For Observer Food Monthly’s 20th anniversary, the TV presenter and cook recalls baking cakes for her GCSEs 20 years ago – and the worst thing about cooking at home in a pandemic
In 2015, Nadiya Hussain’s life changed completely after she won the sixth series of The Great British Bake Off. She remains the most popular winner in the show’s history. “I mean, how do you even measure that?” she says, from her home in Milton Keynes. “That makes me feel weird and awkward, because we’re all just doing what we love.” Now 36, she has presented several cooking and travel shows and has written cookbooks, children’s books and a novel. She also baked the Queen an orange drizzle cake for her 90th birthday celebrations.
You must still have been at school 20 years ago.
I was 16, so I’d just left high school. Big year. I was studying for my GCSEs. Oh, man, that seems such a long time ago.
