When you think of your favorite moments from The Great British Baking Show, chances are that a ton of them come from the 2018 season, aka “Collection 6” on Netflix. That was the year Rahul Mandal stormed the tent with his trademark mix of brilliant bakes and nervous chitchat, Briony May Williams proved that differently-abled people can more than easily hold their own against Paul Hollywood, and, yes, Ruby Bhogal‘s cake completely collapsed during “Vegan Week.” The iconic moment has become a meme, the opening sequence of Netflix’s The Brothers Sun, and a source of main inspiration behind Bhogal’s new cookbook, One Bake, Two Ways: Fifty bakes with an all-plant option every time.
“I’m a really bad sore loser,” Ruby Bhogal told Decider during a recent interview. “I hate being bad at something.”
After leaving the “Bake Off Tent” as one of her season’s top three finalists, Bhogal swore off vegan baking for a while, but soon found herself pulled back into its orbit when followers slid into her DMs asking for vegan substitutions for her homespun recipes.
“I really hate the idea of not being able to cater for everyone. So I’d often find myself amending those recipes, sharing again,” she said. “After doing that for about a year, I was like, ‘Have I stumbled on something? Should I really, should I make this a thing?’”
Bhogal’s very first cookbook, One Bake, Two Ways, is the culmination of that idea. The book really does offer two versions of fifty bakes, from cakes to pastry, and everything in between. One Bake, Two Ways also is brimming with Bhogal’s trademark cheeky, yet classy, attitude. As you flip through its pages, you’ll honestly feel like Ruby from Bake Off (as it’s lovingly known as in the UK) is standing over your shoulder, offering sage baking tips alongside sassy jokes to keep the mood light.
Ruby Bhogal stopped by Decider HQ recently to chat about her new cookbook, the state of her Bake Off besties, and which Great British Baking Show alum will have the honor of baking her wedding cake…
DECIDER: So first of all, I’m a huge fan of Bake Off and your season is one of my favorites. I was rewatching last night and I forgot how many of my personal faves are on that season.
RUBY BHOGAL: There’s a lot of big personalities on that show. Yeah, especially that season.
You mention in the foreword to your book that you were kind of inspired by “Vegan Week.” Can you talk me through why that set you off on this journey?
I think with “Vegan Week,” it was slightly iconic because my cake falling over features in so many of the show’s entire history top ten moments. I’ve been haunted by that moment, I’d say, ever since it happened. It got turned into a GIF as soon as it got aired on TV and it turned into a meme, and it was normally followed by “How my week is going,” and the cake is falling over. And I’m like, “You know what? Same girl.” I’m not mad at that. I completely hear you on that one. But then it also turned into the opening sequence of a Netflix series that aired last year. I got so many DMs at Christmas, and I was like, “Oh no, what have I done? What have I said now?” And it turned out to be the opening sequence of The Brothers Sun. I didn’t get paid royalties on that. I wasn’t even informed that it was going to happen.
I’m a really bad sore loser. Even though I was very gracious in my defeat on Bake Off because I accepted that I was too tired. I knew I wasn’t going to win it, especially against Rahul, but I’m a sore loser. I hate being bad at something. So, I was slightly scarred by the cake falling over once it happened. Didn’t even tackle vegan baking after that and then every time I post a recipe on social media, it would be a case of “Rubes, how do I turn this gluten free? Or how do I turn this egg free? Or how, I’ve got a dairy intolerance? Or I’m plant based? How can I, you know, amend the recipe?” And I really hate the idea of not being able to cater for everyone. So I’d often find myself amending those recipes, sharing again. After doing that for about a year, I was like, “Have I stumbled on something? Should I really, should I make this a thing?” I remember talking to my manager and I was like, “Should we do this? Has this got any legs to become a book?” Because baking is a niche in the food world, but it’s a very saturated market and to really stand out — especially in the book market as well, where everyone has their book coming out — it has to have a point of difference. I didn’t want to offer something to the baking world unless it was offering something new and I couldn’t find anything on the market that catered for both sides of the dietary fence. Especially in my family, my sister is vegan one week, vegetarian the next. She can’t make up her mind and so I wanted something that my mum or someone in my family could have a book at home and no matter who comes over, there’s something that they can choose from that book and bake for, and everyone will have a happy time at the end of it. That, for me, is really what it’s all about.
You call the cake a failure. I rewatched that episode last night, you had the best-tasting cake.
Yes, technically, the best-tasting, but we all eat with our eyes first and there was no one scrambling to try that one. I really distinctly remember it was all fine at one point and I don’t know what went wrong. It just starts to snowball and you actively know you’re sabotaging. I knew every decision was bad and I kept on going. “Oh, so you know what this cake needs? More bad decisions.” I kept on adding to it. I kept on adding more cake dowels. I was like, “This cake is not gonna stand, so I’m just going to add in some more support.” There was more cake dowels then there was actually a sponge at the end of it.
But I loved how all the all the girls in the tent rallied around me at the end. I’d never cried on that show the whole entire way through, mostly because I didn’t take it too seriously. But I loved how they all kind of came around and gave me that emotional support that I needed and just kept me mildly sane. I can see myself still very clearly flapping in my head. I remember Noel [Fielding] and Sandi [Toksvig] taking me out of the tent. I was telling everyone, “Please tread carefully, because that cake, she’s a high flight risk.” We all left, and Noel was comforting me and he’s being very, very sweet and then he just said, “Oh, no.” It looks like I’m going to cry when they cut on the screen, but really, I was dropping quite a few f-bombs for about five minutes straight. They had to cut because they were like, “We can’t show any of this.”
I love how the cake just decided to steal the limelight and waited ’til everyone had gone. So all, like, twenty cameras in that tent were just honed in on that one cake waiting for it to fall. Yeah, I mean, it deserves an Oscar, really.
She’s a diva.
And I love her for that. I love that.
Rewatching “Vegan Week” last night, it really struck me that vegan baking and vegan cooking has come so far in such a fast time. I was kind of stunned that you introduced Paul and Prue to nutritional yeast, which is a staple in my pantry now. Do you feel maybe you guys were original vegan baking influencers?
I mean, I could say that to a degree. I think plant-based baking and vegan baking and vegan cooking have been around for such a long time. I mean, even without the title, though. I come from an Indian household and I’ve been blessed to be brought up around incredible vegetarian dishes. We ate predominantly vegetarian food when we were growing up, but it was never termed as eating anything different. It was just how we ate. There’ll be often times where we wouldn’t be using any dairy in our food, but it didn’t have the title of vegan cooking or plant-based cooking. So it’s definitely a term that is new, but it’s definitely a style of cooking that’s been around for decades.
When it came to it being televised [on Bake Off], it was definitely a big thing because it was quite new. People were still not sure what’s going on. What does it involve? How do you actually turn something that is full of dairy into something still equally delicious? It was so new for us, especially as bakers. Honestly, I was so naive about it. I did a bit of research. I realized you can take chickpea water and turn it into meringue and I thought I nailed it. My test runs went fine. It’s just the pressure button. It’s truly something else and you get caught up in it and then before you know it, you’re presenting a pile of mush to Paul and Prue and being like, that’s what I spent four hours doing. You are welcome.
I want to ask about the book. You know, it’s very striking how, first of all, your face is not on it. A lot of people want to put their face on the cover. Inside, when I read it, though, I hear your voice on every page. Tell me about just the tone that you wanted to set.
Thank you, firstly, for saying that you can feel me in the book, because I really wanted the book to be an extension of me. And I really wanted the book to be really accessible to everyone, no matter what level of baker that you are. Maybe you are a baking novice, maybe you just want to try baking for fun, or maybe you’ve been doing it for a few years and you want to push yourself. I really do believe that there is a recipe or several recipes for everyone at every level.
I wanted also something that was slightly timeless and a bit classic. I come from a design background, so I’ve got two degrees in architecture and design is where I feel at home. So I really feel sorry for my publishers. I wrote to my designer and I was like, “I’m really sorry.” At the end of it, I was like, “I know I’ve been a pain. I know I’ve been the worst and you probably won’t want to work with me again, but it’s just because I was so pedantic, even down to the size of the font and making sure that aesthetically it looks how I wanted it to look.”
I’ve had people ask me why did you not put your face on the cover? Firstly, I hate taking my picture. If I could do this interview just behind a mask, I would probably do that right now. But I wanted something that looked slightly classic and looked timeless so you could pick this book up in a few years time and it would still feel very current. I wanted something that almost also had a nod to the old cookbooks, to the cookbooks where there were no pictures, no faces on the front of the cover. Also I love the fact that I pushed for a jacket on the book, as well, so you have the option to have it basically both ways. Which is super fun and just a bit more of a nod to the theme of the book,.
So I’m really pleased that you say that you can feel my personality there. I love that. The editor only, I think, took out a few swear words in there. She’s left a lot of them in there. So I’m very, very pleased. But I was blessed with a great publisher and a great editor who just really let me just go to town on it.
I have a friend who’s a pastry chef and a food blogger and she talks about recipe testing and how sometimes things are just not initially working out. What was the most challenging recipe to nail?
Oh, a recipe that just did not make the book! Like I said to you, I really am a sore loser. I really don’t like to be bad at something, but vegan choux pastry. Wow, I really could not nail it. At the start, I made an Excel spreadsheet. I love an Excel spreadsheet. I made an Excel spreadsheet to be like, “These are the recipes that are going to go into each chapter.” Just so I could kind of see where I needed to include variation. I got to the pastry section. I was like, “Choux pastry. I am going to nail it.” I honestly thought I was going to be doing something new. I thought people would hail me as a baking genius. Like, “Oh my god, this girl! She has managed to make choux pastry without having any additions from the shops, without any replacements.”
Honestly, I tried so hard. I got to, I think, number seven in the space of two days and I was like, “I’m losing the will to live. I’m progressively getting worse with the choux pastry.” It started to somehow have a minus rise. It was decreasing. My sanity had gone. I’d lost the will to live. I’d spend an exorbitant amount of money trying to buy these ingredients. I was like, “I think this is one I just got to put to rest.”
So unfortunately, I could not vegan choux pastry. Maybe for the next one, but I can’t go back to this yet. I’ve still got PTSD. I just need to give it some time.
I saw in the acknowledgments that you gave a shout out to Antony Amourdoux. Your friendship is one of my favorite things about watching the show. Like, I’m sure you’ve been told this by viewers, but we have a parasocial relationship with you guys. We want to believe you’re our friends. To see you guys be real life buddies, it’s so great. What’s the last time you talked to him and what’s up with him?
What’s he doing? Literally, I spoke to him this morning. We are such good friends. I convinced him to move twenty minutes away from me. A twenty minute walk. That’s how close we now live to each other. He lived too far. I moved and I was, like, “Antony you literally live on the other side of the world.” It was about forty minutes away, but it’s too far for me, and so he gradually moved closer to me.
So we talk all the time. He’s a part of my family, essentially, and I was talking to him today because I’m trying to find out what I should buy him from New York. He is great with presents. I’m notoriously the worst. He will buy me something every time he goes away. He’ll even write me a postcard. He just gets better and better, and I always return home empty-handed for him and I’m trying. I went to Magnolia Bakery, because I’m obsessed with the banana pudding because I’m basic. I was like, “I didn’t realize that you could buy a kit to make the pudding at home.” And I was like, “I’m gonna buy him that.” This morning, I just sent a message, said, “Do you like bananas?” And he said, “No.”
Is there anyone from the show that you haven’t met that you sort of wish you could?
Yes, but this is a bit of a copout answer. She wasn’t a contestant, but I really wish I was on the series with Mary Berry. I’ve never met her. I would love to have — because I love Prue [Leith] as well, equally — but I would have loved to have also had a taste of what it was like on the original show, to see what Mary was like. Because in the UK, she is just a baking goddess. She is the queen. (Aside from Nigella, obviously.)
But, also, I have met Nadiya quite a few times. There’s a food festival back in the UK by the BBC called The Good Food Show, and I tend to host that quite a lot, and Nadiya [Hussain] is always there. I would have loved to have been in the tent with her because she’s honestly such a dream. She’s so sweet and she’s so humble. Even though she has done phenomenally well from the show — and arguably has done the best out of anyone that has come from that show — she is so incredibly humble. It’s so lovely to still know that she is still very genuine and down to earth.
So I would loved to share the tent with Nadiya. I don’t think we would have got much done though, because she loves to chat just like me. So it would have been a hoot, but yeah, she would have been the one.
Would you ever be up to maybe do an all star season of Bake Off?
I have been asked this so many times and I flip between saying yes and then I flip between saying no. The competitive side in me says yes because maybe it’s third time lucky that I lift up that cake plate. But also, I know — and this is going sound very un-humble of me — but I know I have become infinitely a better baker since Bake Off. I know that I have progressed and I know that I’ve grown. When I went into Bake Off, I only went in there with a year’s worth of baking experience. I was so inexperienced in terms of knowledge, technique, and confidence. I would love to be able to return to that tent knowing all the things I know now…and probably not have my cake collapse on TV.
But at the same time, I had such a magical season. I still truly believe, and I know I’m very biased, my season is definitely one of the most entertaining because we had so many big personalities in that tent. I mean, we had Rahul for god’s sake! He automatically puts us at the top of the list. But we had so many big personalities. We had Kim-Joy, who was incredible. We had Dan [Beasley-Harling], we had Antony, who’s also still so memorable, even though he went out in Week 3. We had so many great moments in that series that as much as I’d love to go back, I would hate if it tarnished my experience from my series because we had such an incredible time.
Before I let you go, congratulations. I know that you’re engaged. I also saw on your Instagram that you made your first wedding cake.
I did.
Are you planning on making your own wedding cake or are you gonna take up Rahul on his offer? Because I remember seeing the announcement, Rahul was like, so who’s gonna make the cake? Can you give us an update on what the plans are for the wedding cake?
I’ve got no date for the wedding, by the way, but I’ve got so many offers on the wedding cake. It’s incredible. I did make my first wedding cake for the first time and I absolutely loved it. I’ve never said yes to anyone other than my cousin who I would do anything for. I just said to her, “Look, you don’t have to take me up on this offer, but if someone else makes your wedding cake, I’ll be very sad. But also, I know no one is going to put as much love and time and attention as I would for your wedding cake.”
When it comes to my own, I am inundated with people wanting to make the cake. So I’m very, very fortunate, but I will still make my own cake because I know what I’m like. I will get to the week before, and I’m like, “I’m gonna make a cake.” I’m just going to do it because let’s add a bit more stress in there.
The plan is to have a dessert table. Yeah, I can’t be just having one cake. Like what is the point? Life’s for living, cakes are for eating. Also Antony and Rahul would fall out if I chose one of them over the other. So I’ve got to keep it happy families everywhere. But I just know the moment I tell Rahul the day, he’s going to plan the most elaborate, decorated, tiered-cake, I can’t wait. Honestly, I got to make sure that dress is a stretchy material, because I’m going to be eating.
This interview has been formatted and edited for clarity.