Alison Hammond has revealed she won a brick on Bake Off last year.
The former Big Brother housemate, 49, who replaced Matt Lucas as co-host of the much-loved show, explained how she now has strict rules on cake tasting.
After finally losing an extra 14 pounds, filming has started for the upcoming series of Bake Off, and Alison is determined not to yo-yo anymore.
The TV presenter originally said she only agreed to join the show in the 2023 series ‘for the cake’ – but now she realizes she has to curb the tasty treats.
Alison has decided to limit herself to tasting only the winners’ creations and the bakes awarded with Paul Hollywood’s famous handshakes.
Alison Hammond, 49, has revealed she won a stone on last year’s Bake Off (L pictured at the 2023 show, R pictured in April 2024)
Filming has started for the upcoming series of Bake Off and Alison is determined to stop yo-yoing (pictured May 2024)
Alison told me Off Menu podcast: ‘I’ve just started filming Bake Off. I’ve never seen the tent so cold. It was freezing, absolutely freezing. I had my thermals on under my dress.
“But I love that show because of the cake. People don’t realize that I’m literally there for the cake. After every bake you can taste every bake and last year I put a stone on it.
‘It took me a year to remove that stone.
“So now I only eat if they get a handshake or the winner of a section. But everything else sorry, I’m not going there.
‘As soon as it comes into my mouth I swallow it, I love it.
“He might not do a handshake in a show – he only does a handshake every now and then, but if he does a handshake, I’m going to taste that cake without a doubt.
“If there are no handshakes, I won’t taste cake.”
Although Alison has decided that during the current filming for this year’s series she will only taste the winners’ creations, with each bake receiving a Hollywood handshake, that seal of approval has caused controversy.
Alison has set herself a limit of tasting only the winners’ creations and the bakes awarded with Paul Hollywood’s famous handshakes (Paul gives a handshake)
Alison revealed she has finally lost the excess 14 pounds since filming the first series of GBBO (pictured left before filming in February 2023; pictured right after filming in September 2023)
Viewers of the last series complained that Paul started handing them out too often since he started judging the show in 2010.
In season seven – the last on the BBC – he handed out just four – but in subsequent series it was seven, with a record high of twelve in the ninth.
In 2021, when the twelfth series aired, Hollywood said he was considering stopping his handshakes and they dropped during the pandemic, but he still handed out five last year.