Miranda: "I'm just trying to make the cream a bit thicker so it holds together more like a sort of thicker layer rather than running out of the cake. And I'm putting in more raspberries because it's not quite sharp enough. I'm quite used to baking with a constrained time because I have little children. So actually it's quite nice not having someone trying to sit up on the worktop with me and think that they quite like to join in. It's kind of odd to have actually a period of time when I can just cook."

Voice-over: "Miranda Gore Brown lives in West Sussex with her husband Edward, and children Thomas and Eleanor. Her signature triple layered brownie meringue cake with raspberry cream is a family favorite."

Miranda: "It's going to be actually piled up. I'm going to do it not just as a tray bake. I'm doing it like a Victoria sandwich style. No I'm going to do it in two tins. Each tin is going to have a thin layer of brownie meringue on top with it. Yes. One of them is going to have peaks."

Voice-over: "Miranda's signature cake has to be baked twice, once for the brownie bottom and once for the layer of meringue."

Paul Hollywood: "It's going to be a surprise. I haven't seen it before. A brownie. You've got to get that just at the right moment, that it's got a crust on top, but it's a little bit soggy in the middle. Then she's going to put the meringue on top. It'll take away the crispness, but if she does it at just the right time, I can see that it's going to work."

Edd made a three tier caramel, cinnamon and banana cake, topped with sliced bananas and a swirl of caramel sauce.

Sometimes in the early seasons, we only had chance to find out what  a few of the contestants were baking. In the first episode, Louise wasn't interviewed.

Voice-over: "31 year old entrepreneur David Chambers lives near Milton Keynes with his girlfriend Ellie. He takes all of his hobbies extremely seriously, especially his baking."

David made a two-tier chocolate sponge cake, filled with orange buttercream and iced with orange frosting. 

Voice-over: "Lea Harris lives in Scotland with her husband Simon. She's baking a cranberry and pistachio cake topped with orange flower water icing."

Ruth: "I'm making my own lemon curd there."

Mary Berry: "They used to do it always in a bowl above simmering water and you're bravely doing it over a low heat. That's much quicker. But you've got to keep your eye on it, haven't you?"

Ruth: "You have. But I'm a firm believer in, you know, shortcuts. I'll whizz my butter in the microwave, just, you know, to soften it up." 

 Voice-over: "Ruth Clemens lives in Cheshire with her husband Damien, and three sons, Ashley, Dylan and Finn. Her signature cake is a twist on a lemon drizzle cake with cream and freshly made lemon curd."

Mary Berry: "Ruth has treated it quite differently. She's done it in three layers and she's going to layer it up with that lemon curd, which is a far cry from lemon drizzle cake. She's methodical, she's enjoying what she's doing and I noticed she's been very sensible. She can't get the three cake tins in at once, so she did two, saw they were perfect and put the next one in."

Jonathan: "Baking is my obsession. It's what I'm about all the time. You know, it's my hobby, it's my love, it's everything to me really. I adore it."

Mary Berry: "Now there's something, I guess marmalady going on in the pan."

Jonathan: "Marmalade. Part of my, my orange cream for the top of my carrot cake that I'm making. The first lot of eggs, they were bad because I left them on the heat too long so they curdled. That's what happens when you try and do too many things at once."

Voice-over: "25 year old research analyst Jonathan Shepherd lives in St. Albans with his girlfriend Jenny. Baking is in his blood. His grandfather owned a successful bakery in Bristol. His signature bake is a triple layered classic. A carrot cake with a lime and cream cheese icing and handmade carrot decorations.

Mary Berry: "You've got three cake tins there. Why did you choose to do it in three?"

Jonathan: "I'm really bad at slicing cakes in half, so I feel more comfortable putting them in three separate tins."

Mary Berry: "And also if you bake them in three separate tins, it's rather easier because they take shorter time." 

Jonathan: "Exactly. And they're cooked all the way through. A deep one is 25 minutes instead of 50 minutes. Sometimes it takes an hour if I've got it really thick."

Jasminder: "Paul is just watching me. I'm just thinking, "oh, I wonder if they're looking at the way I'm doing it, if it's the wrong technique." 

Voice-over: "Assistant credit control manager Jasminder from Birmingham regularly bakes for her colleagues. She's making a hummingbird cake with a twist. The classic version is made with banana and pineapple. Jaz is loading hers with mango and passion fruit."

Mary Berry: "There'll be an element of crunch in there?"

Jasminder: "Yes. A little bit of seed coming in just to give it a bit of more texture."

Paul Hollywood: "And where are you up to on the actual baking process?"

Jasminder: " I'm just chopping up the fruit and then once I've chopped up the fruit, trying to mash it as much as I can, then I'll just add the oil and the eggs and mix it and it'll be ready to go in the oven."

Voice-over:  "By using so much fresh fruit, Jaz may have already given herself an advantage."

Mary Berry: "What you'll get is a normal cake with lots of bits in there. When you get it out of the oven, it will probably have quite an open structure because the moisture in the fruit as it expands in the oven will leave big air holes. So it should be a very, very moist cake. What I don't want to see on that is a dry cake."

Voice-over: "Mark Withers is a bus driver in South Wales. His cakes are the talk of the depot. He also makes his own marmalade for his signature sticky marmalade tea loaf."

Mark: "There's only so much marmalade on toast you can eat, so it's nice to have something different to do with my marmalade. It's quite a straightforward recipe and it's quite forgiving, so there's not a huge amount that can go wrong with it. "

 Annetha: "This is most definitely a fusion of both of my British culture and my West Indian culture. I'm adding strawberries and cream to a Jamaican black cake."

Voice-over:"The home bakers have access to identical base ingredients, but beyond that, they're free to add whatever they wish to their signature cakes. Anita's West Indian black cake gets its name from the high proportion of brown sugar in the mixture as well as her homemade secret ingredient."

Mary Berry: "These are all different fruits in here. I can see some cherries. What is the moisture in there?"

Annetha: "Well, that's the rum and the wines. It's part of how you'd make the 'wow"."