To think that Mary Berry has jumped the shark?

[southeastdweller]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/07/mary-berry-dabbles-dark-arts-shop-bought-sponge/

How much more money and exposure does she need?! She churns out books almost all the time, and now she's done a u-turn on cooking from scratch.

National Treasure, my fat arse.

Yup,

Absolutely agree OP.

Do not diss the Berry.

I suppose she has to pay for all of those snazzy jackets.

Aww I love Mary berry, I'd buy them! We had her chocolate brownie pudding & salad dressing the other week, was very nice.

So she's making money, what's the problem? All celebrities make money one way or another

I don't understand the issue. She doesn't seem to be claiming that her ready made sponges are better than baking from scratch, but she recognises that most people in modern day life don't have the time to bake from scratch on a regular basis, so as a smart business woman she's decided to tap into that market.
I for one love Mary Berry but if someone were to gift me one of her books then it would gather dust very quickly as I don't have time, nor the skill for baking from scratch, her ready made sponges though would definitely appeal to me.

I was always pretty indifferent towards her and never really watched bake off, but since I read an interview in a magazine where she was boasting about wearing real fur (rabbit I think) I've come to dislike her. She has no 'sweet old lady' appeal for me I have to say, but then I think there is a general excess of cooking programmes/books etc.

I find that Mary Berry understands more that people have lives than some of the other chefs. Even Jamie's 15/30 minute meals can contain a lot of ingredients and a lot of faff.

It's possible to be nice AND make money.

Yes, but she's not nice, is she?

My mum and my aunties were great fans of Mary Berry back in the day when she wasn't famous. I got one of her cookbooks as a present for my wedding 20 years ago. I swear nearly every single recipe had a mistake. A tablespoon instead of a tea spoon, litres instead of ml. Timings wrong, Temperatures wrong. Quite good recipes but you had to double check everything. Very very sloppy. Never though much of her after that.

I have tried many of her recipes and they all work a treat. They really WORK unloke Jamie Faff Oliver and Delia, whose quantities can be wrong.

I was a fan long before she became famous, her cook books are my go-to and they have never ever failed me. Or any member of my wider family, come to think of it.

Incorrect use of the phrase 'jumping the shark'.

Anyway, she has had a range of salad dressings out for decades. Is this really so different?

I don't actually think she's that good a cook, I can see her popularity is all about her persona as a wholesome role model, in a Janet-and-John kind of way.

What I do like about her is her resilience. One of her sons died tragically, and young. No parent should have to face that.

Not impressed by the rabbit referred to above. I'd much rather hear she kept a rampant one.

Yeah, YABU. She's a brand. She sells stuff. Don't like it, don't buy it.

Still love her.

Can't stand Bake off, but I'm happy to buy her cakes if they taste nice. (That chocolate one doesn't look as if it's got enough filling tbh).

Sainsburys coffee and walnut cake is the biz - far better than the Waitrose and M&S versions.

I am slightly disappointed tbh, maybe I'm dumb and it's not a viable possibility but I do wonder why she didn't go down the route of additive-free shop bought cakes?? Attempting to stick closer to her original recipes.

I tend to not buy anything that has a celebrity's face on it. It will be more £££s but not any better than anything else.

MB already has a Bread and Butter pudding out, and Jamie and his poncy oils, and Paul Hollywood has some very overpriced cooking utensil things he's flogging and bread.

She's 82 and doing exactly what I would be doing if I were in her shoes, which is to make the bloody most of every single opportunity she is given. The average life expectancy of a UK woman at the moment is 83.1 years, so I can't really blame her for wanting to fill her boots while ever she has the chance!

BTW her beef with horseradish and mustard casserole is yum.

I watched her brief appearance in the show with the Robshaws.

They had a freezer for the first time.

MB's suggestion was that they decanted everything into seethrough bags & use colour coded clips.

Why not just leave in the bag that it was bought in & shows what's in it??

I'm not impressed with her recipes bar the Victoria sandwich one. I tried her chocolate cupcake recipe a couple of times, where she asks you to mix cocoa powder with hot water and add it to the egg, burtter and sugar mixture. It always, always went wrong. The cocoa powder wouldn't dissolve properly and end up lumpy, making the cupcakes rather heavy and full of bitter cocoa lumps.

Anyway, long story short, I think MB is an average cook at best. If you carefully listen to her comments throughout Bakeoff, you'll see that anyone can come up with them, there is no 'expertise' to speak of.

I agree with a pp that he 'value' if any, is in her being a wholesome role model, not a great cook.

I've gone off her since her nasty comment about having an advantage over Delia because she has children to give her feedback.

I've not watched GBBO so I don't have an opinion on MB.

A chef/goodie taking advantage of their '15 minutes of fame' isn't unusual though.

MrsHughesCarson that's horrible!