Bake Off winner: ‘The pressure pushed me to rely on Jesus’

This year’s Great British Bake Off winner has shared how the pressure of participating on the series helped her faith in God to grow.

Jasmine Mitchell, 23, spoke to Premier Christian News about her time in the tent, and how her “faith has become stronger and stronger over the last year”, as she relied on God in the busyness and stress of competing on Bake Off while studying for a medicine degree.

She noted that it was “a complete whim” to apply to be on the show, but that she was encouraged to do it by a friend.

Rely on Jesus

Jasmine shared how the pressure of the show “really pushed me to rely on Jesus, on God, because there were a lot of situations where I just felt completely unequipped”.

She explained: “Walking to the tent from the green room, or waiting, I would just pray the Lord’s prayer a lot in my head. It didn’t take away the stress, but I felt like God was walking along beside me with it”.

The five-time Star Baker said: “I would look back at the end of the week and just feel completely held by God.”

Hospitality

Jasmine credited her family’s example of hospitality for inspiring her love of baking: “I’ve learnt a lot from my mum, aunts, family and friends who love bringing people together around the table”.

She explained how she brought practice bakes to her church throughout the competition, saying “I kind of just scraped off all the fancy decoration and dismantled it, hoping that no one would actually guess that I was doing anything like being on the Bake Off, which thankfully they didn’t!”

She added: “Last week, my brownies were still literally hot, so I was carrying them with a tea towel on the tube in the rain to church, because I didn’t leave myself enough cooling time.”

Identity in Christ

Throughout the competition, Jasmine shared her experience of living with alopecia, which caused her to begin losing her hair at the age of ten.

She explained how, as a teenager, she was desperate to fit in and wore wigs, but that in the past few years she embraced her natural look and participated in the Bake Off without a wig.

The baker shared: “Often, I would pray for my hair back, in a sense of: ‘This is what I want, this is what healing looks like to me.’ Ironically, healing isn’t just what we ask for.

“God has healed me to make me more whole, and more me. I’m now starting to enjoy being different and just going with that. It’s definitely a process of learning to see myself the way God sees me”.