John Whaite Quotes

The Great British Bake Off’ has rapidly evolved into one of the nation’s favourite TV shows.

To see a world where two men can dance together, it can instil the fear of God into people.

We need to break the stigma around depression.

When you’re panicking you make rash decisions.

I started baking with my family and friends. We would make easy and competent dishes and spend our evenings and weekends together in the kitchen. It was quite argumentative and ferocious – it was family life. That instilled the love and comfort of food for me.

It seems unlikely that a 70-something-year-old grandmother could be one of Britain’s most iconic celebrities, but Mary Berry defies all expectations.

There’s little in life so disappointing as a sunken cake.

I always wanted to be in the food industry, so I had to break away from the novelty of the ‘Bake Off’ and actually learn my trade. So, I had to go to Le Cordon Bleu to train.

One of my favourite low-carb suppers is a Spanish tortilla using cauliflower in place of the potato.

Nigella Lawson is truly sexy.

As a child my life was shrouded by fear. Every night I would crawl into the alcove outside my sisters’ bedrooms and sleep on the floor, just to feel as though I wasn’t alone.

I am so excited to be ‘Strictly-fied.’

My career could go up in smoke and as long as I’ve got my health and my family then nothing else matters.

How could anyone not use the humble chestnut at Christmas? It has a great flavour and can be used to make chocolate cake more festive.

I am a complete magpie when it comes to gold leaf. I use it throughout the year but it is especially fitting at Christmas.

I just want to say to men, it doesn’t matter if you’re straight, it doesn’t matter if you’re gay, asexual, whatever you are, you have to speak, you have to talk, you have to find the help that you need, the help is there.

I had zero interest in banking, but the mountainous pile of legal training contract rejections forced me to look elsewhere. As a malleable graduate, I, as many students do, took whatever I could get.

Life shouldn’t be about arbitrary power, for power’s sake, but about respect, mutuality, decency.

I do like my own space. I like to just block the noise out after a while.

Ballet is very stiff and I can do a triple timestep but who knows what I will be like at Ballroom or Latin.

I like my entire house, including my kitchen, to feel womb-like.

Especially as a chef, I didn’t really want to talk about it because I felt like it kind of undermined my entire career. How can a chef who writes recipes and books and cooks on TV, how can he realistically have bulimia?

As a depressive, routine is sand slipping through my fingers. Being self-employed doesn’t help.

Baking is very meditative. It’s precise – you have to weigh out the ingredients, follow it step by step and focus on everything, so it’s just right. It also brings you out of your shell, because if you’ve made a batch of brownies, you share them and its really sociable like that.

Make the choice, if you can, to get milk direct from farms or farm drop services. We need the supermarkets, of course we do, but we need our farmers, too.

We hear a lot about this phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ but I think the real poison in manhood is silence.

I’ve grown quite tired of the term ‘superfood.’

A cake overpopulated with air is due to either too much chemical raising agent, an over zealous whisker, or a yeasted dough/batter that has had too long a rising stage.

The problem with a lot of modern recipes is that you have a great list of ingredients and you only need a tiny bit of each one so the rest perishes in the fridge.

I like pie! Pie with proper pastry and a meaty filling always works. It just makes you feel good.

My dance skills are reliant on me being a bit pickled in a nightclub, if I try to do a dance move sober it doesn’t go very well, but I used to do ballet and tap so I have to be shown what do, so if I watch things I pick things up quite quickly.

Between the ages of 10-14, I did ballet, modern and tap. So I may have a few dancing bones in my body, but I’m not necessarily very good rhythmically.

For me, as many dark days as I have, I have bright days where I can achieve so much.

I was doing my barrister training in Leeds, so I was getting up at 5 A.M. and getting home and 10 P.M., and for me, that was a really stressful time.

When the post-‘GBBO’ media frenzy began I gladly quit my job. I darted up and down the country, heading to meetings with publishing houses.

I’ve grown to love veg – I didn’t have a choice – and I’ve always been mad on cauliflower. It has a gentle nutty sweetness that intensifies when cooked; and you can’t deny that a bowlful of cauliflower cheese is one of the ultimate comfort foods.

Ever since I was a little lad, the sun has seemed to shine during my birthday weekend.

Baking helps lift my depression. It can’t cure it but it helps.

Relationships have to come first.

I can vividly remember the first time I ate a pasty. After a busy day shopping with my gran, she treated me to one. Wide-eyed and with a watering mouth, I chomped down into the crisp, buttery casing. It yielded to my eager bite; the pastry flaked and fluttered down my front.

Just to see two men or two women dancing together, it’s not necessarily about sexuality, it’s just about intimacy and respect.

Later, one of my first jobs was to feed the calves. It meant getting up before the crack of dawn and going to school stinking of manure – you can never shift the smell; it soaks your clothes and hair.

During the ‘The Great British Bake Off’ I didn’t get to know Mary all that well. We weren’t allowed to interact with the judges outside of their moments of critique and commentary.

I learned my love of food from my mum.

I don’t question the importance of learning how to cook at school. It’s vital that children know how to create a few dishes to sustain themselves in later life, but that’s different from the emotional, nurturing environment of the home kitchen with Mum.