As the long summer holidays finally draw to a close and children head back to school, parents across the country are breathing a collective sigh of relief this week. And 2015 Bake Off champion Nadiya Hussain is no different.
Sitting down with us for a chat about her latest cookery series, she laughs as she admits her brood are “a little bit wild” and reveals that she wasn’t prepared for adolescence.
“Teenagers, nobody can quite prepare you for dealing with teenagers,” laughs the mum of sons Musa, 16 this week, and Dawud, 14, as well as daughter Maryam, 11, who she shares with husband Abdal.
The family enjoyed a “lovely” holiday in Morocco this summer but Nadiya, 37, is the first to admit that motherhood isn’t rosy all of the time.
“One of the hardest things I’ve had to learn as a mother is to listen properly. Sometimes I have to tell myself to stop, zip it and actually listen to what they’re saying,” she says.
READ MORE: Nadiya Hussain once admitted she was petrified during filming of The Great British Bake Off
But that doesn’t mean Nadiya and Abdal, 41, have ruled out adding to their family, with Nadiya sharing that she’s “always thought about adoption”.
“Given how much time I spend away with work it’s not something I can do right now but I’m always open. I’ve got a space in my heart and in my home for another child,” she says.
Seven years on from her tearful victory in the Bake Off tent, Nadiya is still the show’s most popular winner. And you’d think she might be tired of whipping up cakes and puddings, given that her career is centred around baking (who can forget that fizzy pop cheesecake?).
But that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, she still bakes every day – and Abdal’s favourite is her pear and ginger cake. Her love of baking and using her oven has now inspired her latest TV show and book, Nadiya’s Everyday Baking.
“We all use the stove every day but the oven kind of gets forgotten about unless it’s for a cake or a roast,” she says.
“So I thought, ‘Let’s write this book for everyday baking with everyday foods.’”
Her popularity means Nadiya has been inundated with offers since winning the Channel 4 show. She already has 17 books, a newspaper column and a homewares collection under her belt.
She even whipped up the Queen’s 90th birthday cake – an orange drizzle extravaganza with orange buttercream.
So what does she think is the key to her success? “I try to be authentic in everything I do and everything I put my name to,” she tells us with a smile. “I’m involved in every stage of everything from the recipes I write to what I’m going to wear, what’s in the background of a shot. In everything I do I give as much of myself as it’s possible to give.”
And that has led Nadiya to open up about some of the darker moments of her life, including her sometimes crippling battle with anxiety and the racist abuse that she’s suffered. She has previously revealed that she had days where she “struggled to get out of bed” during lockdown and in 2019 she spoke about her regular panic attacks.
One of Nadiya’s most charming characteristics on Bake Off was the fact that she just didn’t know how good she was.
She tells us her confidence blossomed throughout the show as she progressed from week to week. And though Nadiya isn’t one for regrets, she says she wishes she’d enjoyed her time in the tent more.
“I wish I didn’t stress as much because that moment was never going to come again.”
When she lifted the trophy she tearfully told an audience of 15 million that she was “never going to put boundaries” on herself again. “I’m never going to say I can’t do it, I’m never going to say maybe, I’m never going to say, ‘I don’t think I can.’ I can and I will.”
Nadiya keeps in regular touch with some of the contestants from her series. “I text Mat [Riley] and Tamal [Ray] all the time and Ian [Cumming] came round not long ago,” she tells us.
But she struggles to watch herself back on the show. “There are quite a lot of repeats and it was even on Netflix but I find it so cringey,” she giggles.
With her fingers in so many pies, it’s hard to know what box to place Nadiya in. The cook, author and presenter confesses even her own children aren’t sure what Mummy does for a living.
Although her success in the kitchen has been hard won it is the books that she has written – food, fiction and non-fiction – that she is perhaps most proud of, as she has “been writing for as long as she can remember”.
“I didn’t imagine I would ever be able to call myself an author,” she tells us. “As someone who loves to write and uses writing as their form of expression, to be an author is a wonderful thing,” she tells us. “I love the process of writing a book. It’s so exciting starting out with a blank page and a few months later you have a book in your hand. I love every single bit of the process and to be able to say that I’ve written books is such a massive achievement for me.”
Of course, behind her success is the unwavering help and support of her husband Abdal, who originally pushed her to apply for Bake Off and was quickly dubbed a “hunk” by viewers after appearing in clips on the show.
The pair had an arranged marriage when Nadiya was 20, having met only once, but almost two decades later they are happier than ever and even renewed their wedding vows in 2018, which Nadiya describes as “just wonderful”. “It was just us two. We did it very quietly with no fuss,” she adds.
With a chef for a mother and a father who works in computer sciences, what career paths does she think their three children will go down? “I’ve never pushed them in any direction,” Nadiya tells us. “They can do whatever and
go wherever they like. Whatever makes them happy. That’s the one thing I always tell them – just do what makes you happy. I can’t imagine that any of them will want to work in television or food but never say never,” she adds with a smile.
With an incredible career that keeps on flourishing it is hard for Nadiya to choose a stand-out moment. But when pushed, she picks filming The Chronicles Of Nadiya – in which she travelled back to her roots in Bangladesh and traced her culinary past – as a real “pinch me moment”.
“It was so special being able to reconnect with my family after winning Bake Off,” she tells us, brimming with emotion.
“Bake Off changed my life but I’ll never forget where I came from, what my heritage is. People would travel there and ask, ‘Is this Nadiya’s village?’ Who could ask for more than that?”
