This week saw the launch of Channel 4’s The Great British Bake Off 2022, and in the line-up is Carole Edwards from Sherborne, the second Dorset contestant to enter this world-famous tent.
With her fabulous pink and purple hair and broad smile, you’re not going to forget The Great British Bake Off’s second ever Dorset contestant – Carole Edwards from Sherborne. She is following in the path of our first GBBO competitor from Dorset who entered the tent last year, Maggie Richardson from Poole. She is now a Dorset magazine regular with her monthly baking column Maggie the Seaside Baker.
Born and bred in the West Country, 59-year-old Carole lives in a pretty bungalow on a Dorset hillside with her husband, Michael. When not working at her local supermarket, she is a keen baker and gardener. Carole has already tasted fame via her gardening segment on a local radio show, where she is called ‘Compost Carole’ (find her on Instagram @compostcarole), and shares her green-fingered know-how with listeners.
Carole brings the artistry and attention to detail that she uses in her garden to her baking, creating colourful and eclectic bakes that are inspired by her passion for horticulture. She began her dedicated baking journey with a first birthday cake for her eldest granddaughter Maisie. Since then, she has refined her skills, using YouTube to teach herself the finer techniques of decoration. Her favourite flavours are fruity and punchy. And if she was a cake, she says it would be a carrot cake.
Carole did well on her first outing in the famous tent. First up was the Signature Bake – 12 mini sandwich cakes. Inspired by her garden Carole created 12 stunning To Bee or Not To Bee cakes, featuring homemade lemon curd, and topped with awwww inducing edible bee decoration, Paul and Prue were all of a buzz over Carole’s cakes which they described as ‘nicely balanced’ and they loved her zesty lemon curd.
The Technical Challenge of Red Velvet Cake with six layers held no fears for our Carole, who softly crooned ‘Come on my babies’ through the glass oven door to her rapidly raising sponges, before whipping up a very passable Red Velvet cake that passed muster for flavour and texture.
The Showstopper can only be described as a ‘home bake’ as the judges wanted a 3D cake replica of the baker’s homes, or a home that had fond memories. Whilst some created childhood memories of homes they had loved, Carole was keen to recreate her Dorset bungalow in coffee and walnut sponge with colourful piped flowers around the door, and topped with a sugar fondant roof. ‘Carole’s Little House in the Country’ drew compliments for being ‘beautifully neat’ from Prue. But her use of a retro coffee flavouring of chicory, and from all accounts quite a lot of it, set the judges’ pulses racing. She confessed that there was ‘a good glug of coffee’ in the cake – which Paul, with an arched eye-brow, declared ‘fascinating’.
Well done, Carole you have survived and thrived. Next week is Biscuit Week, we can’t wait to see what bakes you will create as you proudly fly the flag for Dorset at GBBO, we are cheering you on from Dorset and beyond.
Click here for former GBBO star Maggie's ammonite inspired picnic loaf
