Ready, Steady, Bake! During Enrichment Week 2023, twenty three (new) Year 9 and (new) Year 10 pupils based at school were creating sweet culinary delights in a Bake Off.

Monday 3 July 2023 was the Beautiful Bread Challenge where pupils had to bake a decorative loaf and bread rolls to accompany scones, jam and cream for an afternoon tea. The group became pros at kneading and accomplished plaiters with a beautiful rise on their bakes. They then got to “Shake it off’ whilst making butter from cream by shaking jam jars and having fun squeezing out the butter milk to use in their scones. The room was filled with that comforting, bakery smell of warm, freshly baked loaves and scones… even Paul Hollywood would be proud!

Tuesday was the Chocolate Challenge, when the smell of mouth-watering cocoa emanated from the cookery room all day. Pupils made and decorated a delicious chocolate cake, made chocolate chip muffins and had the dreaded technical challenge to make a chocolate Swiss roll. This proved too much for some, with over-whipped cream, crumbly broken Swiss rolls and many saying “Never again!” – nevertheless they all tasted great!

Wednesday morning was the Biscuit Bake Bonanza, flavouring their biscuits and practising their piping skills with some original ideas from lemony delights to stars and stripes. In the afternoon we had a well-earned break from baking and cooled off with a trip to the outdoor pool.

Thursday was the pastry technical challenge to make a lovely lemon meringue pie. This provided a significant challenge with crumbly pastry and ‘soggy bottoms’, runny meringues that over-whipped, and lemon sauces that wouldn’t thicken or thickened too much. Mrs Tipper and Mrs Millar went to the rescue with pastry repair and sieving of sauces to remove the lumps for some!

In the afternoon pupils were treated to a decorating masterclass from Mrs Tipper, where they learnt how to make fondant animals and roses. This session taught the teams all they needed to know for Friday’s showstopper cakes.

Friday was the big Showstopper Cake Challenge. Sponges were baked and decorations were made. Pupils showed awesome creativity and they really pulled out all the stops; we had fondant figures, iced flowers, beautiful piping with different colours and flavours of sponge, elaborate and creative designs including Willie Wonka’s hat, a day at the seaside, an igloo and even a Mario piranha plant!

Each day every team was judged on the delicious food they produced and a winning team was announced the next morning. They were awarded beautifully decorated wooden spoons. All our bakers did a great job and showed us some fantastic cooking skills!

Georgia: "I really enjoyed doing the Bake-Off, it was really fun and will definitely be doing this again"

Libby: "I had lots of fun and really enjoyed making and decorating cakes for the showstopper."

Sophie: “The best thing we made was the lemon meringue pie, but we should never do the Swiss roll again!”