Comic Relief Red Nose Bake Off

cake1In the British Bake Off style we invited two judges to use their own expertise and eye for a good bake to choose our winners.

Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood were already booked by the BBC on Red Nose Day, so we hired David (Hollywood) McKnight of Martin & Co (Derby), and Gary (Berry) Trickett of Healthy Route (Nottingham & Leicester) to carry out the judging.

Both Gary and David are well known to our business and they were very pleased to be able to sample the baking of the FC cartons team.

In true Mary and Paul style they tested the bake, the crumb, the snap of the shortbread, the tang of the sticky lemon cake….. it was all very serious.  They both judged independently of each other, but they both agreed on the winner.  They both went for tradition – the Victoria Sponge by Dan Hawley Family.

cake2The winner was presented with a Lakeland voucher in the hope that they will be encouraged to keep baking.

A lovely morning was spent drinking good tea and coffee and sampling excellent bakers.

In total we raised £170.00 for Comic Relief and everyone went home having put on at least a couple of extra pounds!

Gary Trickett, one of the judges commented afterwards:

“As a man designed for cake eating, I am admirably qualified to gauge the standard of cakes in the FC Carton Red Nose 2012 Bake-off! I was pleasantly surprised by the standard and quality of the cakes produced by the UK’s leading gluing experts!

cake3The standard was of a Master Chef level and I felt that each had been baked with the passion of some of our best known celebrity chefs!

Delia Smith – The Winner, a slightly old-fashioned Victoria sandwich, but always stylish and never out of fashion!

Gordon Ramsey – The Red Nose Chocolate cake, plenty of bad language would have been used in the making of this cake.

Jamie Oliver – Sponges in a box-thrown together in 15 minutes and it showed!

Rick Stein – The crunchy shortbread, no matter how hard you try it’s still a little fishy.

Nigella Lawson – The Lemon Drizzle cake was made with no thought of calories and someone not afraid of their figure!

All in all a great team effort by Team FC Cartons!”

A brilliant day was had by all with laughter, sampling and a donation made to Red Nose!!