Nigella Lawson has taken aim at ‘The Great British Bake Off’ just as she’s about to launch her latest cookbook and accompanying TV series.
The TV cook claims the much-loved baking show is “unrealistic” because home cooking shouldn’t be about achieving absolutely perfect looking cakes and biscuits - something the ‘Bake Off’ contestants are judged on.
“We live in a world where there is so much, so glossily done,” Nigella tells Good Housekeeping Magazine.
“If I am given a cake, I like to see that it has been made by someone and that it’s not even. That is what cooking is. Things can’t look like they come from a factory.”
She adds: “You know on Bake Off where they say you have to make 18 biscuits and they have to be identical? I have never had two biscuits that look identical!”
The 57-year-old also revealed she keeps in shape these days by doing yoga three times a week.
“I have to do something I enjoy, otherwise I wouldn’t do it,” she says..
“The older I get the more I realise I have got to do lots of stretching. So even if I’m not doing yoga, I make myself do lots of stretching.”
Last week, Nigella defended her new book ‘At My Table’, after some critics blasted some of its simpler recipes as ‘boring’, including a ham and cheese toastie.
She said: “It’s not always about the recipe. I think it’s more of an enthusiasm. I didn’t even give particular amounts of what to use.
“Sometimes it’s the middle of the night and I decide ‘I want to make a ham and cheese toastie’
“I love when people say they like cheddar and marmalade sandwiches. It’s not a recipe but it’s an idea.
“If you can get pleasure in life why turn away from it? As long as I am the person who is allowed to eat the sandwiches I don’t care what they feel.”
Read the full interview with Nigella in the November issue of Good Housekeeping, on sale 27 September 27.