It was Ruby Bhogal’s own hard work and determination that led her to the finale of the 2018 season of The Great British Bake Off—but, she’ll admit, the show’s iconic judge, Paul Hollywood, helped her get there. “I really just don't like someone telling me that I'm bad at something,” Bhogal says. “So the more that Paul Hollywood would tell me that something didn't go right, it gave me more motivation to come back the week after, to be like, I can show you I can do this.”
Six years later, Bhogal is publishing her very first cookbook. In an indirect way, Hollywood also helped the one-time kitchen amateur get to this moment. One Bake, Two Ways: Fifty bakes with an all-plant option every time, comes out July 30. On Saturday, July 27, Bhogal will be at Time Out Market Boston with signed copies of the book for a meet-and-greet and question-and-answer session.
The book, from Interlink Publishing Group out of Northampton, Mass., juxtaposes like-for-like recipes with a plant-based and standard version for each bake. Avid Bake Off fans may remember that vegan baking was nearly Bhogal’s downfall: The show’s first-ever plant-based challenge saw her tall, two-decker, chocolate and lemon cake dramatically topple over right before judging. The fact that the cake tasted good saved her, Bhogal recalls. While there’s a part of her that does want to “show people that I have grown a lot from the show, and I have been able to master vegan baking,” Bhogal says, the idea behind the book is more about showing “that baking can be fun and accessible to everyone,” which is a lesson she learned herself from one of Paul Hollywood’s cookbooks.
Bhogal had barely baked a thing, ever, in her life, before trying one of Hollywood’s recipes for bread. She had found his book at her mother’s house while staying there during a prolonged period of unemployment. “I felt really lost in life,” recalls Bhogal, who was in her late 20s at the time. (Hollywood’s book was an odd discovery, she adds, as nobody in her family bakes.) She read that it takes five hours to make bread, which seemed like just the kind of creative outlet she needed to feel purposeful and productive for the day. “I literally baked my way from my unemployment,” she says. “I baked my way through that book, and I baked my way, quite frankly, to something that brought a bit of life and light back into who I was.”
It was during this time that Bhogal applied, on a whim, for The Great British Bake Off. She was a longtime fan of the show, but she’d been baking for only one year when she was invited to compete. “I don't like to admit that Paul Hollywood taught me everything that I know about baking now,” Bhogal says with a laugh, “but he certainly did teach me some really stunning foundations. I'm very, very grateful for that book.”
Throughout her season, Bhogal continued to learn from Hollywood as well as Dame Prue Leith, a Michelin-starred restaurateur-turned-television presenter and the show’s other judge. “I got to the final because I put the work in and learnt from everything that Paul and Prue were saying to me,” Bhogal says.
Over the past few years, Bhogal has continued to hone her own skills and style of baking. The result is One Bake, Two Ways. The book is at once a bit of vegan-baking vindication, a gift to her non-baking family, some of whom are vegan or have other dietary restrictions; and the ultimate way to show Paul Hollywood exactly what she’s learned.
“I very much wanted to replicate, in an emotional sense, what I got from Paul Hollywood's book, which is that I trusted his book to a T and I got good results because I followed it,” Bhogal says. “I'm really hoping that someone picks up this book and feels like I'm right there with them in the kitchen.”
Bhogal’s book tour in Boston, which also includes a sold-out stop at Brookline Booksmith and an appearance at Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Kitchen as well as an appearance on NBC 10, is only her second time to the city. The previous visit was in January, so she’s excited for warmer weather, she says—maybe she’ll even complete the Freedom Trail this time, after abandoning the walk in the wintertime, she says. She visited Time Out Market last time, enjoying a doughnut from Union Square Donuts and tacos from Taqueria el Barrio. She also saw both the Celtics and the Bruins play at TD Garden. This time, she and her fiancé, James Stewart, are excited to return to Time Out Market, and are interested in visiting Fenway Park to watch Bhogal’s first-ever baseball game.
"Whenever I come to the States, I like to go and watch a game. I've got no allegiance to anyone, but it's good fun," she says.
Catch Bhogal at Time Out Market on Saturday, July 27, from 3-5pm. Tickets are $45 and include a signed copy of One Bake, Two Ways as well as a $10 gift card to spend with any of the market’s 14 food vendors or bars.