Baking Queen

Fresh from her Great British Bake Off win, Thames Ditton resident Sophie Faldo tells Rebecca Younger about her future plans and why she doesn’t want to put all her eggs in one basket

- Rebecca Younger

SITTING cross legged on the sofa in her two-bedroom Thames Ditton flat, her Great British Bake Off (GBBO) cake stand trophy pride of place on the shelf above, Sophie Faldo seems relaxed but focused. Understandably for a GBBO winner, there are a huge number of work offers and options on the table (including potential work in the kitchen at the The Clock House, in Ripley, which was recently crowned with a Michelin star, ) but the 33-year-old says she is being cautious about what she wants to do next.

With her calm and collected appearance on GBBO, which controversially moved from BBC to Channel 4 this year, you would be forgiven for thinking that Sophie had been baking since childhood but in fact Sophie’s introduction to baking came just five years ago when she made a birthday cake for her housemate.

“I thought ‘this is quite cool’ so I made a few more and then I did two wedding cakes for a couple of friends of mine,” she says. “It was actually the decorating I liked more. I had quite a small oven in my old place so the baking was a real nuisance because it took so long to get the tiers done.”

But it wasn’t until she embarked on a ski season in Morzine with her chef boyfriend David (who works at The Glass House in Kew) in December 2016 that she was convinced to apply for GBBO. While she was there, she would bake cakes and other treats daily for the chalet guests’ afternoon tea, which helped her hone her skills.

“While we were there I was trying to apply to Le Cordon Bleu to the patisserie scholarship but found out they weren’t doing it that year so David said I should apply for GBBO instead,” she says. “I loved the show but because all I did was cakes and I didn’t know anything about bread or pastry, I thought it was a bit ridiculous.”