Celebrity Bake Off: Meet New Judge Cherish Finden
The new season of the show will reportedly see pastry chef Cherish Finden join the judging panel alongside Paul Hollywood. She's been tipped as judge replacing Prue Leith, after she exited the Celebrity spin-off last year due to its demanding filming schedule.
Earlier this year, we saw Caroline Waldegrave join Hollywood as a judge on the celebrity version of the show, but for 2026 it seems Cherish Finden will be the one judging the creations on our screens.
Cherish Finden is a Singapore-born pastry chef. She's had a successful career in the culinary industry, and has been fascinated by food since she was a child. Finden's first job was as a waitress in a restaurant when she was 14, before she enrolled on a pastry course at Shatec Institutes.
From there, Finden applied her talents at top hotels across Singapore, such as the six-star Raffles Hotel. In 2001, she relocated to London with her family, where she joined the Langham Hotel as executive pastry chef. And she even has royal links. Finden famously created a Windsor Castle-shaped cake for Queen Elizabeth II's 90th birthday in 2016.
Cherish Finden is 57 years old.
Yes! Since 2016, Cherish has appeared on Bake Off: The Professionals. On this show, she developed her reputation for exceptionally high standards and no-nonsense critique. But while she can be stern, she's also fair - Finden tries all the challenges for herself ahead of the show, to check the time allocated to the contestants is suitable.
This isn't her only TV accolade. Finden has also appeared on Heston's Great British Food on Channel 4, BBC's MasterChef, Australian MasterChef, BBC2's An Extra Slice and Junior Bake Off. She is also the judge for Best Afternoon Tea UK.
Last year, Prue announced she would be stepping back from The Great Celebrity Bake Off. However, she will still star alongside Paul for the main series.
In a chat with This Morning last year, Prue explained she wasn't leaving the show permanently but was finding the demanding filming schedule difficult to keep up with. This meant she decided to step back from the celebrity edition.
She said: 'These things are filmed back-to-back all the way through summer from April to August so you don't get any time off. I'm getting quite old and there's places I want to see. So I'm not doing this year's.'
Yes! You can keep up to date with all things Cherish, including her mouth-watering creations, at her Instagram handle @cherish_finden.
Alice Hall is the Staff Writer at Grazia UK. She was previously a Junior Features Writer for The Daily Telegraph. At Grazia, she writes news and features about pop culture, dating, health, politics and interiors.
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