'Great British Bake Off' Star Bakes Queen's Birthday Cake
Anyone who watches The Great British Bake Off (and if you don't, we really recommend that you start) understands that cooking for judges Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry is pretty intense. But that doesn't even remotely compare to Bake Off champ Nadiya Hussain's latest assignment: baking a cake for the Queen's 90th birthday, which she's celebrating in Windsor today.
Hussain tells NPR that when she was first asked, she nearly said no, "because I was so afraid of getting it horribly wrong. And then it dawned on me that I can't say no to the Queen. So once I got over the nerves, I thought, 'Well, actually this is such an honor,; how can I possibly say no?'"
Apparently, the team at Windsor didn't give her much direction on which type of cake the Queen likes, so she went for something creative and playful: a three-tiered orange drizzle cake with vanilla buttercream and orange marmalade, wrapped in purple, violet and yellow fondant. "I don't know if she even likes orange," Hussain tells The Telegraph. "I don't want to disappoint the Queen. The pressure is on again."
Here are the layers on their way:
Bye bye cakes @BritishMonarchy #HerMajestyTheQueen pic.twitter.com/Uj7e1nIbpj
— Nadiya Jamir Hussain (@BegumNadiya) April 21, 2016
Hussain was there to present the cake to her majesty:
While today is the Queen's actual birthday, the country's "official" celebration will take place this summer with a 10,000-person picnic outside Buckingham Palace. Anyone up for that baking challenge?