MY LIFE IN FOOD: Ruby Bhogal
- The baker and presenter, 34, tells Tom Parker Bowles about craving Turkey Twizzlers, munching on bars of butter and finding comfort in a curry sandwich
My parents have a photograph of my first food memory.
I’m about two or three years old and have my back to the camera. But I’m turning around, with a very cheeky smile, and am eating a stick of butter like it’s an apple. I was a butter fiend. I should have known back then that I was destined to be a baker.
I grew up in a village not far from Ascot.
My mum is from Punjab in India and my dad is from Uganda. I was blessed to have grown up in a household where spice and food were in abundance. They both cook very well. We were a mostly vegetarian household, but I was always around great food from an early age.
I’m the youngest of four, so when my siblings were all at university I was at home with my mum.
I spent a lot of time with her in the kitchen. She is not the greatest baker (her cakes are flat!), but when it comes to Indian food she’s incredible. Everything I know about Indian cooking comes from her.
I loved school dinners and for a few years my mum was a dinner lady at my school.
She didn’t cook Indian dishes there, rather classic English school meals. It also meant I got three scoops of mash rather than two. She’d take home any leftovers. So while I was eating all these wonderful curries, I was craving fish fingers, Turkey Twizzlers and smiley face fries – really crap but incredibly delicious.
If there was ever any chocolate in the house it would be immediately demolished.
We were all so bad that we were only allowed a bag of sweets every Saturday. There would be Maryland cookies, which are terrible, as well as KitKats, Time Outs and Penguins.
I fell into baking by pure chance.
I was an architect by trade, and now I just construct gingerbread houses. The irony is not lost on me. I was in Liverpool for about ten years after my degree, then decided to come back to London to be close to family. But I was unemployed for a year and started baking because I had nothing else to do. It saved my sanity at what was a dark time. I felt as though I lost my identity, but through baking, I found who I really am.
Ruby was The Great British Bake Off runner-up in 2018
I’d only been baking for about a year before I went on The Great British Bake Off, so I was very inexperienced.
Because of that I had zero expectation of winning, and didn’t take it too seriously [she was runner-up]. I was just happy to be in the tent. It was like baking at home, except you had 15 cameras shoved in your face. Any time there was a mistake, they’d be on it.
I’m very clumsy, which is not a good thing for a baker, dropping about three eggs daily on the floor.
There are mistakes by the dozen. But baking is still very much my therapy, if you call therapy me swearing, shouting at something, screaming at myself, or things not going right.
Ruby always has cakes in the fridge and used to pick the peas out of samosas
Baking is about patience. If it doesn’t go right the first time, you’ve got to go again.
There’s not much instant gratification as it’s an exact science. If you don’t have patience, I don’t think baking is for you.
I used to hate peas.
Whenever we had samosas, a very common Indian snack, I’d pick the peas out.
My comfort food is my mum’s Indian cooking.
Whenever I go home, my head is straight in that fridge, putting last night’s curry between some really rubbish white bread and having the best sandwich that you’ve ever eaten.
I always have about five cakes in my fridge.
They all have a random slice out of them, because I’ve been taking pictures.
My last meal would be a frozen supermarket strawberry gateau.
It tastes slightly synthetic, but it’s a fond childhood memory. I’d happily go to town on it with just me and a fork. No sharing.
One Bake, Two Ways by Ruby Bhogal (HarperCollins, £26). To order a copy for £22.10 until 21 July, go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937. Free UK delivery on orders over £25.
