Selasi from Bake Off's festive treats: 'Christmas is full of food no one likes'

He was the breakout star of this year's Great British Bake Off with his jaffa cakes and piped roses. What happened when we paired him up with our gadget guru for a seasonal masterclass? Plus, try his recipes for pecan and maple layer cake and gingerbread

Baking is the perfect way to unwind, isn't it? I’m joking, obviously – it's a recipe for stress, squatting by an oven watching things refuse to rise and shouting at brownies. I turn into a maniac: simultaneously slow and impatient, unskilled and perfectionist. Baking in December whacks that pressure cooker mentality up to 250C (gas mark 9). Which is why today is very exciting. I’m going to be given a live lesson in Christmas cooking, in my flat, by the undisputed king of cool baking.

Fifteen million people know who Selasi Gbormittah is. If you don't, imagine a cross between Han Solo and Baloo the bear wearing a tea towel over one shoulder. The most casually proficient contestant The Great British Bake Off has ever had, Selasi was a maverick who treated being on the UK's most popular show as an excuse to take time off work and have a nap. While other contestants ran around sweating, getting antsy over frangipane and taking Paul Hollywood's hair seriously, Selasi would slide a souffle into the oven and spend the rest of the episode chillin’ on the floor. To swaths of the internet, he was also something of a hot toddy: tall, sly-smiled, big of heart and body.

That's irrelevant to me, of course; I just want some tips on how to be more relaxed in the kitchen, and maybe become best friends for ever. Given our opposite emotional temperatures, things have started on an anxious footing. He was meant to be here at 9am; I had pictured laying down gingerbread at 9.05. At 9.55am, I decide to call him, as there is a roomful of people waiting. My girlfriend usually takes no interest in my job, but she is present today and has done her hair, although I’m not sure why. "I don't know why, either!" laughs Selasi over the phone, a little too loudly and for a long time. It makes me think he does know why. Finally, in the nick of Selasi time (an hour and 20 minutes late, regular time) he strides in. He is carrying a motorcycle helmet, looks 8ft tall in our small flat and smells of Dior Sauvage. He is here to save me from myself.

"It's fine" is a phrase Selasi uses a lot. Everything is fine, even when he enters with his leather bag in tatters, it having fallen off his bike and been dragged for five minutes before he stopped in a bus lane, risking a ticket. His ingredients have all spilled or broken, a cloud of icing sugar billowing out of the open bag. He makes an instantly charming joke about having a drug problem. Does he need to go to hospital? How will we cook with no ingredients? This seems like the worst way imaginable to begin a bake, but he's not bothered. "I had an accident in the middle of filming Bake Off. I fell. The bike was a write-off, but it was fine." Has it changed the way he drives, made him more wary of failure? Silly question.

Baking begins. We are making a boozy fruitcake decorated with gingerbread figures. Selasi's first and last response to everything I do is to tell me it's fine. Confused grams and kilograms? That's fine. Sugar and salt? Fine. I crack an egg and the contents run down the outside of the bowl, leaving shell fragments in the middle. "That's fine. It's good crunchy." While initially comforting, the number of times he says this starts to make me suspicious it means the opposite.

"Christmas is full of food no one really likes," announces Selasi. "Turkey, brussels sprouts – what is that? Let's make maple and pecan cake and just put some snowmen on it or whatever." He has been in the flat five minutes and is already off piste. But he has got a point about fruitcake.

How about his own plans? Since his phenomenal popularity on the show, will he jack in his job in the financial sector and become a full-time celeb? He's not sure. "I’m actually very risk-averse. I take out every type of insurance it's possible to have. You should see my outgoings." I’d love to see his outgoings, I think, but don't know what I mean by that, so keep it to myself. Selasi is telling me about his plans in a chocolate-rich baritone. He wants to open a bakery with a restaurant in the back. He is taking a motorcycle trip around Europe. It sounds dreamy. I snap out of it, remembering I am talking to a banker. Is he one of those alpha males who caused the financial crash, I ask. "I was graduating when that happened! It was out of my hands."

He is amused by fans’ lack of chill in his company. "Someone in Westfield came up, couldn't believe it was really me, and demanded to see my ID. That was weird. Pass me a screwdriver." Sorry? Following the mishap on the bike, his electric whisk no longer works. This strikes me as a huge problem, but Selasi is unfazed. "We don't need technology," he says, and sets me to work beating eggs. It's a task I find extremely therapeutic. Watching me work very slowly, hand-whisk cocked, eyes hooded in pleasure, Selasi decides we do need technology after all. He starts poking around the whisk's internal mechanism. How does he know what he's doing? "I don't," he says, fiddling with a sprocket and looking awesome. Amazingly, he gets the machine whizzing again minus some springs, stabilisers and other important-looking components. "We don't need those, they’re just adding weight."

I’m stressed but impressed. He is full of baking advice, telling me to avoid overbeating eggs, and to fold them, gently, into the cake mix with the maple syrup. During this process, he places a tea towel over a quarter of the bowl to stop flour misting out of it. When we slide the sponges in to cook, we keep them forward as most ovens brown food quickest at the back.

Raised by relatives in Ghana, Selasi came to the UK to join his parents, and taught himself to bake during his second year at university. He largely taught himself from YouTube videos, and describes the recipe in his head as "a mashup". He instinctively knows where bowls and cutlery are kept, and never asks for help. I observe his style, how much he gets done without fuss. When I cook, I need focus; inessential talk is prohibited and tension runs high, as on a submarine. Selasi chats throughout, working quickly, throwing spices into flour, beating in treacle and syrup to form a gingerbread dough. How can I relax like him? Music helps, he offers. When I ask for a recommendation, I’m surprised to hear him suggest Wham!

Confronted with my lack of a cooling rack, Selasi upends my dish rack, drapes a teatowel over it, and plonks down the sponges to firm up. He later uses a chopstick to coax gingerbread bow ties from their tiny cutter and, when it comes to the crumb coat, he asks if I have a record turntable. I’m most surprised, though, when he casually reveals that in Bake Off's pastry week, "I made parmesan and asparagus cigars, and didn't even taste them. I don't like butter or cheese." Then how did he make the semi-final of a baking competition? And why am I mixing those very two ingredients together right now? "For buttercream. But I’m gonna squeeze an orange in there, to cut through the flavour."

I had hoped he might be impressed by my rolling pin – which has interchangeable rings to adjust rolling depth – but no luck. He's too cool to appreciate my flour collection, which includes amaranth and spelt. But we do have something in common: having discovered raw gingerbread tastes exactly like cola bottle sweets, I’m pulling on the dough like a lab rat; I wrap up the excess for later, Gollum-like. Selasi is a comfort eater, too, albeit classier. "When I went to Zurich, I spent 300 swiss francs (£238) on chocolate. It's bad."

The photographer is concerned. Selasi has dumped the electric whisk, still attached to the wall, into the sink. It feels a little bit like one of us, probably me, might die if they turn on a tap. "Oh, yeah – don't try this at home!" Selasi laughs. But … this is my home, I point out. He has already moved on. By now, the atmosphere is a bit, well, Wham!-y. Club Tropicana went down OK, but by the time we get into Wham Rap! and Bad Boys, I ask why he likes the band so much. "I don't – I thought you wanted Christmas music. This sounds bad." We put on Paul Simon's Graceland instead.

I am thrilled when he beckons me over for a crash course in how to ice two-tone roses. Bake Off viewers know Selasi is a master of decoration. (A gif of him muscularly squirting his piping bag went viral on social media although, as there wasn't a cake in sight, its popularity is hard to fathom.) He grips the bag, shows me how to swirl evenly outwards in a clockwise direction. He is saying clockwise, but the direction he is demonstrating is clearly anti-clockwise, I point out. "They’re the same thing," he responds. What? I have a go, and lay down a swirl on the flank of the cake. "That's the wrong way," he says. I feel aggrieved, but the Charmer from Ghana reassures me that everything is fine; he can fix this. How? He takes a spatula and neatly flicks my entire rose off the cake onto the counter, as if it had never existed. Rude.

Time to adorn our bespoke gingerbread cutouts – so it's back to the piping bag. I’m feeling unsure how to best administer the green icing, and ask for a bit of guidance. "Tree," he says. I’m looking for a bit more detail, I explain. There's a flat pause. "Christmas tree?" He has already requested that I stop asking questions. "You need to take everything less seriously," he Obi-Warns me. He does an impression of me cracking eggs: squatting, with a scrunched-up face, moving very slowly. It's offensive. What's wrong with my egg-cracking technique? "Nothing! It's fine. Hahaha!"

I wait for him to tackle a tree and follow his lead. He pipes a zig-zag along the outer edge of the gingerbread, to suggest pine tiers. He shows me an alternate technique, "flooding" the middle with more icing. A bit primary school, but effective. We decorate the gingerbread men, too: a bowtie and frown for me, a dress for him. I didn't know we were going to be represented on the cake, but I’m pleased. There are other figures, too, and trees, so it's not as if it's him and me on top of our wedding cake or anything like that.

The finished cake is a thing of almost unbearable beauty, flavoured bittersweet because it means our time is up. After he has left, I see signs of him everywhere for the next few days. He has left us the astonishing cake and most of the ingredients, his tea towel, cake stand and one refurbished electric whisk. He has also made two types of bonus muffin with leftover cake mix. What a man.

To be honest, I don't feel any more relaxed in the kitchen, because I’m not that guy. But I have been given something better. When I go to walk him out, he wordlessly gestures to the back of the bike. With the helmet, it's difficult to say who's he's signalling to, and my girlfriend incorrectly starts forward. I step firmly in front of her and hop on. We rip off into the distance, a heroic couplet, my arms wrapped around his big body. We have to slow down every 15 metres for speed bumps, and eventually he asks me to get off because he has to go to Southampton and doesn't have insurance for someone as unsafe as me. But what a memory. Selasi and me, carefree and sailing away. For one afternoon at least, best friends for ever.

Follow Selasi on Twitter and Instagram at @selasigb.

(Makes 1 large cake) 130g unsalted butter 340g caster sugar 3 large eggs, beaten 360g plain flour, sifted 1½ tbsp baking powder 350ml whole milk, at room temperature 90g pecans, chopped 45ml Canadian maple syrup

For the buttercream 210g unsalted butter 800g icing sugar, sifted 50-80g cream cheese 2 tbsp maple syrup Green food colouring (optional)

Begin by greasing and lining two 10-inch round sandwich tins and pre-heat the oven to 180 fan/350F/gas mark 6.

Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy for about five minutes. Add the beaten eggs, flour, baking powder, milk, pecans and maple syrup and gently mix thoroughly until well incorporated.

Divide the mixture into the prepared tins and bake for 25-30 minutes until fully cooked. Leave to cool while you prepare the icing.

For the icing, beat the butter until soft. Add the icing sugar and mix well until there are no lumps. Gradually add the cream cheese and maple syrup. (Be careful as you might not need all the cream cheese.) Whisk gently until you have a nice, but not runny, consistency.

To decorate the cake, spoon some buttercream on top of the first cooled sponge and spread evenly. Place the second sponge on top and spoon a generous amount of buttercream on to the second layer.

Using a palette knife, gently spread the buttercream along the sides of the entire cake until evenly coated and spread. Place in the fridge for 15-20 minutes.

To create the two-tone effect, in a separate bowl, take 1 tbsp of buttercream, add some green food colouring and mix well. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a 2D nozzle and spread along the sides of the bag. Spoon the remaining mixture into the piping bag and pipe rosettes all around the cake.

100g unsalted butter 3 tbsp golden syrup 70g dark brown sugar 1½ tbsp black treacle Grated zest of one small orange 1 tsp ground cinnamon Pinch of ground nutmeg 1 tsp ground ginger ½ tsp mixed spice 2 tbsp milk ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda 255g plain flour

For the royal icing 2 large egg whites 500 icing sugar Juice of one small orange Food colouring (optional)

Place the butter, syrup, sugar, treacle, zest, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and mixed spice in a pan and bring to boil.

Add the remaining ingredients and, using a wooden spoon, stir until fully incorporated and leave to cool. Pre-heat the oven to 180C fan/350F/gas mark 6.

Lightly dust your worktop with flour and begin to roll the dough, but do not overwork it. Using a rolling pin, roll to about 0.5cm thickness. Dip your cutters into flour, cut out the shapes and place on a baking tray lined with baking parchment.

Bake for 15-18 mins, then leave to cool.

Make the royal icing by beating the egg whites until frothy, then add the icing sugar. Continue to mix while gradually adding the orange juice until you have the right consistency. Separate the mixture and add food colouring as required. Fill an icing bag equipped with a writing-tip nozzle and decorate as you wish.