The Nine Network announced Shane Jacobson and Anna Gare as hosts of The Great Australian Bake Off, with Dan Lepard and Kerry Vincent joining them as judges in the search to find Australia’s Best Home Baker.

The ultimate kitchen battle is set to erupt when Nine serves up this brand new TV dish in 2013. Ten home baking enthusiasts will be put through a series of grueling elimination challenges, baking a mouth-watering selection of cakes, pies, tarts, pastries, bread, biscuits and desserts, all in the hope of being crowned Australia’s Best Home Baker.

The franchise began on the BBC TWO in 2010, the UK format is a ratings phenomenon with its series three finale drawing its highest ever peak audience of 7.2 million and attracting a record-breaking average of 6.5 million viewers.

The US Network CBS has also just announced it will commission a full American series. The franchise created by Love Productions and distributed by BBC Worldwide has been adapted in Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Poland, Ireland, Norway and France.

Lepard’s co-judge is fellow Australian Kerry Vincent, who is known for revolutionizing the wedding cake industry in the US and is nicknamed “the Simon Cowell of Cake” in her role as judge on American television’s Food Network. She creates cakes that have to be seen to be believed.

Kerry, founder of the Grand National Wedding Cake Competition and co-founder of the Oklahoma State Sugar Art Show, grew up on a farm in Western Australia and won her first Country Women’s Association baking competition at the age of eight. She moved to Tulsa when she married an Oklahoma engineer 38 years ago and brought her Aussie baking flair and exquisite sugar artistry to the world of American cakes.

“Australia will set the tone with a new entourage of emerging characters and contestants that I hope the audience will come to love and admire, while they empathize with the drama, challenges and my own tough-love approach. Being invited to judge The Great Australian Bake Off in my homeland is beyond a dream come true,” Vincent says.

Production on the new series will commence mid-November in the gardens of historic Werribee Park Mansion in Victoria.