Mary Berry helps make some Fantastic Feasts

If anyone knows about fantastic feasts and how to cook them, it’s Dame Mary Berry.

Her first job was with the Bath Electricity Board showroom, where she would whip up Victoria sponges to demonstrate to customers how to use their new ovens.

After training at the French Le Cordon Bleu school, she moved into food writing, publishing her first cookbook in 1970.

Then, of course, she became an all-round national institution when she was chosen to be a judge on The Great British Bake Off in 2010.

Now in Mary Berry’s Fantastic Feasts, she’s putting her skills and decades of expertise at the service of inexperienced cooks who want to make a special meal to say thank you to someone important.

She could probably do that single handed, but just in case she’s also drafting in some famous helpers.

We got a little taste of the format at Christmas with Festive Feasts, and Mary is clearly keen to get going on this new run.

She says: “I am very excited about this series.

“Teaching is in my DNA and I can’t wait to share my knowledge and encourage the novice cooks – and with my celebrity sidekicks by my side we will make it fun all the way!”

In the first episode, Mary is heading to Cardiff where fireman Mark, youth worker Callum and boxing instructor Thaer want to throw a spectacular afternoon tea to say thank you to Soraya, who runs a local youth charity.

It’s fair to say that none of them are particularly at home in the kitchen.

Mark has never followed a recipe in his life, Thaer once had to throw a pot out after burning it and Callum delegates most of the cooking to his nan.

So, Mary will have to teach them the basics as she invites them round to her home for a special cooking lesson and shares her hand-picked recipes for golden red pepper, cheese and chive tartlets, mini scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream, and a four-tier clementine cake.

Meanwhile, she’s also signed up Roman Kemp and Celebs Go Dating’s Tom Read Wilson to get hold of some extras for the feasts.

Tom is sent to the Women’s Institute for a masterclass in making jam, and of course you can’t have afternoon tea without a nice cuppa and a slice of cake.

So, Roman is trying to find the perfect brew, which may be made a bit harder by the fact that he’s never tried tea before.

(Forget Fantastic Feasts, perhaps someone should be making a stand-alone documentary about how he’s avoided tea for so long.)

Roman and Tom will also be on hand to lift morale when Mark, Callum and Thaer take everything they’ve learned and try to put into practice by surprising Soroaya with her feast at Langley Hall near Cardiff.

Mary is standing by to offer last-minute tips, but will that be enough to ensure Soroya gets an afternoon tea that’s unforgettable for all the right reasons?

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