya has previously said: “I’m just as British as anyone else, and I hope I have proved that”.
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She explained: “They all knew that I’d won. We’ll see. Loads of dreams, we’ll see what happens”.
