Hazen Vaughan, Great British Bake Off: “You don’t see the chaos. People are stressed”

There’s a lot that goes into the feel-good, wholesome charm that Great British Bake Off exudes. 

While it may be free of the ruthlessness of reality shows such as The Traitors, behind the twee facade is a pressure cooker environment and a gaggle of really stressed home bakers. 

Westbrook local Hazel Vaughan found this out when she made it onto the Channel 4 show as one of the 12 contestants of last year’s 14th season. 

“You don’t see the chaos,” she says. “People are stressed.” 

The retired nail-technician found her way into baking through making her children’s birthday cakes. She missed out on a spot five years ago, after she was caught off guard by a phone call from the programme’s production team who wanted to quiz her on baking techniques while she was driving.

This time round, Hazel was more prepared. She sent off the initial application form, then blitzed through the follow up questions, then Zoom meetings, which led to Hazel baking a loaf of bread and a cake in what looked like the toy oven she used to play with as a girl, complete with a ticking timer, kettle and firelighter. 

She then travelled to Wales, armed with her carriable Louis Vuitton bag cake and some fresh cream slices, where she was asked to do a blind technical - a Swiss cream roll. 

Medical and mental health assessments followed, and then finally, after all that, she received the call to say she had been whittled down to the top 12 out of 16,000 applicants. Again, Hazel was in the car.  

“I pulled up straight away,” she says, “and I just screamed. 

“I said ‘Oh my God’, and then I panicked.”

From there on, Hazel says “it was all go, literally”. With a month lead-in before filming, the grandmother had to plan out nine weeks of baking, provide 18 recipes and include exactly how she was going to make each of them. Every recipe had to be her own or one that she had adapted. 

Hazel’s wearable Louis Vuitton bag made the list. She has baked “hundreds” of illusion cakes in her time, including Rolex watches with ticking time parts, a Bentley car and a remote controlled campervan which she made for her son’s birthday - driven out to him from behind the bar at Giorgios in Margate. However, it was her baked designer bag that saw the cake requests roll in, when she made it for the first time 10 years ago for her nephew’s then girlfriend. 

Another cake Hazel planned to show off to the viewing public was her Paris-Brest, a flaky ring of choux pastry filled with hazelnut praline cream and topped with sugared hazelnuts and flaked almonds. Hazel adds a chocolate Eiffel Tower to hers which soars out from the dessert’s centre. It’s one of the bakes she is most proud of. 

“It’s beautiful,” Hazel says. 

However, once in front of the cameras, things did not go to plan for Hazel. There was a burnt batch of jam on the first technical. During biscuit week, she had a run in with some butter while making her Viennese coffee and hazelnut wells, and she wasn’t able to pop her shortbread Punch and Judy Show - Hazel’s homage to family outings in Margate - into the fridge. It all added up and she was eliminated on the second episode. 

“I think once I had done something wrong, I just panicked, because I was behind everyone else,” Hazel says, reflecting on how she bowed out. 

“It’s more psychological, trying to keep cool and not panic,” she goes on, explaining the difference between baking at home and on the show. “But that’s difficult because you’ve got a cameraman coming up to you and asking, what have you done wrong? I felt like saying go away and leave me alone.”

While Hazel never got the chance to show off her Paris-Brest, she did get to carry her bag cake by its handle to the judges during the first episode, which she says was a highlight of her time on the show. 

“Everybody cheered and clapped,” she says. 

“Then [the judges] tore my sponge apart. They said it was dry,” Hazel adds. “But my sponges are never dry.”

Even though Hazel’s time on the show was brief, she felt her air time was even briefer - and when she did have the camera on her, she wasn’t portrayed as she had hoped. 

In particular, Hazel was asked why she baked designer bags, as she toiled away on her Louis Vuitton knock off. While detailing her collection, she told the crew she started collecting designer bags because her husband, an ex-London cabbie, “buys such awful presents, bless him” she tells me, adding: “So I decided a few years ago he could just get me a nice designer handbag  - a Mulberry or a Louis Vuitton - and my granddaughters can choose one when they are 18.”

However, of that conversation, all that was aired was: “I’ve got 10 Louises, a couple of Burberrys, a couple of Fendis. They’re my guilty pleasure.” 

“I knew they would do that,” Hazel says. “They just didn’t show anything else, which I was really upset about.” 

Grumbles aside, Hazel says walking into the tent for the first time was “surreal”. “You’ve seen it so many times, but to be there, you can’t explain it. It’s just amazing, absolutely amazing.”

Each episode was shot over two days, starting at 5.30am and finishing at 7pm at the earliest. Contestants were being filmed “constantly all day”, she recalls, with the aisle separating baking stations down the middle clogged up with support people washing up, getting cups of tea, and four sets of cameramen, sound guys and lighting techs who covered three contestants each. “Every time you do something - you go to the fridge, go to the oven - they have to take a look.” 

Contestants would swap stations daily for unknown reasons. “You bake one day on one side, then you bake on the other, so your drawers are all wrong and you don’t stay in the one station,” she says. 

And the cold. “It was crazy cold,” Hazel recalls. “Freezing.” 

“For the first episode, there was a heater for everybody, hand-warmers, extra jumpers, legwarmers, hot water bottles. 

“Chocolate set cold and you’d be measuring out flour as it blew across the tent. My hands were numb.”

And in that cold, the contestants had to sit facing the back of the tent for the technical judging, which would take around two and half hours to shoot. 

“It was too cold,” Hazel says. “We had no watches and no idea of time. Alison would announce we had an hour left then Noel would say we had 10 minutes left - we were like where did all the time go? He’s a joker, but it was really stressful." 

In such a strange, pressurised environment, Hazel learnt she was very easily distracted. “I would chat and then think, what am I doing now?” she laughs. “I like to be on my own when baking.”

After exiting the show, some of her mistakes still run through Hazel’s head - “not doing what I practiced” for one. 

“I didn’t think it would affect me, but after I left, I baked constantly, proving I could do what they said I couldn’t do. 

“It still plays on my mind. We all knew we could do better.”

“I’m proud of getting on," she adds. “I was disappointed that I was eliminated, and I still am. But I’m proud of my handbag.” 

Although missing out on the crown, Hazel left the show a winner, finding a “new family” in the other 11 contestants. “We’re so tight,” she says. 

“We’ve all stayed at Mike’s farm for the weekend and went to Birmingham to see Alison in her pantomime. 

“We’re all really close. Mike’s getting married on his farm and we’re all going to that." 

Taste one of Hazel’s creations yourself at Crumb & Deli, 52 Station Road, Westgate.

If you want more Bake Off, the contestants for this year’s Celebrity Bake Off have just been announced, including Rebecca Lucy Taylor (aka Self Esteem), Adam Buxton, Meera Syal, Phil Wang and more. The show will air this spring.