Who Is Cherish Finden? Meet The New Celebrity Bake Off Judge

This year’s edition of Celebrity Bake Off was missing a key face: long-time judge Prue Leith, who took a break from the show to focus on ‘other things.’ And it looks like she won’t be returning for the 2026 series, with pastry chef Cherish Finden set to replace Leith and join the tent alongside Paul Hollywood, according to reports from The Sun.

Cherish Finden To Join Celebrity Bake Off 2026

Singapore-born pastry chef Finden is no stranger to the world of Bake Off. Since 2016, she has worked as a judge on Bake Off: The Professionals, where she became known for her razor-sharp eye and frank critique (she’s been known to get her ruler out to check the size of even the tiniest of bakes). But she’s also fair, trying out all the challenges ahead of the show to ensure the allotted time is sufficient. Will she do the same for the celebrity edition, we wonder?

Finden had an illustrious career in the culinary world before joining the show. She became interested in food as a child, securing her first job as a waitress in a restaurant aged 14 before enrolling on a pastry course at Shatec Institutes. After honing her baking craft in top hotels across Singapore including the six-star Raffles Hotel, Finden moved to London with her family in 2001, joining the Langham Hotel as executive pastry chef. 

SHIOK!

More recently, the patisserie chef joined Bishopsgate hotel Pan Pacific London to open her first own patisserie, SHIOK!. Here, she brought her Singaporean heritage to the menu, creating unique desserts like a coffee-flavoured Kopi Tarik and a lemon and raspberry compote handbag. However, in 2023 Finden left to focus on a ‘new career chapter’.

She’s a fitting judge for Celebrity Bake Off, having won a string of culinary competitions herself over the years. Under Finden’s leadership, The Langham’s Palm Court won the Tea Guild’s Top London Afternoon Tea in 2010, and two years later she was named Pastry Chef of the Year by the Craft Guild of Chefs.

Celebrity Bake Off 2026: What Do We Know So Far?

Celebrity Bake Off will return in spring 2026. As usual, it will raise money for Stand Up To Cancer, featuring a line-up of stars from the worlds of TV, music, sport and more. Leith has been a judge on The Great British Bake Off since 2017, but in 2024 she announced she would be taking a break from the celebrity version.

‘[The one] I’m not doing this year is the celebrity one and it’s mainly because these things are filmed back-to-back the whole way through the summer,’ she said during an interview on This Morning. She added: ‘You start in April, and you end in August and honestly, you get no time off. And so, I’m getting a bit old and there are places I want to go to and other things I want to do.’

Celebrity Bake Off 2025 (c) Mark Bourdillon

Her friend Caroline Waldegrave OBE, former Managing Director and co-owner of Leiths School of Food and Wine, stepped in as a replacement. 

We don’t know which celebrities will feature in the 2026 series, but as always there have been some rumours. Names being floated so far include Sugababes star Mutya Buena, One Day’s Ambika Mod, Love Island’s Molly Mae-Hague and musician Rag‘n’Bone Man. 

When Will Celebrity Bake Off Air?

No release date has been confirmed yet, but usually the show airs on Channel 4 in spring.