Britian's Queen Elizabeth II turns 90 this week, and like many of us do on our birthdays, she'll be celebrating with some cake.
This year the task of coming up with a cake fit for a queen fell to Nadiya Hussain, the winner of the most recent season of the wildly popular TV show The Great British Bake Off.
Hussain's story captivated audiences: She quickly became famous for her sense of humor and for her fantastical creations, which included a gravity-defying soda-flavored cheesecake and a chocolate peacock. She's the daughter of immigrants from Bangladesh and she's become a role model to many in the U.K.
Her latest masterpiece is an orange drizzle birthday cake with orange curd and orange buttercream — which she'll be hand-delivering to the Queen.
NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro spoke to Hussain about her craft — and we've collected some of the interview highlights below.
A couple of weeks ago, I just got a phone call to say, "Hey, would you like to do this?" And my initial reaction was "No," because I was so afraid of getting it horribly wrong. And then it dawned on me that I can't say no to the Queen. So once I got over the nerves, I thought, well, actually this is such an honor, how can I possibly say no?
On how she decided what to bake
I went through this phase where I thought I need to do something traditional, and it needs to be really, kind of, what I thought the queen would expect. And actually, I went from that to doing a complete 360, and I went on to [bake] an orange drizzle. And even down to the decorations, I've decided to go very, very different.
On putting her identity on display during The Great British Bake Off
I thought — how are people going to perceive me? I don't want people to look at my hijab straight away and say, "Oh, she's just a Muslim." I don't want to be judged just based on that, because we are all so much more than that.
But that is who I am wherever I go.
On what it means to cook for the Queen
There is definitely this weird juxtaposition between me and the Queen and the cake — it's all a bit higgledy-piggledy. It's really odd. But when I accepted [the offer] to do this, I didn't think about who I was or who she was. It's the Queen's birthday — and who doesn't like cake on their birthday?
On what she'll say when she meets the Queen
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