Helen is Bake Off Creme de la Creme champion

The Bearsden chef, who incredibly only qualified as a pastry chef in 2014, teamed up with junior chocolate master Samantha Rain and their team captain Mark Tilling, a UK chocolate master, to lift the coveted trophy.

The group were one of 15 teams of professional pastry chefs vying for the title.

The 33-year-old who works at the award winning Number 16 in Glasgow’s west end, said she was ‘stunned’ that they had won.

The former Boclair Academy student said: “It was tough and the judges were looking for perfection. We all had different challenges. In the first episode we had to do 36 identical matching pastries of pistachio and raspberry entremet. And in the final we had to produce six different types of desert for 100 people under a strict time limit.”

And she added, “It is good to have a local person winning something for Scotland. I’m stunned but also really happy that someone from Scotland has shown what can be done with determination. It is also a vindication of my decision to change career. I’d only qualified as a pastry chef a year before being asked to take part in the programme, and I thought there was no way I would put myself up against the best in the business. I was terrified I’d be totally out of my depth.

“But it has been incredible, I have amazed myself at how well I have done, but it is all down to team work.

“There are no gimmicks on the show, they are strict about the time you have and the judges are looking for perfection. To say it was stressful is an understatement, but it was also super fun and everyone was just great.”