Welcome to Off the Shelf Sheffield's Festival of Writing. This is a special conversation as part of our digital programme in association with the University of Sheffield. I'm Trisha Cooper from BBC Radio Sheffield, and I'm delighted and honoured to be having a conversation today about this wonderful book Showstopping Cakes with the winner of Bake Off 2018, Rahul Mandal. It's lovely to talk to you, Rahul. Welcome to you as well. Thank you. 2018, that's a while ago now. I know. Yeah. When you thin
k like that, it's about five years. Time just flies. Whoa. A lot's happened since then. I was looking into things and I mean, I like to keep things like all the clothes I wear for Bake Off, all the shoes and stuff. I still have them, and I don't want to throw them away. Can you remember what you were wearing for all those episodes in the final? Isn't it in TV it's always recorded, so you can't really forget. I only had two pairs of shoes that time, so I wear that one. I had a nice shoe and that
still had marks of white chocolate dripped over it, and probably some other chocolate and other sweet sugary things. I still have those things. But yeah, five years is a long time. But I guess through memory, you wore an apron. Did you wear an apron? I did, but I didn't know that time that you can take the apron back. I was a very good student in that way. I just didn't take it. However, when I went back in for the New Year Bake Off for 2020, it was shown in 2021, I think in January 2021. I did
know by that time that you can take the apron back. So that green apron I was wearing for that I did take back, and it is also smeared and covered with chocolate. I haven't washed it as well. You haven't even washed it? Because I wanted to keep it like that. That's a memory, isn't it? That's a great excuse not to wash things, isn't it? People are going to think that I'm when I do wash everything. But I'm wondering about your kitchen at home now. No kitchen is okay, but I have loads of stuff, lik
e we're just tidying up even this morning, and I probably have about seven or eight whisks of different sizes, starting from very tiny, small ones. Say, suppose you wanted to whisk a couple of egg yolks for a custard or creme anglaise You don't want it to use a big one that you are basically whisked to mix something, or you're making a genoa batter or folding in flour or things like that. So that's why lots of different sizes of whisks. Spatulas, pallet knives, amazing for smoothing cakes. And y
ou can't smooth with a big pallet knife, small cakes. So I kind of gathered it over the year. However, even though I said that when I went to Bake Off, the only baking equipments I have is probably four cake tins and one or two spatulas and probably one or two pallet knives and few things I borrowed from my colleagues. And that's about it. That's normal. That would be a normal kitchen, wouldn't it? So that was Bake off 2018. What about now? 2023. Literally a tall rack, which is supposed to be li
ke a book rack, full with cake tins. Because I make quite different things and sometimes some ideas come into my mind, say, middle of the night, or when some idea came into my mind, I want to do it, I know I should wait. But waiting, for you to buy something and it takes two days, three days, a week to come, you just can't resist that urge of making it. And by the time they arrive, you probably completely lost the idea. Even if I write it down, you lose the passion of making it. So I like things
to be there all the time, so that, whenever I want to make things, it's there. And hence I have tons of baking things now. I mean, a huge amount of baking articles, as you said. My wife Shreya is here now and she was asking me that day, how do you manage to get so many things? It was an incredible amount of things. Congratulations on your marriage to Shreya. Yeah, that's lovely. You posted about it on social media, haven't you? Obviously, it was like a big thing. I mean, wedding is big thing f
or everyone. We knew each other for more than two years. About two years when you get married. And then I went to India, then we get the wedding done and then we came back and then applied for a visa. And then after she got the visa, she's here now. Did you have a wedding cake? We don't do wedding cakes in India. So that was I don't know, because in India, weddings are different, significantly different than weddings here, so it kind of lasts over. The main wedding is one day and the reception i
s probably one or two days later. And there are a few other days around the wedding day and the reception day. So in that way, it's quite a well spread occasion. And also, considering the number of guests that are present in the wedding, people usually just come and they just eat and then they leave. So it's not like a sit down meal where everybody sit down and after the meal, you cut the cake as such. And by the time we finished our wedding, it was almost about midnight. So when we went to actu
ally eat our food, almost more than half of the guests have left and we're literally eating the last bit of food, because our wedding was literally like late evening. So it kind of started around nine, half nine, because wedding happens during a very auspicious time that's been decided in the Hindu calendars, so it has to be like in UK, weddings normally happen on Saturdays because that's a convenient day for everyone. Even though our wedding was on a Sunday, it was based on some calendar where
they have some particular days when you can get married. There's some particular time between the time you have to get married and our timing was towards the end of the evening, so it was a couple of hours, like rituals and ceremonies. This kind of started around nine ish probably it probably finished around eleven. So by the time when we went to food, as I said, most of the guests were gone. It was only close friends and relatives left. And no cake! Even though you're the winner of the UK Bake
Off, I bet nobody would even dare. Tell me how it all began. For you. This journey towards Bake Off and your Showstopping, Cakes and beyond. Where did it begin? Yeah, well, as you said, a lot of Indian probably would realize, who lived in India before, is a normal Indian household, normally doesn't have an oven, so baking cake is quite a - it's not a regular thing. So we didn't have an oven. I grow up with lots of different sweets and lots of lovely homecooked meals, but not cake in a way. Not
a home baked cake. For cakes, you can get separate ovens. They look like a carrier box or like a tupperware, but made out of metal. And then you plug it in and you put only one, like a cake tin in and basically the cake is baked. And normally people, the cake they make there is either like a normal vanilla sponge or maybe chocolate sponge or fruit cake. That's quite popular. I mean, my first cakes were probably fruitcake that you easily get in the shops for Christmas. That's the time when prett
y much all corner shops or any kind of shop would definitely stock cake and people will have that, so there is no influence as such in there. And then when I came to UK, I went to Loughborough and Loughborough University and I lived in a shared house. And in our house also, not many people used to use the oven, so we used to kind of store lots of trays. Not trays like empty pots and pans there, because obviously, like five people living in a shared house, tiny kitchen, no space. But I had seen o
ne of my housemates, he get very experimental and he started making some cinnamon rolls, some normal bread rolls, or just toast some almonds with some honey and stuff. So I used to get really intrigued, but never really tried any. I think the whole baking journey started, in a way, the very early days, I would say, in Loughborough, but it was just to give presents to my garden society friends. Oh, the Gardening Society! Tell me about the gardening society. How did that start? It's just like I ca
me to UK as a PhD student and my regular life was just going to lab, coming back home, that's pretty much it. But then slowly, after staying two years in UK, I think somebody told me there is a gardening society. I like to do a bit of gardening and like plants and flowers and stuff. I really enjoy doing those things. And I was actually pretty much turned my downstairs living area in the shared house. I was living in a tomato jungle. When you plant like tomato plants, you think they're not enough
. And I planted probably four or five tomato plants I bought and then they started to grow and the summer hits and think about downstairs with heating on and lots of sunshine, they just started to grow really fast and put some support in it. They literally created jungle tomatoes started to grow. Yeah, I had like from four plants, I have about 100 tomatoes and I grown courgettes and things. And I was so surprised that you can buy those seeds in supermarket, because in India, like, how do you pro
pagate plants? You go to your neighbour, you either steal some plants from them or ask them nicely to give them some seeds. And that's how you kind of propagate plants. Whether here I was so happy and surprised you can actually buy seeds in supermarket. So that's how the whole journey started. And then when I find out there is a garden society, I went there and there is lots of like minded people, a lot of international students there. And when you make friends with them, I realise that people d
o give presents to each other during Christmas. And being in an international scholarship, it is very tight. You can't really afford to buy loads of presents for people, but you can bake them. So then I basically I've seen Nigella Lawson making the little star top mince pies and then making stained glass cookies and I feel like, you know what, maybe I should do those. But I'll be honest, I didn't either make the pastry or make the mince meat. All shop bought, I just assembled it. And that were m
y Christmas present in, I think it's 2012. That's what I give to people. And that's where the very early bit snippets of baking started. But the main bits of baking started when I moved to Sheffield or Rotherham. After I got a job in University of Sheffield in AMRC, I basically moved to Rotherham because that was quite close. But obviously I had a good circle of friends and people I knew there. And then suddenly I don't know much people. Many people here. No. So you come from Loughborough to Rot
herham, you had all your friends in Loughborough, you land in Rotherham, lovely job at the advanced nuclear manufacturing. Lovely. But still you don't know a soul So yeah. So what did you do? Well, that's when baking kind of slowly creeped in, because I kind of thought, okay, maybe I could what to do when you have loads of time to spare and to kill. So I basically started to do a bit of baking. And I remember the very first cake I baked, I didn't even know there are two settings in oven. I made
a Victoria sponge. I watched Mary Berry making it in YouTube for 20 times, and I still did it wrong. What did you do wrong? Well, that's the thing. So I brought it to my colleagues, and they still devoured it. But one of my colleagues said, you know, Rahul, the inside of the cake is slightly underdone and the outside is a bit overdone. And she asked me, what temperature did you bake it in? I said, 180 degrees, because that's what she was baking it. And then she asked me, did you know that you ha
ve a fan oven? I feel like, I don't know, maybe a fan oven. Then she said, if it's a fan oven, it's 20 degree lower, so it has to be 160 degree fan. Then I basically tried it again, and that came out perfect. Because that's the thing. Obviously, if the temperatures are higher, the cake get browned faster, but the inside still remain a bit underdone. I guess that appealed to you, though, as an engineer. The whole science and engineering bit, I pretty much took that as a project or like a school e
xam kind of thing, or school lessons. So I did one thing, and then I feel like, okay, what can I do next? And then after the Victoria sponge I made, okay, so I make normal Victoria sponge with jam and cream. Let's try some buttercream. So that's my second cake. And that was even hilarious because I wanted to do a lot of decorations and things, so I didn't know how much buttercream is enough for two sponges. So I bought 500 grams of butter and a kilo of icing sugar and made 1.5 kilos of buttercre
am. That's a mountain! Yeah, and then I just basically start keeping piping around it, do a lot of decoration. It wasn't pretty, but I just keep doing it because I feel I needed to use it. Otherwise how am I going to do it, what I'm going to do with so much buttercream? So as a scientist, as an engineer, were you working out how the different ingredients interacted, different temperatures? Exactly. That must have intrigued you. Yeah, and also there are tons of cake recipes in oven. So what I use
d to do is say, I want to make a carrot cake. I used to go to Internet and find out all the possible carrot cake recipes you can find. I used to note it down in my copy and then compare what's the difference in them. And from there I basically say, okay, so the main ingredients is pretty much same, just the ratios are different. And then I basically say, okay, how about I mix this with this and this with this and make my own and see whether it works or not. And it does work and it tasted nice a
nd I bring it to work and people liked it. And that's how all my recipes developed. Pretty much. A lot of people say when they grew up, they knew baking from their family, they saw their mum's baking, they saw their nan's baking. I haven't seen that. So I didn't have that generations of handed down recipes. So I just use my research background to do like a proper literature search on every recipe and find out what's best. Like an academic exercise, pretty much I treat it like that. And also soc
ial exercise because you realise back in the day, tomatoes and the mince pies, that actually it was a social thing. People love homemade things, they love the idea of receiving something that you have lovingly created and that gives you a buzz. And also that makes a relationship. Exactly with the local, I have to say, with the social culture where you live, it's very important that it doesn't matter wherever you live, it's important to know and get to know the people around there. Because if yo
u are living there, you need to know the community there and you need to be part of the community. And I always wanted to do that. So in a way, baking helped me with that. So obviously along bringing cakes to work, what I started doing is bring cakes to the local leisure centre where I used to go for gym and swim. It's quite an ironic, but I don't used to bring it inside the gym. So by people exercising and ask them okay, eat my cake, I used to just give it to the people in the reception and the
n all the staff there, the trainers, they used to love it. I think they kind of started knowing me and I kind of started knowing them, so I think that definitely helped. So you need to have that support of people. As a human being. w e love to be surrounded by people and supported with people. And I think I kind of developed in that way, or even better. As I said, when I bake, I sometimes probably bake in the middle of the night as well. So I realize I'm running out of butter. So I basically ra
n to the supermarket. But I have some cakes that I made earlier and I remember in the very early days, what I used to do is I just slide the cakes up, wrap it in cling film or foil, and then go to the supermarket. And by this time I've already started talking with different staffs in the supermarket. So I kind of knew them, I kind of went there and I basically asked them do you like cake? If they say yes, if like, do you like to try some cake I made? And normally it's a big yes from everyone. At
the end of the day, they probably have a very hard day. Somebody said something to them, maybe some customer wasn't nice or maybe just they are very tired and just having that piece of cake, it just makes them happy. They try the cake, they say, oh yeah, it's really good and somehow it's about eleven in the night. It gives me a lot of energy and makes me happy so that I can come back and do even more baking. It's a great cure for loneliness, isn't it? To get yourself loved. And Noel Fielding sa
id just don't try to do that in London! Noel Fielding said that to you? I said, just don't try to do that in London or in the Tube. Will you try my cake? You've taken his advice, I guess So I guess it's only possible also because it's up north. I mean, I speak with people in bus. I know many people find it weird, but I travel in bus every day and if I see someone getting the same bus with like me more than two times and three times and sitting around me, I just tap on the shoulder and say hi to
them and start talking. I mean, I used to do that before Bake Off and now it is I do do it. But yeah, it's a very northern thing. You're definitely a northerner, aren't you? For sure. Let's take a look. You've described a lot, you've described your journey and how Nigella came to your rescue and then the Mary Berry Cake. So should we take a little look at the book? We'll take a look at some of the cakes and also the beauty of this book, which is so, so gorgeous. But we've got a few cakes which I
've kind of really couldn't resist asking you about. And the first one is this one. Oh, that's the Fault line cake. The Fault line cake, which is so beautiful. But I'd never heard of a fault line cake before. So what do you mean by a fault line? How do you make it fault line? I think it's a trend, it's a social trend of cake making, which probably came into the whole thing probably about four or five years ago. It's quite a simple idea. So you ice a cake but you don't put the icing all over the
cake or buttercream. You can even do it with fondant if you want to. But whatever you use, you don't ice the whole cake. You keep some of the side, like a belt in the side of the cake empty and kind of reciprocating whatever flavour inside or say whatever the colour of the cake. So you basically stud the side that belt, the anti belt with that thing. So it's kind of like kind of giving a bit of hint of what is inside the cake or what you're expecting. So that's kind of thing, it's really easy to
do, but very effective. It is a show stopper in that in its own way. So the easiest thing. What I did for this is it's a lemon cake. So I sliced some lemons and then just microwave it slightly so that it's just a bit more bendy. And then just stud it around inside, but not inside sorry, middle of the outside of the cake first. And then put icing on the top and bottom. And then just use a pallet knife, like in a big pallet knife. There you go. A big one. To smooth it all around the side, you did
n't need to smooth the top or anything. You basically smooth it so that you wanted to have that kind of scruffy edge around that little bit in the middle, around the belt area and in the top. You can smooth it, you can leave it scruffy. And then just make sure you chill it before you try to paint it. I think with fault line, a bit of metal touch around the fault lines. Looks really pretty and effective. You've chosen it for the front of your book. I didn't choose this cake actually The publisher
s choose that. I wanted to put something really glorious, like a two tier cake or something, but they said it's a book. Even though you show show stopping cakes, people wanted something that's achievable and doable. And also people think, you know what? I can do that in home. I think that's why it's been chosen. It's really funny because originally we decided we are going to use that two tier cake with pears on it, like a caramel drip, as a cover. But then I had this yellow jumper. I bought tha
t for the shoot, and I just thought, can I just take a picture of this with the yellow jumper? Because I really like it. I mean, if you don't use it for the book, I'll use it for my social media. So you match and in fact, you've got a kind of lemony, creamy jumper. Yeah, I quite like yellow Very summery, I think. Yeah, I like bright, vivid colors. What would mine be? Kind of a raspberry cake to go with the raspberry. Or maybe how about the terrazzo? How about the plum and almond? Look at that on
e again. Plum and almond is a classic combination. You can't beat it. It's a lovely cake. And I have seen again, that was a social media trend to do a terrazzo decoration. Okay, so what is terrazzo decoration? You see terrazzo style decoration in floors mainly like little bits of stone studded into the floors, in mosaic floors You can do similar in cakes, but what you do is it's kind of like a reverse process in that. So what you do is I use ganache for it. So you coat the cake with ganache. You
can use buttercream as well. And then you basically cut little bits out from the buttercream, and then you fill those with darker colour ganache or any other colour ganache you wanted to use. And then you use a smaller pallet knife. This time because the cake is small, not as tall as that cake I need to get some more pallet knives. You need different sizes of things to smooth out the sides and that's it. And then you decorate it with some plums on top. It's just these are the things like those
little small decoration techniques. It just make your cake so special and look incredible. People will think you've spent hours and ages to decorate it, but it's not. It's really simple, quick and easy. Once you have done once or twice, you know exactly how to do it. And you've got your whisks and you've got your pallet knife. and all your paraphenalia You know what the funny thing is? Even if you don't have a pallet knife, what you could actually use, you know the bent scraper that if you're ma
king bread or something, you can actually use that for smoothing the sides of the cake. Or if you have ruler that works. A ruler? Just a ruler. A school ruler. I used to use ruler before. Well, when I was practicing for Bake Off I didn't have pallet knife or scrapers. I used to use rulers sometimes. I used to use the normal table knives. Not the posh ones that have a thicker handle. The ones that you get quite cheap ones. They're all like same uniform thickness all over. They're quite good as w
ell. Wow. Gosh, that's amazing. Now, there's another amazing cake here because I was thinking, baking the cake is only the beginning of the process, isn't it? And it's the decorating that takes you into the show stopping. Exactly. I mean, all the cakes doesn't matter. I mean, what I learned from work is doesn't matter whatever cake it is. I mean, it always gets finished within half an hour. But if it looks pretty, it probably takes slightly longer because the first slice, people take longer time
to think, should he cut the cake? Should he not cut the cake? I quite like that bringing out it. I like to surprise my colleagues. If I knew that someone's birthday probably a lot of people now expect, but I used to just bring a cake out for them, really nice and pretty, and then surprise them. And they just said, should he cut it? Should he not cut it? I really like they like to appreciate it and they just at the end used to say to me that, why don't you cut it? And I used to just cut the sli
ce and give it to everyone and give it to everybody else to share around. It's just such a social thing. It just brings people together, makes everyone happy. Even if you're having a hard day, just a slice of cake will make you smile. This is one of these wow factor cakes. When you cut into I'm going to ask you why. This is called the chocolate pinata cake. Yeah. Let's have a look at this. It's lovely, isn't it? Yeah. So what happens? Two questions, really. What happens when you cut into it and
how do you get this effect? So obviously when you cut into the cake, what happened? And you take the slice out, you see this huge, well how to say, like a stream of smarties falling outside, how to say it's just awe and astonishment in people. Wow, you actually have it. I mean, any cake can be a pinata cake. I mean, you can actually fill a fault line cake with lemon sherbets, that lemon cake and then you cut into it and when you cut into it, if all the lemon sherbets come out that's amazing surp
rise as well. They tumble out. The whole pinata design. It's a whole Mexican thing for their birthdays. They fill something with something and then people just beat it up till all the somethings come out. I in cake, you just fill it with the more sugary things. Fabulous. So how do you do it? Because it's how do they get in there? Magically! I wish!! Just like magic No, what do you do is you basically cut, so this is a three layer cake. So what I did is I cut little circles out from the middle o
f the cake for the bottom two teirs, then I stacked as usual and then fill it with smarties and then place the top layer on and then basically coat it as I treat a normal cake. So the smarties are already in there ready for when you cut it to flow out and that makes it also special and glorious about it. And nobody would know? Nobody would know until you cut it in. I mean, a lot of people do those gender reveal cakes as well. You can do that. I think the idea came from one of my colleagues, her
name is Julia. Well, actually, three of my colleagues were pregnant around the same time and I decided before they went for the maternity, I wanted to make them cakes, so I made three cakes for them. Now, two of them knew they're having boys, so I went very stereotypical with some kind of boysy bluey touch. The other one didn't want it to know what they were having, so I just said, okay, then I will make a surprise cake for it. So that was a lemon cake, but I thought it was with lots of fresh bl
ueberries and she basically cut it in. All the blueberries came along and very funny enough, she actually had a boy as well. I didn't know it blueberries, I used blueberry. Julia still works at our place. I think that's why that kind of pinata design came into my mind. But as I said, every cake I made there, most of them have some stories behind it because the first time I made them was probably for one of my colleagues or for some friends or some family members or for somebody that have a story
behind it, like that cake. Also it was for another of my colleagues, her name. Was Iwona. It's for her second maternity leave. Before she went on that maternity leave, I just made her that cake when I made the first time. So that design was pretty much whenever I make the design, I always remember her. Do you? And are you still making up new designs? I am. You're still waking up in the middle of the night? I do, yeah. How can I make new designs? Obviously, now life is slightly changed and I nee
ded to be less bonkers about different things because obviously my wife is here. You can't leap out of bed in the middle of the night. And start whisking So far she's been really patient because I literally wanted to do an Easter cake with an Easter egg, but I wanted to do on a cake that is only sideways with a hole in it. But I wanted to make sure that eggs kind of feel like it's broken, so the golden glue is dropping as well. So yeah All those ideas just came into my mind, so I know I was kind
of doing some sketches in my little notebook that maybe I should do it like that. Maybe I should do it like that. I actually originally wanted the cake to be on straight, but she came in and she just said, I think it's going to look nice if it is a little bit tilted. So at the end, I did put it in a little bit tilted. So you have a collaborator now with new ideas. The book is beautiful. The colours are really amazing because you've got blocks of colour which is very, very vibrant, instantly rec
ognizable on the shelf. It is indeed, yeah. And I like the gold, so they make sure that it's written in gold as well on the side. And I think that colour palette came by the amazing photographer, Maya, and she was taking the pictures and she said she won't. She kind of taught me how to be less simple because my earlier cakes might have loads in it. When I'm taking pictures of cake, I put loads of props around. I used to go to the bric a brac market and used to get loads of props. It's typical me
. But now I have learned that sometime you just need to let the cake sing. Simple. Yes. Literally, cake on a cake stand. And what Maya did in that picture is, it was a brown, like cardboard paper or like a hard paper. She just bent the paper slightly. That creates that effect, as if it's a book paper and slightly bent. And that kind of gives idea who designed the book that, you know what? Maybe we should just go with that kind of block colours, because it just goes with the book in that way. Wel
l, it's absolutely beautiful. It certainly is. Show Stopping Rahul. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk about it. I'm sure that it won't be your last book. I hope so. We'll see. We'll see. Hold that thought. I hope lots of people who get the book leave lots of nice reviews so people can see and maybe get more. Rahul Mandal It's been an absolute privilege and honour to talk to you. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's lovely. It's an honour as well.
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