Mary Berry CBE

About

Mary is one of the best-known and respected cookery writers and television presenters in the UK. She specialises in Aga cookery and cakes and desserts. She is a regular contributor to TV and radio food programmes and has written over 50 best selling cookery books, including the Classic Aga Cookbook and Mary Berry’s Complete Cookbook.

Mary Berry attended Bath High School, where she described her academic abilities as “hopeless” until she attended domestic science classes with a teacher called Miss Date. She later moved to France at the age of 17 to study at Le Cordon Bleu school, before working in a number of cooking related jobs. At the age of 22, she moved to London to work at the Dutch Dairy Bureau while taking City & Guilds courses in the evenings.

She left the Dairy Bureau to become a recipe tester for a PR firm and began to write her first book. She has since cooked for a range of food related bodies, including the Egg Council and the Flour Advisory Board.

Mary started her career as cookery editor of Housewife magazine and later moved to Ideal Home magazine. Since then she has presented and appeared as a guest in countless television series and has written more than 40 cookery books, many of which have sold in their hundreds of thousands.

Between 1990 – 2006 Mary ran AGA Workshops, teaching some 14,000 AGA owners, and in 1994, in partnership with her daughter, Annabel, she launched a range of Salad Dressings and Sauces, under the name of Mary Berry & Daughter. The range now includes 14 products which are sold nationwide everywhere from farm shops to Fortnum & Masons.

In June 2009, Mary was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Guild of Food Writers.

Since 2010, she has been one of the judges on BBC Two’s The Great British Bake Off alongside baker Paul Hollywood who specialises in bread and Berry says that since working together, she has learnt from him. Her work on the show with Hollywood has led to the partnership being suggested by The Guardian as being the best reality TV judging partnership ever. She has also appeared on a BBC Two series called “The Great British Food Revival”.

In her own kitchen, she uses a KitchenAid mixer which she describes as being the one gadget she couldn’t live without. She has always had an AGA cooker, and used to run cooking courses for AGA users. She describes Raymond Blanc‘s restaurant Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons as one of her favourites as well as the Old Queen’s Head, local to where she lives in Penn, High Wycombe.

Mary Berry was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to culinary arts.

At the beginning of 2014, LiteBulb Group Limited announced a three year deal with Mary Berry to produce a range of food and cooking products for the home. The Mary Berry Collection features ceramic and wooden cookery items, textiles and gift items all designed and manufactured with Mary’s personal approval.