Jo Wheatley has always had a love of baking from a very early age, so when she watched BBC’s The Great British Bake Off she thought how she would love to enter. It made her realise she would like nothing more than to pursue a career in the thing she loves doing most of all – baking!

Jo feels incredibly proud that not only did she make it onto The Great British Bake Off, but also she went on to win against some amazing bakers. Since winning, Jo has set up a cookery school from her home in Essex and has given Jay Rayner a mini baking lesson on the art of scone making for The One Show (BBC1), given a cookie master class on the Alan Titchmarsh Show (ITV), and had a week- long guest slot on Channel 4’s ‘What’s Cooking?’.

She has written a regular recipe column for Sainsbury’s Magazine and for The Sun on Saturday.

Jo has an extremely successful blog entitled Jo's Blue AGA, receiving between 1500 up to 30,000 hits per day.

Jo extends her knowledge and perfects her skills as a baker daily, through cooking and baking for her family. When she is not baking Jo loves to ride horses in the countryside around her home or go swimming.

Jo’s first book, A Passion for Baking, was published by Constable & Robinson in May 2012 and reached No.2 in the hardback non-fiction chart within its first week of publication. Her second book, Home Baking, also published by Constable and Robinson is available from July 2014.  We highly recommend purchasing a copy of her book which you can buy here !

Jo teaches some of the recipes from ‘Home Baking’ as a presenter of the Pretty Witty Cakes Online Tutorials, sharing many of her top tips for baking successfully.

Photography © Martin Poole