When Make A Wish asked us to get involved with their wonderful cause, we just had to say yes. We have been working with them on their latest Bake A Wish campaign - so we had to get in on the action and throw our own very special bake sale.
When Make A Wish asked us to get involved with their wonderful cause, we just had to say yes. We have been working with them on their latest Bake A Wish campaign - so we had to get in on the action and throw our own very special bake sale.
We had some wonderful celebrity chefs and lovely bloggers contribute their cakes and biscuits and we even managed to make plenty of goodies ourselves by spending a whole day in the kitchen together the day before our sale.
With so many cakes and bakes we assumed that the bake sale would run all day. how wrong we were! We were such a hit that we sold out of every single thing in a few short hours and were left turning people away!
With such amazing creations sent to us by the celebrity chefs we couldn't bear to cut into their perfect icing and be responsible for ruining such beautiful cakes. So, we decided to instead raffle off the five beauties and managed to sell tickets in their hundreds!
Click through to see all the cakes and the action from goodtoknow's Bake A Wish bake sale
Busy bees
Our day started bright and early in the kitchen with brainstorming recipe ideas and deciding who would make what. One of Make A Wish's gorgeous volunteers, Philly, popped in to give us a hand also!
Blue baking
Blue food isn't always the thing you think you would love to eat but we managed to tweak our recipes to keep with the blue Make a Wish theme. These baby blue piped meringues were pretty as a picture. We just added a little blue food colouring to our classic meringue recipe - easy!
A helping hand
Make a Wish volunteer Philly worked her magic in the kitchen and made us some delicious star biscuits and flapjacks - thanks Philly!
What Kate Baked
Fantastic food blogger Kate popped down to our kitchen to give us a hand after work on Monday. We decorated and chatted away about our favourite things (mainly cake!)
What Kate Baked
Food blogger Kate made a wonderfully sticky ginger cake with orange icing for our bake sale - it went down a treat!
A not so rocky road
It wasn't just the recipe team who got on board to bake up a storm in the kitchen. Some of our other friends from goodtoknow came in on their lunch hour to help out too. This wonderful chunky rocky road was made by our Money Editor Tara.
Team spirit
We couldn't leave anyone out now could we? So after spending the day, mixing, baking, icing and doing lots of washing up we thought it was time for a reward! All the girls from goodtoknow got together to so some cookie decorating - the competition was fierce!
Everyone's a star!
You may think that we let a gang of primary school children let loose on our biscuits but sadly you would be wrong. These are the result of us all having a wonderful time with coloured icing, lots of glitter and melted chocolate! It's the taste that counts, right?
The calm before the storm
We were so pleased with our finished table, after many hours of preparation and baking it was fantastic to see everything come together.
Set up
The bake sale brought out the creative best in us all. We were all keen to add as much to the presentation as we could and dragged in our cake stands form home, pinned up our bunting and piled our bakes high to ensure everything looked as good as it could.
Raffle fun
goodtoknow's Lissa had a helping hand managing the raffle as we were joined by Make A Wish's Emma.
Variety is the spice of life
We could not believe how generous everyone was with their time and energy, donating so many delicious cakes and bakes. We think you'll agree this is quite a spread!
Raffle
These are the five cakes that we thought were far too beautiful to slice into on the day. Celebrity bakers Eric Lanlard, Lily Vanilli, Jo Wheatley, Choccywoccydoodah and Fiona Cairnes sent us a signature cake for our raffle and we were blown away by the creativity and style. Who knew you could do so many things with chocolate, icing and fruit?
Jo Wheatley
Great British Bake Off star Jo Wheatly hand made us one of her beautiful cakes, decorated with chocolate cigarillos and adorable mini cupcakes. It was very tricky to resist sneaking a little taste!
Choccywoccydoodah
This towering creations by chocolate masters Choccywoccydoodah made a beautiful centrepiece to our bake sale. A rich chocolate cake, covered in chocolate and topped with fluffy marshmallows. Yum!
Eric Lanlard
This glossy chocolate cake was topped with such an intricate design we had to be on our best behaviour not to pinch a little chocolate bobble here and there! We especially loved the gold transfer creating the boarder.
Annabel Karmel
This adorable little shoal of fishcakes made its way over to our offices from the gorgeous Annabel Karmel. Cleverly decorated with cheerio and chocolate button scales and jelly bean mouths, we loved the fun take on decorating!
Kept on our toes
We didn't just plonk our stall anywhere. As any good sales team knows - location is key. We set ourselves up right beside the canteen to tempt the hungry workers to spend their pennies with us, and judging by the queues, our tactic paid off!
Delicious fish
Annabel's cute little sea creature cupcakes made themselves at home on the stall. They were especially popular for mums and dads to take home to their little ones - we can see why!
Lily Vanilli
In classic Lily style her cake was a real showstopper. Smothered in a smooth buttercream and decorated with fresh fruit, gold-dusted nuts and shards of chocolate, it was all made from the best of nature's pantry.
Flapjacks
There's nothing like a sweet and crumbly flapjack to see you through the afternoon. This recipe, using traditional oats, was a hit with people wanting a healthier option.
Lola's cupcakes
The lovely ladies at Lola's sent us over four big boxes of cupcakes to help towards our fundraising. As a supplier to Harrods, we knew we were onto a winner and they were one of the first bakes to sell out!
Sticky ginger cake with orange icing
Here is the lovely Kate's loaf in all its presented glory! We love the simple but sticky icing, the perfect cake to go with a cuppa.
Almond sponges with orange icing
Some of our recipes team had fun creating new recipes especially for the day. These little almond loaves topped with orange icing and flaked almonds were made by our Recipes Assistant Rosie and were soft, buttery and utterly delicious.
A basketful of treats
We knew chocolate would be a sure winner with the team here at work so made sure we had plenty to offer those chocoholics. Here are our rocky road hearts and white choc and pistachio cookies.
Primrose cupcakes
These super sweet looking cupcakes from Primrose bakery were fluffy sponge heaven topped with various flavours of buttercream. We loved the pretty colours and textures and saw them flying off the stall!
Professional finishes
We were delighted to receive such amazing cakes from all our celebrity bakers. They certainly generated a lot of interest and were a great eye catcher to make people stop by our stall!
Salted caramel brownies
Our wonderful Recipes Editor Holly rustled up these little beauties combining two of our favourite things - chocolate and salted caramel! These slices of goodness were the very first thing to sell out, we might just have to make some of our own! Thankfully she shared her recipe with us!
Roll up, roll up!
With our raffle and cake sale there was never a dull moment during the day. Our team were kept well and truly busy as a steady stream of people kept them busy with their need for cake!
Millionaire's sponge
We asked what you would like us to bake on Monday morning with the ingredients we had and this was one of the suggestions. So, thank you Lydia Ellen Appleyard for your idea, we loved it and this is how it turned out! Get the recipe here.
Apple crumble traybake
Here is another invention from our day of baking. Our clever Recipes Assistant Jess transformed a humble tray bake into this wonderful creation. Light sponge, filled with stewed apples and topped with a crumbly oat mixture was the perfect combo of flavours and textures - get her easy recipe here.
Philly's stars
These Make a Wish stars were made by one of their volunteers, Philly. She had these in the oven in no time and managed to ice them perfectly too! They were the ideal thing for lots of our stall visitors to have with a cuppa in the afternoon.
Orange and almond loaf
We couldn't believe the speed at which we saw cake disappear, it was so quick we didn't even manage to sample any ourselves! This homemade orange and almond loaf was a popular choice.
Chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate
This slab of chocolate, studded with plump marshmallows, fruit and nuts was a real crowd pleaser. That is, after we figured out how to cut it without breaking our knife!
The team
Here we are, proud as punch! We were so delighted to be raising money for such a lovely charity! After all the cakes were sold and the raffle drawn, we raised almost £500 for Make A Wish!
Throwing a bake sale is fun, rewarding and you get to look at cake all day - we couldn't recommend it more!
Where to next?
