It's been an awful long time since we held a huge baking competition in aid of Shelter's Cake Time
But your forgetful correspondent was nudged into action by a letter from Shelter thanking us for our contribution of £71.23 and promising to send us a special cookbook as a present for getting our funds in early. I'm a bit worried that this effectively cancels out our contribution (I know every little helps and everyone was very generous but I was reminded of this sketch)
but anyway, we all had a lovely time and filled our faces with the offerings.
True to form, the competition was extremely hard fought.
From Sid's emotional blackmail (he named his offering the tears of tiny children),
to Jono's shameless last minute icing sugar branding
to Siobhann's handpicked blossom embellishments to K-Broadcast's employment of a professional cookery writer to Phil's recruitment of a special friend to bake an extravaganza in 6 layers of coffee cake and fondant icing (which backfired somewhat as the judges insisted he had bought it from a shop) every tactic was employed to make the judge's job as difficult as possible.
Luckily we had some genuine expertise on the panel... Phil's family friend, the celebrated Polish bon viveur as chairmen, our own Ann Hunter as a fearsome quality control expert and Natalie who, despite looking like a frail wisp of a thing, proved she could put away as much cake as both of them combined.
In the end prizes were give for Originality (my own Giant Jaffa Cake, an idea purloined from this brilliant website as a tribute to the famous Cake or Biscuit ruling ), for Prettiness (Rod's boyfriend's coffee cream confection. Apparently he avoided disqualification because sift the flour himself) for Deliciousness (Sarah's delectable Pineapple Upside Down Aussie Cake) and lastly, the overall Grand Prix to Hattie's astonishing fresh stawberry & cream gateau.
And now we are all morbidly obese. Hey ho.
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