Now that I have mentioned the work competitions, I thought it would be a good time to say a bit more about this.  It was actually these charity events that started my craze with cake making!!  I had never made a cake before, but when I heard about the Easter cake competition just a few months after I started working there, I knew I had a friend who made lovely sponge cakes for her family, and I asked her to tell me how to make one.  My friend Anne loved baking but wasn’t a big fan of modelling little decorations, so I told her my ideas and she instructed me on the basics of handling sugar paste, and away I went!  So in 2011 I baked my first sponge cake, and spent an evening making little fondant decorations to decorate it.  As this was an Easter cake I shall save my pictures to post next Easter, but I will tell you now that I was amazed to hear that this cake won the competition for the best decorated, and was delighted! And I think I have entered every competition at work since!  So I will share a picture with you now of another entry which was not an Easter themed cake…  During the summer this year the Social Committee held the first cake competition which didn’t have a theme… I found it really hard to know what to do with a completely free reign!! Eventually I decided to make a toadstool house, just because I thought it would look quite fun and I could use use bright and bold colours in the decoration.  I also practiced carving cake a little bit, to form the domed top of the toadstool.

Toadstool house cake

I was really pleased with how it turned out, and thought the smaller details in the windows and flowers really completed the cake.  Coincidentally, I think it was during the following week that I saw Kimberley make a similar cake on The Great British Bake off this year!  The cake competitions at work tend to be great ways of raising money for our nominated charities, and this year all our proceeds have been raised in aid of MNDA – the Motor Neurone Disease association.

Toadstool house in flowered garden