I volunteered to make all the cakes which seemed like an excellent idea at the time. After the fourth trip to Tesco in a row, I changed my mind a bit.
I had a bit of a wobble to be honest and had a couple of… I don’t want to say disasters so I’ll say… ‘minor errors’. The good thing about cupcakes is that you can pick the best nine from a batch of 12 and nobody has to know about it (unless you write about it on your blog).
On the third night of baking I turned to a pizza for comfort. Sadly the pizza burnt the roof of my mouth, so that backfired.
The final challenge was on the day of the afternoon tea when I had to navigate the work car park, which is not too dissimilar to an off road 4×4 course, with a car full of cake. Thankfully we all made it in one piece, although perhaps slightly rougher around the edges than when we set off.
We’re not focussing on the challenging times though! We’re focussing on the positive!
I made a carrot cake, an apple and blueberry cake, chocolate brownies, raspberry ripple cupcakes and scones.
Notes to self after this experience:
- People are too polite to tell you there are lumps of butter in your cream cheese icing, and if you whack some carrot decorations on top of it they probably won’t care anyway
- You only have one oven – don’t get too carried away
- You need a better sieve
- Wonky scones have more character
Anyway, everything seemed to go down quite well. I originally didn’t think it was my proudest baking moment (fun fact: when I wrote this out on my phone, ‘moment’ autocorrected to ‘Minnesinger’ which I now know is a German lyric poet and singer of the 12th – 14th centuries, who performed songs of courtly love).
But looking back on it I’ve changed my mind and am really pleased with what I did!
This was just an excuse to post some nice pictures of cake to be honest.
