This '90s Cartoon Inspired Nadiya Hussain's Teen Baking Project

Everyone knows inspiration can be drawn from the strangest places, even when it comes to decorating baked goods. In an interview with The Guardian, Nadiya Hussain, winner of "The Great British Bake Off" in 2015, details just what inspired her to move forward with the cake that eventually led her on the path toward a career in cake design and beyond.

Speaking with The Guardian, Hussain talks about how at sixteen she absolutely adored food studies at school, despite her mother typically being somewhat of a tyrant in the kitchen at home. What she would do was bounce ideas for projects off her little brother, who was six years old at the time. They'd confer about not only the treats themselves, but even the way the food would potentially be packaged. In what might have been an act of fate, Hussain was given a project that entailed her baking a themed cake. She settled on a Pokémon theme, and nabbed a limited edition Pokémon card off her little brother to use as inspiration, which she still has today. Hussain turned that pilfered piece of memorabilia into a red and white marbled layer cake with a Pokéball made from fondant. 

But Hussain's connection to toys doesn't stop there.

According to Toyworld, Nadiya Hussain signed a deal with the company Wilton Bradley in 2020 to produce cooking and baking sets for children. Hussain told Toy News she is "a true believer in involving children in cooking from a young age," and her Nadiya brand is putting out kits with colorful cooking tools, accompanied by her recipes, for all the future chefs out there.

In addition to nurturing a child's love for the kitchen with her Wilton Bradley cooking sets, Hussain has also written a plethora of books ranging from memoirs to children's cookbooks, as listed on her website. Her first book, written in 2016 and entitled "Bake Me A Story," cleverly combines recipes with some of the most famous fairytales out there. In one instance, Hussain offers a recipe for bean patties, simultaneously incorporating the age-old tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. Though Nadiya Hussain not be a child anymore, she definitely knows how to get the little ones involved with what she knows best.