Lorraine Pascale

Personal life

Pascale was born to West Indian (Caribbean) parents in Hackney at The Mothers' Hospital and was fostered shortly after she was born. She was adopted at 18 months old and brought up in Oxfordshire by a white family. When her adoptive parents divorced when she was three years old, Pascale remained with her mother, who subsequently became ill. At this point, at age seven, she was fostered to more than one family, with differing degrees of 'fit'. Eventually she returned to her mother. She won a full scholarship given by the Buttle Trust and so was educated at a boarding school in Devon.

Pascale has an elder adoptive brother and a half-sister (her adoptive father had a daughter after the divorce). She knows her biological parents' identity and their four other children, but she does not wish to re-establish contact.

Pascale married Polish musician Count Kaz Balinski-Jundzill and the couple had a daughter, actress Ella Balinska. The couple separated in 2000 and subsequently divorced.

Career

At age 16, Pascale was spotted as potential model by the agent who had found Naomi Campbell. Based in New York, she achieved recognition as the first black British model to appear on the cover of American Elle. She appeared in the 1998 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and featured as one of the 'Bond Girls' in Robbie Williams "Millennium" video.

Pascale recognised the need to ensure her future after modelling and embarked on a series of career "try-outs", including hypnotherapy and car mechanics. She took a diploma cookery course at Leith's School of Food and Wine in 2005 and found that cookery fitted her "like a pair of old jeans". After gaining her diploma, she did a series of 'stages' in some London restaurants but, realising that restaurant hours would not suit her, Pascale established herself as a specialist cakemaker, with a contract with Selfridges. Her introduction to Selfridges was at the suggestion of chef Marco Pierre White and in 2008 and 2010 she supplied the London store with over 1000 Christmas cakes. Pascale has opened her own shop, Ella's Bakehouse, in Covent Garden. She also studied Culinary Arts at Thames Valley University (now University of West London) and in March 2012 graduated with a first class degree.

In 2015 Pascale said she practises Transcendental Meditation to relax after work.

Television and publishing work

In January 2011, Pascale presented a television bakery programme in 2011, Baking Made Easy, on BBC television and published a bakery book based upon this series. Later that year, a second series, Home Cooking Made Easy, was broadcast in September and October, with an accompanying book. A Last Minute Christmas programme aired on BBC Two on 22 December 2011. A third book was published in 2012 and a series based upon it, called Fast, Fresh & Easy Food, aired in August and September 2012 on BBC Two.

Since January 2014, Pascale co-presents and judges the UK version of My Kitchen Rules with Jason Atherton on Sky Living. In early 2014, it was announced that Pascale was to host a new six-part television series called Lorraine Pascale: How to be a Better Cook that would air later in the year on BBC Two. In March 2015, she co-hosted The Nation's Favourite Food alongside the Hairy Bikers. The show aired for one episode on BBC Two.

Lorraine is also a judge on Food Network's Holiday Baking Championship and Spring Baking Championship as well as a mentor on Worst Bakers in America. She was a judge in a few episodes of the first season of Bakers Vs Fakers, and became the hostess for Season 2.

Charity

Pascale is the patron of TACT, the UK's largest fostering and adoption charity, and an ambassador of both the charities Rays of Sunshine and The Prince's Trust. In summer 2012, she was made the ambassador of the National Careers Service launching the service with Skills Minister John Hayes.