Having used the finest organic flour, free-range eggs, unsalted butter and caster sugar and followed a trusted recipe passed down from my great-grandmother, I was — until two minutes ago — pretty confident that it not only looked good, but would taste divine.
Now, as Mary Berry casts a gimlet eye over the middle layer, which seems to be haemorrhaging raspberry jam, and questions whether my sugar dusting is, in fact, only there to disguise the cracks, my ego is feeling as fragile as a meringue nest.
‘Don’t start with the excuses now,’ she scolds, as I mutter something about the cake being bashed about on the two-hour journey to her house in the Home Counties (where else?).
Of course, the 76-year-old author of more than 70 cookery books is smiling as she reprimands me.
But this is exactly the kind of gentle but no-nonsense approach that unnerves contestants and delights viewers on The Great British Bake Off.
The show, which pits 12 amateur cooks against each other in a ‘bake off’ to find the nation’s best baker, has been an unlikely hit for BBC2.
Whether it was the candy-coloured kitchens, the stately home setting or simply the scrummy confections rustled up every week, everyone seemed to have a view on whether Holly’s croquembouche would crumble or if Mary-Anne’s syllabub was too syrupy.
More than five million viewers tuned in for the final this week to see 41-year-old Jo Wheatley from Essex crowned the winner.
But a large part of the show’s success is down to Mary Berry, whose name has been synonymous with delicious traditional cooking for decades.
Alongside fellow baking expert Paul Hollywood, she is a reality TV judge with a difference. Never as caustic as the dreaded Cowell nor as harsh as Craig Revel Horwood, her standards may be exacting but her comments are always considerate. One TV reviewer has hailed her and Hollywood the greatest reality TV judges of all time.
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