Nigella Lawson is Mary Berry's latest Great British Bake Off replacement

The British cookbook author and TV presenter, Nigella Lawson, will be the latest to step into the soggy-bottomed shoes worn initially by Dame Mary Berry on The Great British Bake Off. Lawson is best known for her cookbooks, How To Eat and How To Be A Domestic Goddess, and her Channel 4 cooking show, Nigella Bites. Here in the States, as they call it across the pond, she hosted a short-lived Food Network show called Nigella Feasts. She’s also hosted MasterChef Australia, so we know she’s got the bedside manner to utterly destroy an aspiring home cook.

Handing off the flour-and-batter-lined flats is Dame Prue Leith, who, at “86 for goodness sake!”, is stepping down from her role as the Paul Hollywood handshake mediator after nine seasons of Bread Week. Leith scooped up the position from Berry in 2017, after Berry and former presenters Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc opted not to join the show’s station move from the BBC to Channel 4 in Britain. The show was subsequently recast with Paul Hollywood providing a steely, blue-eyed, and vaguely intimidating anchor.

Lawson marks a distinct change in the series. She is the youngest judge to join the Bake Off by about a decade, shattering the ageist illusion that no one under the age of 75 could test pastries for underbaked biscuits. “I’m uncharacteristically rather lost for words right now!” Lawson said in a statement posted to the GBBO Instagram account. “Of course it’s daunting to be following in the footsteps of Prue Leith and Mary Berry before her, great dames both, but I’m also bubbling with excitement. The Great British Bake Off is more than a television programme, it’s a National Treasure – and it’s a huge honour to be entrusted with it. I’m just thrilled to be joining the team and all the new bakers to come, I wish the marvellous Prue all the best, and am giddily grateful for the opportunity!”