The Great Winwick Bake Off

There was a flurry of baking activity in our kitchen this weekend.  It doesn’t often happen quite so early on a Saturday morning, but this one was different.  Today was the day of The Great Winwick Bake Off.

It’s a fundraising idea to raise money towards mending our church roof.  We’re nearly there, only another £30,000 to go, so events like this are a great way of getting the community involved and pushing the total a little bit higher.

The way that Winwick’s Bake Off works is quite different to the TV series.  No TV cameras, for a start, no spectators as the contestants race against the clock to complete miraculous culinary achievements, no Paul Hollywood or Mary Berry … but it’s all good fun and involves eating lots of cake.

Contestants for each of the sections – biscuits, scones, sponge cakes, fruit and nut cakes and wildcard – make their entries at home and then deliver them to the Winwick Leisure Centre where the Bake Off is to take place.

This is going to be my entry …

It’s called Chocolate Chip Cookie Bar and it’s one of our favourite traybake cakes at the moment.  It’s moist and chewy, full of oats and chocolate chips – mmm!  The recipe comes from a book called The Traditional Aga Book of Bread and Cakes by Louise Walker.  I can’t copy the recipe out for you as it’s covered by copyright, but if you’ve got an Aga and you haven’t got this book, it’s definitely worth buying.  I met Louise Walker at an Aga cookery demonstration once, so every time I use the book I’m reminded of that day and what a nice lady she was.

Then it was off to the Leisure Centre with small daughter to hand the cake over to the organisers.  We weren’t there first there – the entries had already started to arrive by the time we dodged the raindrops and dashed inside.

The Bake Off itself didn’t start until 1pm.  You pay your money and choose a category to vote on, getting a selection of cakes from your chosen category and a voting form.  This is second year that the Bake Off has run and it was even more popular this year.  Small daughter had asked if we could go into town to spend some gift vouchers she had and we were later getting back than we had intended. By the time we had collected big daughter from home and arrived at the Leisure Centre, there wasn’t much left!  You can see by the big spaces on the plates that the event had been well-attended, though!

Because we were so late, we didn’t get chance to vote, but we did get platefuls of cake which went down very well!  We were just in time for the results, too.

My cookie bar didn’t win the wildcard category but a friend’s daughter won the biscuits category with her rather scrummy raspberry and white chocolate cookies. She was very pleased with her winner’s mug.

We got to take the rest of our cake home.  As I forgot to photograph it when it came out of the oven, I can only show you what’s left of it.  By Saturday night there was even less of it.  Just crumbs, in fact.  But you can take my word for it that it was very nice!