Matt Moran and Maggie Beer star in The Great Australian Bake Off on LifeStyle Food channel

CHEF Matt Moran and cook Maggie Beer add sweetness and bite to the new version of The Great Australian Bake Off, based on the UK smash hit.

IT takes a lot to lure famed Australian cook, food author and restaurateur Maggie Beer out of her beloved Barossa Valley bolthole in South Australia.

When she stepped down from her cooking show The Cook and the Chefin 2009, Beer, 70, thought she was done with TV.

Occasionally she could be enticed into an appearance on MasterChef. Last year, celebrity chef Matt Moran took his show to Beer for an episode of Paddock to Plate.

RECIPE: Maggie Beer’s tribute to the ANZAC Day biscuit

‘They’re just crackers’, says Beer of Bake Off hosts and comedians Mel Buttle and Claire Hooper, pictured here with Moran and Beer. Picture: Matt Wilson / Foxtel

So when producers of the rejuvenated The Great Australian Bake Off(GABO) wanted Beer to judge alongside Moran, they lay their trail of crumbs carefully.

“I resisted for a long time. I don’t like leaving the Valley,” Beer confesses.

“The big carrot they put in front of me was that they would support my foundation (The Maggie Beer Foundation) — which is trying to change the food in aged care across the country.

“The other thing is, I like to learn. If you stop learning you stop living. And I like to laugh.”

Fast-forward to the set of GABO and the vibrant veteran cook is doing both as she enthuses over recipes, coos over contestants, and gives old friend Moran as good as she gets — despite a blush of embarrassment reaching her cheeks when she realises he has shared a story of how her straight-down-the line reaction during a taste test of the famous English pudding named Spotted Dick left the crew convulsed in laughter.

“We laugh so much on this set,” Beer says.

“The contestants are lovely, the team is great and Matt is such a gentleman. He’s all rough on the edges, but underneath he’s a big pussycat.

“And (hosts and comedians) Mel (Buttle) and Claire (Hooper) are just crackers.”

Mel Buttle is the host of The Great Australian Bake Off. Picture: Annette Dew

But this is no mutual admiration society — Beer the instinctive cook and Moran the technical chef happily to pit their food credentials against the other, and revel in their differences.

Moran claims ‘baking cred’ because he trained as a pastry chef and his first business was selling cakes and tarts to a delicatessen.

“She could cook a better tasting scone, she does it by feel and instinct,” he readily concedes, then, searching for the win adds “but I’d decorate it better”.

“I’m more technical. There was a moment a week ago that I turned to her and said: ‘Maggie, I’m really sorry but I have to disagree’, and the minute it came out my mouth I thought: ‘I’m going to get hate mail, because I’m arguing with Maggie Beer.’.

Beer, who prides herself on being described as a cook ‘because I was never taught, I cook instinctively’, laughs off the compliment, and the dissent.

“I’m rustic and I’m rough around the edges and I’m driven by flavour and texture and feel, she laughs.

“Of course I don’t have technique — you should see my knife-work it’s bloody awful. Of course I don’t have technique. And I’m a messy cook. It drives Matt nuts.”

In a world where audiences are drowning in food-based reality television, the pair believes GABO will work — and work well — in its new home.

As Beer says, ‘what is a food show is now on a food channel’.

Moran says the feel good, back-to-basics approach which is ‘more true to the UK version’ means when we eliminate someone, they’re gone, there’s no dramatic build-up, no dramatic back story.

And he says GABO has one massive, vital ingredient: “Maggie. She just resonates with people.”

Hungry hopefuls: Bake Off’s 12 home bakers vying for the title. Picture: Nick Wilson / Foxtel

VITAL INGREDIENTS

• THE Great Australian Bake Off is based on the hugely popular baking competition The Great British Bake Off.

• HOME bakers compete in a series of challenges testing all of their baking skills, with judges selecting the best amateur baker as the winner.

• THE format was screened for one season by Channel Nine in 2013.

• THE 12 contestants this series are aged from 20 to their 50s. “There is no winner’s prize — no money, no car,” says Moran “They just love to bake.”

Claire Hooper, Matt Moran, Maggie Beer and Mel Buttle at the Great Australian Bake Off launch in Sydney earlier this month. Picture: Justin Lloyd

THE GREAT AUSTRALIAN BAKE OFF, TUESDAY, 9.30PM, LIFESTYLE FOOD

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Originally published as Matt Moran and Maggie Beer star in The Great Australian Bake Off on LifeStyle Food channel