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Kimberley Wilson opens the door with a huge grin and ushers me into her small kitchen in south London, where every bit of space is used; plates are stacked in the fireplace, shelves are piled high with tins, and the ingredients for a lemon, cardamom, white chocolate and cranberry cake are laid out on the table. 'I do take over the kitchen,' she says, laughing. 'But my flatmates don't seem to mind; my boyfriend certainly doesn't mind me baking.' Wilson, 30, was brought up in east London and started baking when she was about nine. 'My mum has MS and she was finding it more and more difcult to stand for periods of time to cook for us,' she says. As the oldest girl - she has an older brother and a younger sister - Wilson took it upon herself to learn to cook. 'It was food to eat rather than baking,' she says. In the sixth form she started baking cakes for friends' birthdays and became known as the 'cake angel'.
Watching The Great British Bake Of, which is in its fourth series, with its highest viewing figures yet of 5.6 million, it's easy to forget the contestants have day jobs. Wilson is a psychologist with 12 hours of client appointments a week, and she supervises a trainee psychologist in the probation service. While filming she was also training for a qualification in psychotherapy. 'In the week of the final I had three essays to hand in. It was horrific,' she says.
Every Friday night the contestants would arrive at a hotel in Bristol and have dinner together. On Saturday they would be picked up at 5.30am in the 'Baker Bus' and driven the 16 miles to Harptree Court, where they would film until about 9pm in a marquee erected in the grounds. They would then film all day Sunday and return to their homes late in the evening. 'They were long days,' Wilson admits. During the week Wilson would practise her recipes after work until about midnight, and in week four her pecan and rosemary caramel apple pie helped her win the title of 'star baker'.
Her worst week, she admits, was week one. 'You didn't see it but my blood-orange sandwich...