There are few people we trust more in the kitchen than Dame Mary Berry. So, when we heard that she was releasing a new cookbook and TV series designed to make our lives easier, we had to find out more.

In an exclusive interview in Good Housekeeping's December issue, Mary revealed more about her mission to make things easier in the kitchen, and her new book, Mary Makes It Easy.

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'It's so easy to overcomplicate things, particularly at Christmas. The key is to keep your ingredients simple, and each recipe in the book has a photo to guide,' she says.

'But also, not to be ashamed of buying things that make cooking easier, whether it's Panko breadcrumbs or pre-rolled puff pastry. Who cares if you didn't make it all from scratch!'

mary berry december cover text
David Venni / Good Housekeeping

In 2021, the 88-year-old was made a Dame for services to cooking, writing and baking - and she revealed to GH what the experience was like.

'I was in absolute shock. I thought, "Gosh, a cook becoming a Dame?" - I couldn't quite believe it,' she says.

'The ceremony was at Windsor Castle and I met Prince Charles, as he was then, who was charming and couldn't stop talking about his wife.

'The biggest sadness was that, at my age, you've lost your parents and all through your life, when you do something important, you immediately pick up the phone to call them because they're the only ones you can really brag to. I knew they'd be looking down on me, though.'

mary eating cake
David Venni

Mary has been married to her husband, Paul, for more than 50 years, and despite their happy union, revealed that it took three proposals for her to say yes to him.

'He would always ask when he'd just been in the pub or after he'd taken me out to supper somewhere - and I always thought he'd had too much to drink,' she says.

'I used to say, 'You're drunk!' because I didn't want to make up my mind. But I'm very happy now that I said yes.'

Mary Makes It Easy (BBC Books) by Mary Berry is out now. The accompanying TV series is coming soon to BBC Two.

Read the full interview with Mary Berry in the December 2023 issue of Good Housekeeping, on sale 25th October. It is available in all supermarkets and online at MagsDirect.