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Chatto & Windus has signed a new cookery book from Great British Bake Off finalist Ruby Tandoh.
Senior editor Poppy Hampson acquired world rights in all languages to Crumb in a “heated, nine-way auction” from Stuart Cooper of Metrostar Media.
Crumb is described as “unfussy yet delectable” and will encourage people to roll up their sleeves and bake even if they “don’t have the proper equipment or know how”.
Tandoh said the wants the book to “have the approachability and naturalness that you’d expect from a friend helping you out in the kitchen”.
Hampson said: “Ruby is astonishing: an emerging and undeniable talent as a baker, a writer and a role model, she brings to this project a refreshing mix of seriousness, originality and joy. Here is a young woman who can write as well as she can whip up a Florentine. We are proud and excited to welcome her to our list.”
Tandoh said: “I’m overjoyed to be writing this book. Although I’ve only been baking in earnest for a couple of years now, this book will be the product of a lifetime of poring through weekend recipe supplements, scrawling notes in cookbooks, sketching cakes in homework margins and stopping at the window of every bakery I’ve ever passed.
“And to publish it with Chatto & Windus, who have been behind a couple of my most treasured, cake-spattered, grease-marked, fingerprinted cookbooks... that makes it all the more exciting.”
Cooper said: “Ruby brings a fresh and distinctive voice to food writing, and she puts words together just as beautifully as she combines ingredients and flavours. We are delighted to have found such a good home for her.”
Tandoh, who writes a weekly food column in the Guardian and will write a monthly column called The Dinner Party Philosopher for British ELLE from April, is a 21-year-old philosophy student. She took part in last year’s "Great British Bake Off" on BBC2, but became a talking-point after a mixed reception in the media.
The 2013 winner, Frances Quinn, was reported by the Telegraph to be writing a book due out this year.
Crumb will be published this September. The Happy Foodie, Penguin Random House’s new cookery community, has an exclusive interview with Tandoh.