As a nation awaits the return of the Great British Bake Off, Gayle Ritchie catches up with 2015 semi-finalist Flora Shedden
Flora Shedden is walking towards me with a huge plastic tub of scones.
Elegantly dressed in a floaty skirt, top and dangly earrings, she greets me with a warm smile and a hug.
My interview with the star baker takes place in a Dunkeld deli, one of her favourite hang-outs.
Alas, the scones are neither made by Flora, nor are they a gift for me – her mum Tiffy has made them for the shop.
As we stand at the counter, a flurry of people enter (Flora knows them all) and while she chats to them, I cast my eyes over the vast selection of home bakes, and order a fruit scone.
To my surprise, Flora only wants a pot of tea.
“What, no cake?” I ask, my mouth agape. “No thanks,” says Flora. “To be honest, I don’t often order cake! If I’m out, I usually go for something novelty. I get fed up of cake! After filming Bake Off, I was like ‘give me salt!’. I was off sugar for months.”
Flora has driven over from Trochry, a tiny settlement ten minutes from Dunkeld, where she lives with her mum, dad and sisters, Hebe and Willow (her mum was a florist and named her daughters after flowers).
This time last year, aged just 19, Flora found herself starring in Bake Off, one of the BBC’s biggest primetime shows.
She made it to the semi-final, when shocked viewers saw Flora’s chocolate creation crumble, leaving judges Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry no choice but to give her the boot.
Yet despite her premature exit, the show opened up a world of opportunities for the former Breadalbane Academy head girl, including a lucrative book deal.
“A lot has happened in a year,” says Flora. “I’ve been working on my book, Gatherings, which has been fun but stressful.”
She’s also had her work cut out with baking classes, “sporadic recipes”, demonstrations, personal appearances, TV shows and preparing meals for weddings and fancy parties, as well as mingling with celebrities.
As someone who toyed with baking as a child (I’ve ruined jelly, cremated chocolate cake and maimed meringues), I want to know how Flora, 20, got started.
“I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t cooking or baking,” she says. “Mumma is a fantastic cook and like most wee girls, I wanted to be like her. We were always making pancakes: there are photos of me in my pyjamas at two years old flipping pancakes. It was the first recipe I Iearned by heart.”
For a while, Flora helped her mum cater for weddings, and worked on wedding cakes. But rather than taking up catering professionally, she went to study architecture at Edinburgh University.
After a year, she quit, moved home and got a job at Frames Gallery in Perth, while also making cakes for Watermill Gallery in Aberfeldy and working as a wardrobe seamtress at Pitlochry Festival Theatre.
During her “time out”, she got into food photography and started her own baking-themed blog, www.florashedden.com.
It was her sister Hebe’s idea to apply for Bake Off. “She kept pestering me and after we’d drunk a lot of wine, I filled in the application,” says Flora.
“It was a few minutes before the deadline! I sent it off and forgot about it.”
A few days later, a strange number flashed up on her phone. She almost didn’t answer, thinking it was “another sodding PPI call”. To her delight, it was Bake Off’s production company inviting her for interview. The rest, as they say, is history.
The filming schedule was punishing and saw Flora fly to London, stay in a hotel with the other bakers, film for two days and then fly home each week.
The first time she saw herself on TV, she was horrified and had to watch through a blanket – “I hated myself!” – and she found the fame that followed difficult to deal with.
“It was surreal. People would stop me in the supermarket queue and were usually always lovely but it was bizarre. There were also some accidental insults. People would say ‘I loved watching you…but Nadiya Hussain (Bake Off 2015’s winner) was my favourite’. These days, I’ll get the odd random coming over for a chat, which is nice.”
When Flora was sent home after the semi-final, she admits she was quite relieved. “I had a secret fist pump!” she laughs. “It was fun – there was a lot of alcohol – but it was so knackering and I just wanted to sleep. There were 12 cameras on us throughout filming which was intense.”
Was she not even a tiny bit upset to miss out on the final? “There’s always ‘what if?’, but then I look at Nadiya and I don’t think I’d have the energy to do what she does. A bit of me did feel I’d let people down. Multiple mothers were sending me videos of their kids crying. It was awful!”
Although they’d been given advice on what to expect, or “fame training” as Flora calls it, nothing could have prepared her for the social media storm.
There were fans and haters, a few marriage proposals and perhaps the strangest comment of all: “Flora Shedden looks like her bowel movements would be designed by Cath Kidston”, which she can’t decide whether to take as a compliment or insult.
Others, of course, referred to the “Aga saga” (the moment when Flora failed to switch her oven on and explained her family home boasts an Aga) which led to some portraying her as a “posh girl”.
“I went through Twitter with my mum and sister because most comments were lovely and I wanted to respond,” she says.
“Inevitably though, some of the remarks were nasty. If I’d read them all I’d have become so depressed. So my advice to this year’s bakers would be not to spend too much time online.”
From as early as episode five, Flora started receiving emails from agents and publishers all clamouring for a slice of her.
She deferred her place to study art history at St Andrews University indefinitely so she could concentrate on writing her first book, Gatherings – a collection of recipes for baking and cooking, with pictures taken by Flora, due for release in January 2017.
So what next? A part of Flora acknowledges that a move to London would make sense but she’s not keen. “I’d be so miserable in London. I love it here in Perthshire. I’m close to the country and I love knowing everybody. I love the community. I don’t have to worry about going for a walk in my pyjamas!”
There’s also the not so small matter of the boyfriend, a local lad whose identity she doesn’t wish to reveal here.
Her dream is to run an artisan bakery in Perthshire. “I’d love to open a wee bakery close to home and I’ve been looking at business plans,” she says.
“I’ve been a waitress, I can cook and bake, and I’ve always loved meeting people. Much of what I do now is on social media, so it would make a lovely change. I’ve taken time out from university and while I know 20 is quite young to start a business, I think now really is the time to go for it.”
It comes as a surprise to discover Flora’s favourite dinner would include cold – yes cold – pizza washed down with “cheap” sparkling wine.
“If it was my last meal, I’d want a table groaning with lots of different dishes, salads, platters and puddings, all decorated with tea lights and flowers.
“It would include tagliatelle with garlic, chilli lemon and parsley, langoustines with aioli, steak with an olive tapenade or homemade pesto, cold pizza (don’t judge me, it’s delicious), hazelnut ice cream and mum’s chocolate mousse torte. We would drink cheap Cava, GandTs and Mojitos.”
As for guests, Flora says she’d invite (among others) top chef Massimo Bottura, Billy Connolly, Michael Fassbender “because I intend to marry him”, Barack Obama, David Attenborough, Carey Mulligan and of course, her mum.
And she never travels anywhere without her secret arsenal of baking tools. Opening up her handbag, she brings out a lime, a spatula and some pipettes and proclaims: “I never know when I might need them!”
So will Flora be watching Bake Off when it starts on Wednesday? “Oh yes, I can’t wait!” she says. “I’m just glad I won’t have to watch myself!”
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A pastor, a hairdresser, a nurse and an aerospace engineer will be hoping to follow in the footsteps of champion Nadiya Hussain on this year’s Great British Bake Off.
Viewers will see 12 amateur bakers trying to impress judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood when the new series begins on BBC One on August 24 at 8pm.
