'I have a new respect for cooking show contestants after trying a Bake Off-style class'

"Ready, set, bake!"

It's the call to action synonymous with reality TV show The Great British Bake Off, which has been running for 12 seasons in the UK and spawned spin-off series around the world, including in Australia.

While the amateur bakers who apply for these sorts of series whip up highly creative and awe-inspiring creations, when watching it from home it seems relatively straightforward. But I recently discovered the ticking clock makes it so much harder.

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I walked through a refrigerator door opposite a tube station in London's East to be transported to what looked like the set of The Great British Bake Off — complete with a tent set up and whisks for light features — for a cooking class like no other.

The Big London Bake follows the format of the show in some ways, with 90 minutes on the clock to make your decadent dessert.

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But you don't have to come up with your own showstopper — the recipe is provided, and all the ingredients you need are already measured out for you.

The only thing you need to figure out is the flavours you want for your cake and icing, as well as the colour scheme and decorations you want to use.

We were making an Ombré cake — the trend of a colour gradient through the cake.

On Instagram, there are some spectacular creations showcasing how artistic this type of design can look.

In my head, my cake was going to look just like that. In reality, sadly, it did not.

While everything we could possibly need was on hand and our instructor, named Nina, kept coming around to help us and check on us in a way that is much more nurturing than you see on those reality TV shows, it still wasn't quite as easy as it looked.

We were paired up for the task and my baking partner, Anais, has made many a delicious cake in the past. As her good friend and former flatmate, I can attest to this because I've tried many of them.

I thought I had stacked the deck in my favour with my choice of baking buddy, but it doesn't quite work that way when the timer is running.

The countdown makes you nervous about doing things at a pace more cracking than you'd follow in your own kitchen, and this is perhaps the biggest challenge of the whole experience.

We finished decorating our cake just in the nick of time, but the colour gradient we anticipated for our orange-coloured, lemon-flavoured buttercream icing didn't quite work out, as we attempted to hurriedly lather it all on and spread it out in the final minutes, creating a more salmon-coloured all-round finish.

The gradient inside the cake — a teal-coloured, almond-flavoured sponge — fared better but we used some of the brightest orange icing between the three cake layers, giving it a more psychedelic finish than we anticipated.

Had we more time remaining when we got around to the decorating, maybe we would have stopped for a minute and thought it all through more... but when the "five more minutes" call goes out and your cake isn't ready, all bets are off.

In the end, it may not have been the prettiest cake or won any of the three prizes awarded on the night by Nina to the group, but it still tasted good and that counts for something (at least in my book).

After years of watching cooking shows, in one night, I have a new respect for those reality TV show contestant who get put through all those pressure cooker situations with that clock tick, tick, ticking away.