Looking on the bright side

It would be fair to say that Sue Fleischl likes a challenge. Whether it’s starting her own business while solo parenting, tackling breast cancer or, as she is on the day of our photo shoot, getting ready for a well overdue hip replacement, she is a woman who’s not easily fazed. In her role as co-judge in The Great Kiwi Bake Off, she’s there to nurture the talents of 12 bakers who are put to the test in a high pressure kitchen (albeit one with a lot of bunting and colourful china). Sue knows all about high pressure – she’s lived it from the get-go. The past 12 months have seen the 56-year-old get married, sell her hugely popular business The Great Catering Company, and film season two of Bake Off. When The Australian Women’s Weekly visits the renovated heritage home she and new husband Michael Booth live in, she is just days into her new life without a full-time job for the first time in almost 40 years and it’s fair to say the change of pace is good, if wildly different from the life she’s led so far.

Sue grew up in a food-loving house – her Viennese-born father Peter was such a passionate foodie that the Fleischls’ home was well-known in the Napier community as the place where beer