Have yourself a very merry BAKE OFF! Winner John Whaite shares his four favourite Christmas recipes (2024)

By Emily Hill

Published: 22:00, 1 December 2012 | Updated: 12:32, 10 September 2013

John Whaite whips off his jumper, rolls up his shirt sleeves and prepares to work his magic. We are in the well-appointed kitchen of a London townhouse so he can share his four favourite Christmas recipes with Mail on Sunday readers.

Ingredients and equipment have been laid out. Pristine utensils are at hand. The state-of-the-art oven is warming. But, then… ‘Hmm, how am I going to get by without baking parchment?’ John wonders, turning to me.

Oh no! It was my job to bring everything on John’s shopping list and I have – idiotically – forgotten the baking parchment.

But this is the winner of BBC2’s The Great British Bake Off. The contestant who used architectural plans to whip up a miniature version of the Roman Colosseum from dark treacle gingerbread.

The baker who cracked 15 eggs into a show-stopping ‘Heaven and Hell’ cake, before finessing its chocolate coating with a hairdryer and applying gold leaf with the delicate touch of an artist.

This is not a man to be easily discombobulated.

‘Don’t worry,’ he grins. ‘I can do without.’

He gets to work on his first creation, Christmassy Strudels, while we chat.

Despite daydreaming throughout the show about a move to Paris to learn more about French patisserie, John has now decided to stay in England.

‘I don’t want to run away to Paris because I don’t want to leave my partner Paul at home,’ he says. ‘Relationships have to come first.’

Instead, in January, he starts studying patisserie at Le Cordon Bleu in London. ‘The course is only 15 hours a week, so I will be able to commute from Manchester at first. It’s a fantastic place – I am so excited.’

Meanwhile, the 23-year-old is looking forward to spending Christmas at the family farm in Wigan, with Paul, a 27-year-old graphic designer. ‘Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without family. Many people go travelling at this time of year but I’ve got to be at home. I couldn’t be anywhere else,’ he says. He will, of course, be baking non-stop.

‘I try not to bake the same thing more than twice but at the start of the festive season my mum’s friends all put in orders for my sticky toffee pudding.

This year I have to make ten and I’ve had lots more requests – for birthday cakes and so on. But that’s not really my thing – I just want to do my patisserie.

‘Actually, what I am most looking forward to is creeping downstairs, in the dead of night, with Paul, to raid the fridge and make a giant Christmas sandwich with the leftovers of my mum’s special ham.’

As John sets to with the electric whisk, I ask him about the accident on the show when, mid-strudel, he caught a finger in the blades of the mixer. He was carried off set, bleeding and feeling faint.

‘Fingergate,’ John sighs. He shows me his finger. ‘It’s still intact – there’s a tiny scar on the end. It wasn’t that bad.

'Television makes things look much worse. When you’re making dough you have to be tactile, so I felt it while it was in the food processor. But I forgot the blade was there and just squeezed.

'I tried to carry on, but we’re a nation mad about health and safety now so I had to get it checked out. Also, it wasn’t very hygienic to make strudel with a bloody finger.’

He douses today’s strudel filling with whisky and drizzles melted butter expertly over his filo pastry as conversation turns to other cooks. John loves Fanny Cradock, but saves his real praise for Nigella Lawson.

‘I think I’d turn straight for Nigella,’ he confides – although he does mention Paul again in the very next breath. ‘I think I must have baked every day of my life. And I do all the cooking at home. Paul can’t even heat up a can of beans.’

Strudels in the oven, John limbers up for his second creation. ‘When it comes to Christmas, I am a total traditionalist,’ he announces, poised to make a two-tone, candy-cane Swiss roll, oozing with raspberries.

He whips up the mixture, adds the colouring and grimaces, saying it tastes of paprika. No one is eating this, he insists, somewhat dramatically.

Needless to say, when it emerges from the oven later it smells like all our Christmases have come at once. And tastes like it, too.

John grew up on a farm near Wigan with his elder sisters, Jane and Victoria, and his mother, Linda. ‘I got into baking when my parents divorced,’ he says.

‘It began when I was five – just me, Mum and my sisters in the kitchen. Since then it’s become inherently comforting. I used to have the washing-up job but I’ve worked my way up the kitchen hierarchy at home.’

At school, John’s natural intelligence took him to the top of his class, and he won a place at Oxford University to read Modern and Medieval Languages.

But missing home – and Paul – he left Oxford for Manchester University, switching to study law. He was sitting his finals at the same time as filming The Great British Bake Off.

In October, seven million viewers tuned in to see him triumph in the show’s first all-male final in which John went cake-to-cake with the favourite, 21-year-old Scottish medical student James Morton, and 63-year-old baking veteran Brendan Lynch.

Judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood crowned him winner and, shortly after filming finished, he graduated with a first.

John’s mother, who had been opposed to him pursuing a career in baking, finally accepted that it wasn’t such a bad idea.

‘I was all set to start a job in banking and I was losing sleep because I didn’t want to do it,’ says John.

‘I was going to be a commercial banker in an asset finance division. It was a fantastic job, I was very lucky but it wasn’t where my heart was – and you have to follow your heart.’

John kept his win a secret and he and his friends tuned in to the show each week to watch. ‘It was awful watching it because you had to start again, emotionally, from day one.

'You watch yourself put salt in a load of rum babas and make an underproved stollen.’

There have been no such disasters in our little bake off, which is completed with John’s pristine mince pies. He dusts them with icing sugar, one-handed.

What is the best advice he could give any future contestants of The Great British Bake Off? ‘A great tip – that James developed and I had to steal – was to swear like a sailor if things went wrong, because then they couldn’t put it on TV,’ he says. ‘I wish I’d learned that sooner.’

And with that, his work here is done and he is off into the night. Looks as if I’m doing the washing-up.

Frangipane? Check. Guinness? Check. Ready, steady — bake!

My idea of cooking is boiling tortellini in a saucepan and putting a fishcake in the oven, so John has his work cut out. Still, he seems convinced he can make a baker of me ...

Candy cane swiss roll – with raspberries and cream

John beats eggs, sugar and vanilla bean paste in a large bowl. He whisks the mixture vigorously until it triples in volume.

Then he folds in flour. He divides the mixture in half and colours one batch red, leaving the other white.

He decants each of these mixtures into separate piping bags.

John snips off the end of each bag with a pair of scissors and begins expertly drawing red and white lines, alternately, down the baking tray.

He makes piping the mixture look easy.

It isn’t. My Swiss roll doesn’t have stripes, it has wiggles.

And don’t even get me started on the next step...

John whips up a Swiss roll filling, using raspberries and double cream.

His perfect baked stripes are removed from the oven.

When cool, he slathers the raspberry filling on top and carefully rolls up his perfect rectangle of thin, striped cake to make a scrumptious Swiss roll.

He neatens up the ends – et voila! I, however, am confronted with a collapsed roll of raspberry mush.

John says you can always spike the cream with a seasonal shot of Framboise liqueur. I console myself with a swig.

• Emily's difficulty rating: 9/10

Mincemeat and frangipane tartlets

The brilliant thing about John’s mince pies is they are at least three times the size of your average mince pie. And they come with an orange-infused frangipane topping. Plus, he serves them with a dollop of brandy butter.

John follows an old French recipe for his pastry. I copy him, placing sugar and egg in a mixing bowl and whisking until aerated.

The flour is tipped in – resembling sandy breadcrumbs. Then the butter is added. The mixture clumps together and kneads easily into a smooth ball. After dusting down the rolling pin, it all rolls out smoothly and can be placed in the heart-shaped tartlet tins.

Unfortunately, I forgot the baking beans. John needs to blind-bake the pastry, so improvises with screwed-up bits of greaseproof paper.

The next step is to spread mincemeat across each baked pastry case, and then pipe on the frangipane.

Again, John makes piping look easy but when our tartlets are baked until brown and puffy you can’t really tell the difference. To make sure, I douse mine with even more icing sugar. It wouldn’t fool Paul Hollywood.

• Emily's difficulty rating: 4/10

Christmassy Strudels – with sweet apples, cranberries, walnuts and grated marzipan

John dices up eight apples into 1cm cubes and mixes them up with cranberries, walnuts and caster sugar. He then adds a liberal dose of whisky to his mixture – which makes it distractingly delicious. John promises that if I concentrate I can have the leftovers afterwards, so we get to work grating marzipan.

Luckily, this recipe doesn’t require making Mary Berry-worthy pastry. You use frozen filo pastry from the supermarket. At least I have remembered to defrost said pastry – John is grateful for such small mercies.

He unrolls the sheets on to the worktop, carefully. He paints each sheet with melted butter and plonks a helping of strudel innards on. He then tucks the whole thing up into a fat sausage shape. I follow his example and soon get the hang of it.

John’s strudels may look much more elegant than mine – but with a liberal sprinkling of icing sugar on the finished product, no one will be able to taste the difference.

• Emily's difficulty rating: 3/10

Last-minute Christmas Cake – with sweetened cranberries, Guinness and dates

With John’s encouraging words ringing in my ears, I decided to bake the Christmas cake at home. It is billed as a last-minute cake but it takes several hours to make, and John didn’t have the time to take me through it on our Great Christmas Bake Off.

On perusing the recipe, I see John admits that ‘some of us do not have the time to make a cake until a few days before the big day’. I last made a cake in the Nineties. Still, there is Guinness in it, so it must be good. I get cracking and the cake does not disappoint. You simply take cranberries, prunes, cherries, currants and dates and put them in a large saucepan with the Guinness.

It smells delicious, simmering away on the stove for five minutes.

Then you add brandy, sugar, butter, eggs, flour, walnuts and all manner of festive ingredients.

Then you bake it. Success at last.

• Emily's difficulty rating: 1/10

CHRISTMASSY STRUDELS

Makes 6

Whenever I visit the Manchester Christmas Markets I always treat myself to a strudel, soaked in custard. There is something so heart-warming about the soft apples and spices that makes me feel so merry and festive. I wanted to make a version that could be served as a pudding at a Christmas dinner party, so I created these gorgeous strudelettes filled with soft sweet apples, cranberries, walnuts and grated marzipan.

INGREDIENTS

8 Medium Granny Smith apples

150g Golden caster sugar

150g Dried sweetened cranberries

2tbsp Whisky

200g Walnut Pieces

200g Golden Marzipan, frozen 30 minutes before use.

12 Sheets of Filo pastry

125g Melted butter

Icing sugar to dust

METHOD

Preheat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6. Peel and core the apples and dice them into 1cm cubes. Place immediately into a mixing bowl and mix with the caster sugar, cranberries, whiskey and walnuts. Remove the marzipan from the freezer and grate into bowl. Place to one side until needed.

Remove the filo pastry from its packet and unfold it. Lay the piled sheets onto the worktop and cover them immediately with a dampened teatowel, to stop them from drying out. Take one sheet of filo and paint it with melted butter, then place another sheet on top and also paint with butter. Take a handful of the filling and place it along one short edge of the filo sheets in a fat sausage shape, leaving about 1 inch of filo at either side of end of the filling, and 2 inches along the length of the filling sausage.

Place the 2-inch filo sides over the filling, then fold over the 1 inch sides and roll the filling up in the filo pastry. It should resemble an oversized spring roll. Place this onto a baking sheet and repeat with the other filo sheets and remaining filling. You should end up with 6 strudels.

Paint the strudels with the remaining butter and sprinkle with a generous sifting of icing sugar. Place into the oven and bake for 15 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 180C/gas mark 4 and bake for a further 20 - 25 minutes. Allow to cool slightly before sprinkling with more icing sugar and serving, as I do, with hot custard and a ball of ice cream.

LAST MINUTE CHRISTMAS CAKE

Makes 1 23cm / 9inch cake

When it comes to making Christmas cake, I am a ‘Christmas Conservative’ and make mine months in advance, however I appreciate that some of us are very busy and don’t have the time to make a cake until just a few days before the big day. With this recipe you could wake up ‘cakeless’ on Christmas Eve, but by Christmas Day you’ll have a moist, fruity cake, perfect for any Christmas table.

The reason this cake is so moist, is because the fruits are first boiled in stout: this helps to soften the fruits and ensure that this moisture seeps into the cake.

INGREDIENTS

150g Dried sweetened cranberries

250g Dried seedless prunes, roughly chopped

250g Glacé cherry halves

150g Currants

175g Dried, seedless dates

400ml Guinness or other stout

75ml Brandy

225g Dark muscovado sugar

225g Butter

4 Large eggs

225g Plain flour

200g Walnut pieces

Zest of 1 large lemon

Zest of 1 large orange

150g Mixed peel

2tsp Mixed spice

METHOD

Preheat the oven to 140C / gas mark 1. Grease a round 23cm /9 inch loose bottomed cake tin with butter and then line the base and sides with a double layer of baking paper. The paper should overlap the sides of the tin by 1 inch.

Place the cranberries, prunes, cherries, currants and dates into a large saucepan with the stout and set over a high heat. Bring to the boil and leave to bubble for one minute, before bringing it down to a simmer and leaving for five more minutes. Remove from the heat and add the brandy, sugar and butter, and stir with a wooden spoon until well incorporated.

Stir in the eggs and flour, along with the walnuts, zests, mixed peel and mixed spice. Mix well, then scoop the batter into the prepared tin. Cover the cake tin with a circle of foil, with a small hole cut in the top, to protect the top of the cake from burning.

Place into the oven on a baking sheet and bake for between 3½ and 4 hours until the cake is baked and has stopped making a gentle bubbling-crackle sound. Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely in the tin before turning out onto a cake stand.

You can decorate this cake however you like, with traditional marzipan and rock solid royal icing, or dried fruits and nuts with an apricot glaze.

CANDY CANE SWISS ROLL

What can I say? This really is as camp as Christmas, but I think it is important that we don’t take ourselves too seriously at Christmas time. This is a particularly fun dessert to make with the kids, but you can also spike the cream with a seasonal shot of Framboise liqueur for your older guests.

INGREDIENTS

For the sponge roll

3 Large eggs

90g Caster sugar

1tsp Vanilla bean paste

90g Plain flour

1tbsp Sunflower oil

Red food colouring (liquid is better here as it will be easier to incorporate)

For the filling

250ml Double cream

1tsp Vanilla bean paste

3tbsp Icing sugar

50ml Framboise or Creme de Cassis liqueur (optional)

5tbsp Best quality raspberry jam

100g Raspberries

You will also need 2 disposable piping bags and a 30cm x 20cm Swiss roll tin.

METHOD

Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Grease a 30cm x 20cm Swiss roll tin and line with baking paper; grease the baking paper too so that it will be easier to release the baked sponge.

Place the eggs, sugar and vanilla bean paste into a large mixing bowl and whisk using an electric handheld beater for no less than 5 minutes. Once the mixture is extremely light and has tripled in volume, gently fold in the sifted flour and sunflower oil, and pour half of it into a closed disposable piping bag; place the piping bag into a pint glass or small jug and fold the edges over the sides of the vessel so that it is held open as you fill it.

With the remaining sponge mixture, add a teaspoon of red liquid food colouring and fold in gently, until you have a consistent pinkish-red batter. Pour this into a second closed piping bag.

Now twist the filling ends of each bag and snip about 1cm off the piping ends. Using the uncoloured sponge mix, pipe a line of batter across the width of the Swiss roll tin. Repeat this with the coloured batter, then again with the uncoloured and so on, until you have filled the tin with alternate lines.

Place into the preheated oven and bake for 10 minutes. When baked remove from the oven and tip onto a sheet of baking paper sprinkled with caster sugar. Gently remove the baking paper from the sponge. The bottom of the sponge will now be the top so flip the sponge over - gently - so that the bottom is once again on the bottom. Allow to cool completely.

To make the filling mix together the cream, vanilla bean paste and icing sugar and whisk until the cream has thickened into soft peaks. If you are using liqueur, fold it in now.

When the sponge is cool, spread the jam over the entire surface of it, then arrange the raspberries on top of the jam. Finally dollop the cream over the top and then slice a tiny bit off the two shortest edges of the sponge, which will help it roll more easily. Roll the whole thing up at right-angles to the stripes so that when completely rolled, the stripes go across the length of the roll.

Eat within a day of making it; because the sponge has very little fat in it, it will not keep very long.

MINCE AND FRANGIPANE TARTLETS

Makes 4

Of course no household is complete at Christmas without a load of mince pies, but I particularly love my version; not only are they bigger than the conventional mince pie, but they come with an orangey frangipane topping. These, served with a dollop of brandy butter, will transform even the most cold-hearted Scrooge into a festive fiend.

For the pastry, I use an old French recipe by Ginette Mathiot, however if you don’t enjoy making pastry yourself then you can easily use shop-bought sweet shortcrust pastry.

INGREDIENTS

For the Pastry

65g Caster sugar

1 Small egg

125g Plain flour

65g Butter, chopped into 1cm chunks

For the filling

6tbsp Best quality mincemeat

55g Butter

55g Caster sugar

1 Large egg

55g Ground almonds

1tbsp Plain flour

1tsp baking powder

½tsp Almond extract

Zest of half an Orange

Icing sugar to serve

You will also need 4 x 9cm/3.5 inch loose bottomed tartlet tins and a disposable piping bag.

METHOD

To make the pastry, place the sugar and egg into a mixing bowl and whisk together with a balloon whisk for two minutes, until the sugar is well dissolved and the egg slightly aerated. Tip in the flour and mix in using a wooden spoon until it resembles sandy breadcrumbs. Finally, add the butter cubes and cut these in using a table knife. When the butter is sufficiently incorporated the mixture will start to clump together; at this stage tip the mix onto the worktop and knead gently until it forms a smooth ball. Wrap in cling and leave in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Meanwhile make the frangipane by creaming together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in the egg, almonds, flour, baking powder, almond extract and zest. Place to one side until needed.

Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. When the pastry has chilled, roll it out on a well-floured surface using a rolling pin, until the pastry is about 4mm thick. Cut out circles of pastry that are bigger than the tartlet tins. Line the tartlet tins with the pastry, ensuring you press the pastry firmly into the grooves of the tin. Trim off the excess pastry hand place the tins into the freezer for 15 minutes.

Remove the lined tins from the freezer and place a square of baking paper into each pastry-lined tin, then fill the paper with rice or baking beans. Place the tins onto a baking sheet and into the oven for 12 minutes. Remove the baking beans and baking paper and place the pastry-lined tins back into the oven for 10 minutes more. Remove and allow to cool slightly.

Place 1.5 tablespoons of mincemeat into the base of each pastry case and smooth over. Place the frangipane into a disposable piping bag and snip off about 1cm from the piping end. Pipe the frangipane in spirals on top of the mincemeat, trying to cover the mincemeat as best you can. Reduce the oven temperature to 150C/gas mark 2, place the tarts back into the oven on the baking sheet and and bake for a further 30 minutes, until the frangipane is puffed and slightly brown around the edges.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely before removing from the tins and sprinkling over a heavy snowfall of icing sugar.