Images: Emily Chalk
It all started with a sweet little caterpillar. Growing up in South London, Anna Wainwright was tired of having the same Colin the Caterpillar cake – an iconic chocolate sponge roll sold by British retailer Marks & Spencer – for her birthday each year, so the seven-year-old put her foot down.
“I asked Mum if I could make my own birthday cake and fell in love with baking,” tells the newly-crowned winner of this year’s The Great Kiwi Bake Off. “I then started making all of our birthday cakes. And the kitchen has been my happy place ever since!
“I’m grateful that my parents let me go in the kitchen to cook and do whatever I liked, experimenting with different recipes. They were like, ‘Go for it!’
“I always think that if kids don’t get exposed to trying new things, how do they find their passion? I didn’t do very well in the classroom, but here I am winning a cooking show.”
Friendly and upbeat, primary school teacher Anna chats to the Weekly from her home in West Auckland, where her glass cake stand trophy has been hiding at the top of her pantry. She nearly gave the secret of her win away, though, when videoing a pantry tour for her 19,000 Instagram followers and realised it was in the background.
“There I was, chatting away about what products I like to bake with, and then saw that the glass bottom of the trophy was visible. I was like, ‘Nooo!’ So I had to re-film it because I was not prepared to take the risk!”
The 28-year-old, who lives with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), wants to inspire the kids she teaches to follow their dreams.
Describing herself as “a bit clumsy”, Anna was thrilled she pushed herself enough to even enter the competition in the first place.
“One of my friends commented on one of my Instagram videos, ‘You should go on The Great Kiwi Bake Off’ and I replied, ‘Haha, I’d never do that!’” she recalls.
“Then when I was in England at Christmas, I was watching the Junior Bake Off with my grandparents and they said, ‘We could imagine you doing that when you were a kid.’
“I came back to New Zealand and was helping my dad Phil out one weekend, cooking for his pizza food truck up in Kerikeri. I saw the ad for Bake Off and it said to send in an audition video. I immediately had this really cool idea for one and decided to enter on a whim.”
Based on the British version, which is filmed in a tent, Anna dragged her dad’s giant tent out of the garage, while he helped her film it.
A few days later, she received an email from producers saying they loved the video and offered her a place on the popular series.
She calls the eight-week experience life-changing.
“It might come across on TV like I’m super-confident and super-bubbly. But I’m so self-critical. So to put myself out there on TV – for other people to judge – was such a nerve-wracking risk.
“It was so worth it, though,” says Anna, whose highlight was being named Star Baker following a butter chicken pie she made and dedicated to her Dad, in a nod to all the curries they enjoy eating together.
“I’ve never been so proud of myself for anything before. I had the best time ever and I wasn’t expecting to win.
“I was quite shocked to be honest when they called my name as winner. It felt like I was in a dream and it didn’t sink in for a little while.”
When Anna moved to New Zealand with her family aged nine, she loved being exposed to more fresh ingredients than the “beans on toast, fish fingers and sausage and mash” that were her staple dinners in the UK.
While working at her last school, she was also able to share her love of cooking fresh produce with her students, through fellow Bake Off contestant Paul Dickson’s Oke charity. The charity funds and builds vegetable gardens in schools so kids can take an active role in growing their own food.
“In my classroom last year, we cooked every single week with five-year-olds,” she shares. “Some of them had never seen certain vegetables or put their hands in soil before and my kids loved cooking because it wasn’t something they really did at home.”
So, what’s next for the talented winner… MasterChef NZ perhaps?
“No, I’m too scared to enter another cooking show!” she laughs. “I don’t want to open a café or a bakery because I love change and teaching others to cook. I’d love eventually to open a kids’ cooking school. That’s my all-time dream.”
Quick fire
Favourite food? I love Kiwi pies – they’re the best.
Share the last thing you baked? Yesterday, it was a six-layer pancake cake. There’s a lovely retired couple who live next door to me, so every week, well almost every day, I’m like, “Hello, would you like some of this?”
What’s the funniest comment you’ve received since being on the show? Someone wrote on my social media, “Oh, your voice is so lovely – I want you to read me stories to sleep!”
The Great Kiwi Bake Off is available to stream on TVNZ+
