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Making your Christmas cake in September is perfect, as too fresh a cake crumbles when cut.
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I won't do 'Strictly' or any of those ghastly reality programmes. 'I'm a Celebrity' would be the end. It makes me shudder.
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What a privilege and honour it has been to be part of seven years of magic in a tent - 'The Great British Bake Off.'
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Cooking and baking is both physical and mental therapy.
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At my dinner parties, I like to serve cheese after the main course because you still have red wine in the glass, and it goes very well with the cheese. And that is what they do in France, and I think they set a good example.
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I usually wear only a bit of pink lippy, but for TV, they add a few extra lashes to brighten my eyes and some colour to my face, as without it, I look pale and uninteresting.
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My favourite TV show is... 'Downton Abbey.' The characters are wonderful, and the style is created so beautifully on screen. Everything from the table settings to the linen seem perfect to me. While I'm watching it, I'm in a totally different world.
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While we're filming 'Bake Off,' I can get really cold, so I'm often holding a hot-water bottle or layered up under an anorak and a warm hat.
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All my grandchildren bake. On a Saturday, Annabel's boys, Louis and Toby, always bake. Louis makes a chocolate cake, Toby makes banana or lemon drizzle. They're 12 and 10, and they can do it totally on their own. My son's twin girls, Abby and Grace, are 14; they make birthday cakes and like to do it on their own with Mum out of the way.
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When I was paralysed by polio at 13, I went into an isolation hospital and couldn't sit up, so I only took liquid food from spouted cups which the masked nurses would bring in and feed to me. I saw my parents only through glass; we couldn't touch.
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I mainly cook British food with a few things I've had on my holidays. I went to the Canary Islands a few years ago, and we had all sorts of different mushrooms on brioche with pancetta on top, and it was delicious. I had it most days for lunch, so I thought, 'I'll do that when I get back,' and now it's in my cookbook, an absolute favourite.
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I do not like a quiche with wet, undercooked pastry underneath, and that is that.
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Many people think children must have chips. I don't think any household should have a deep fat fryer.
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My parents were very strict about manners and being polite to others. I brought my own children up that way, too.
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I wasn't the brightest button in the class at school, but I enjoyed cooking and baking. I wasn't clever enough at Maths O-level to get onto the cookery teaching course I really wanted to do, so I did a catering course instead.
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I love Michel Roux, Jr., and James Martin - the chefs who are experts in their own right, like Rick Stein on fish. But I don't watch them very much because I don't think it's fair for my husband to be in a total food environment all the time! So we watch programmes about gardening more.
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I eat carefully because people don't want to see a large person judging cakes. They'll think to themselves, 'That's what happens when you eat cake.'
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When you're on the way up, you have to take all the jobs because bills have to be paid.
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I think to eat cake is very good for us, but it's the size of the slice and how often you have it.
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I hate Gordon Ramsay's programmes: I don't know if he's been told it makes good television.
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To be able to walk out the door when you come home from a job and wander into the garden to do a bit of watering gives you time to be creative in your mind.
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I love a good madeira cake. Nice and simple. The most important thing is that a cake is moist. Most people overcook cakes, which dries them out.
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It should be that every child, when they leave school, can do ten meals, because when they leave home, they've got to be able to eat healthily. Blow the science of it and everything else. They've just got to be able to know what's good for them, how to buy it, and how to make a few dishes that they enjoy and don't cost too much.
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I'm not great on the florals. I think you've got to wear what you're happy in and that is fun but isn't mutton dressed up as lamb.