A slice of cake with gbbo champ matty edgell

I have my nan to thank for my introduction to baking. She passed away when I was really young, but I heard loads of stories about how good she was. I think she made me fall in love with baking without even knowing it. When I was little one of the first things I made was a Milky Way cheesecake – it’s a standout memory. Melting chocolate bars isn’t exactly what you’d call baking, though!

On Bake Off we were all outside our comfort zones and we were heavily dependent on each other. None of us had ever done anything like that in our lives. I hope it came over how well we got on with each other. One week, you were someone’s support mechanism; the next week the tables turned and they were yours. Through that sort of experience, you bond quickly.

My friends didn’t know I baked before the show. But it was more of an accidental secret – it wasn’t something I was ashamed of. It just didn’t come up in conversation. I made a cake a few years ago for a party, and the penny-drop moment for me that I wasn’t too bad was when somebody asked where we had bought the cake from!

It was my then-girlfriend, now fiancée, Lara who convinced me to do Bake Off. Until my application went in, I was just making birthday cakes for family – I didn’t branch out any more than that. Gradually, I became more daring in styles and flavours. Through Bake Off I’ve learned to experiment and my horizons have broadened enormously.

There was a lot of trial and error in the development stage, the months prior to filming. I stuck to what I knew to some extent, because mistakes can be expensive to make, in terms of ingredients and time. In the tent, the weirdest part for me was from start to finish I knew exactly when things were going well and when they weren’t. But you’re never too sure what will