Dame Prue Leith is not slowing down anytime soon. The South African restauranteur shot to fame as a judge on the Great British Bake Off (in the U.S., it’s titled the Great British Baking Show), and she just published her memoirs. She’s also going on tour next year, with a brand-new one-woman show.
Leith is currently a judge on Bake Off‘s American spinoff, The Great American Baking Show, which has a celebrity holiday special, out today on Roku. Of the American celebrities who competed—including Chloe Fineman, D’Arcy Carden, and Joel Kim Booster—Leith says it was a great time filming. But, she admits to Town & Country, “Some of them, I hadn’t ever heard of. Because unless you watch American television, you wouldn’t know them. But some of them were terrific, and very funny.” Her favorite contestant was former NFL star Marshawn Lynch. She shares, “He was very good fun. And he started off really well. And then, well, let’s just say, it’ll make very good watching.”
There are a few key differences in judging Americans vs. Britons. For example, Leith does not understand Americans’ love for peanut butter. “If I get a cake with peanut butter in it, I have to just pretend I like peanut butter, because lots of people love it,” she says. “I don’t know why I don’t like it. It’s just the texture, because I like the taste of peanuts, and I like peanuts. I just don’t like it squashed into a butter. It’s too gooey!”
She also says that bakers in the U.S. often go heavy on the sugar—and the heat. “Americans tend to put more sugar in things, than we would, and more chili,” she says. “I think it’s your proximity to Mexico, that you all love Tex-Mex, and that’s both sweeter and more spicy than the English diet. I love chili, but I just don’t like it to blow your head off.”
So what does she do when she’s judging something and doesn’t like the taste? “I just judge it as if I liked it, because I can see that there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not the baker’s fault, that I don’t like it.”
In celebration of the premiere of The Great American Baking Show: Celebrity Holidays, Leith shared with T&C some of her favorite things—including her favorite cake, what she carries in her purse, and brightly colored glasses and necklaces, of course.
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