Warning: This article contains spoilers from the 2025 finale of The Great British Baking Show.
NEED TO KNOW
The Great British Baking Show has crowned its 2025 winner
Jasmine Mitchell, Aaron Mountford-Myles and Tom Arden competed for the coveted cake plate
Judge Paul Hollywood praised the winner as one of the best bakers to be on the show in ‘quite a while’
The 2025 season of The Great British Baking Show was full of talent, but only one contestant’s bakes took the cake in the end.
The final episode of the collection 13 aired in the U.S. on Friday, Nov. 7, (three days after it premiered in the U.K., where the show airs under its original name, The Great British Bake-Off). The conclusion comes after a season that included the first left-handed Paul Hollywood handshake, a redo of the infamous “Bingate” incident from 2014 and numerous baking conversations with NSFW comments, as always.
Finalists Tom Arden, a 31-year-old creative entrepreneur, senior systems architect Aaron Mountford-Myles, 38, and 23-year-old medical student Jasmine Mitchell battled it out until Edinburgh-native Mitchell came out on top.
In the finale, judges Hollywood and Prue Leith asked the bakers to tackle three baking projects: the signature challenge (this time, it was a British iced finger bun), a technical challenge where bakers were asked to make a tower of madeleines and a final showstopper challenge that saw the finalists bake the “largest cake” in the show’s history. Co-hosts Alison Hammond and Noel Fielding danced around the finalists as they did their last-ever challenges.
For the signature challenge, each finalist highlighted their strengths. Mitchell said she paid attention to the flavors that judges had liked throughout the season and made apricot and strawberry finger buns. Arden used his decorative skills to bake finger buns shaped like hot dogs. As always, Mountford-Myles pushed the envelope with flavors and added an unexpected twist to his pear and rhubarb finger buns.
Courtesy of Netflix
The technical challenge, which focused on ombre madeleines, proved challenging for all three. It ended with Mitchell in third, Mountford-Myles in second and Arden on top.
In the last showstopper challenge, each contestant was tasked with baking a cake that had to measure at least 1.2 meters in length (nearly 4 feet). All three looked to previous flavors and decorations from earlier in the season for inspiration
Mitchell recreated her cardamom sponge from the first episode with a layer of almond and raspberry sponge. Similarly, Arden wanted to rectify a misstep from week six by redoing a raspberry and basil syrup for his raspberry cake. Mountford-Myles baked a tea-inspired dessert with a darjeeling sponge, revisiting the tea flavors he’s used throughout the season.
While Leith, 85, and Hollywood, 59, went back and forth on Mountford-Myles’ cake’s taste and praised Arden’s bake for having “style” and “substance,” but it was Mitchell’s “absolutely lovely” flavor and impressive decorations that earned her the win.
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Upon receiving her cake plate trophy, Mitchell said she was “overjoyed.”
“When I was in the middle of exams and trying to bake while I was trying to learn, it’s been so much. But I have done it and I am just so unbelievably happy and to have done it with such an awesome group of people,” she said.
Mitchell consistently wowed the judges, earning two coveted handshakes from Hollywood and becoming the second-ever contestant in the show’s history to receive five Star Baker titles. The other five-time Star Baker (Richard Burr from the 2014 season) did not get the cake plate in the end.
The judges doubled down on their chosen champ with Leith saying, “The thing about Jasmine is that she has been steady all the way through, almost unheard of to be so consistent and so good. She is an extraordinary girl.”
Courtesy of Netflix
Hollywood agreed, adding that there was “not one week” they thought Mitchell could go home. “And that’s unusual, and to win five Star Bakers and then win overall that’s never happened before,” he said. “She has done an incredible job all the way through the Bake Off this year. She is a worthy winner and she is the best one we have seen for quite a while actually.”
As always with the finale episodes, the finalists were supported by their loved ones and the nine bakers they had previously competed with: Hassan, Iain, Jessika, Leighton, Lesley, Nadia, Nataliia, Pui Man and Toby.
When reflecting on her GBBS time, Mitchell said she felt it took “getting to the final to then start to brush away [her] imposter syndrome,” in a press release.
She thanked her boyfriend, friends and family and spoke about her gratitude for the contestants, crew, judges, hosts and everyone else involved in the show. “The camera crew, the sound crew, the producers, the runners, the washer uppers, the food team, the judges and the presenters,” she listed. “I miss walking into the tent every morning and being greeted by the warmest smiles and hugs.”
Mitchell’s win also marked a major moment in her alopecia journey, which she was first diagnosed with when she was 12, she said during the show.
“If I had told myself three years ago that I would be going about my life without wearing a wig, with no hair, I would have laughed and said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ I could never have imagined being on Bake Off, let alone doing it with no hair,” she said.
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The 2025 season and earlier seasons of The Great British Baking Show are now streaming on Netflix.
