THE BIG LONDON BAKE

A review by Tanya Howard

Your key ingredients for the ultimate baking extravaganza…

0 x experience needed
1 x awesome marquee
10 x cooking stations
Mix in up to 10 teams of 2
Add a dash of competition
Set the timer to 90 minutes
Customise with our creation corner
Stir in a slice of creativity
And when the time’s up, the winning team is crowned

Are you up for The Big London Bake?

In my household we do love a cooking show, although I’m not sure when I will fully forgive Bake Off for the loss of Mary Berry, and Mel and Sue. But whilst I’m a big fan of cooking shows I could not be further from a baker if I tried. In fact, I was selected for a cooking campaign once with SORTEDfood specifically based of the fact I can’t cook.

So, what’s a girl who can’t cook or bake to do, why pitch a baking experience because The Big London Bake will definitely be the turning point for me, and I will leave the “tent” as the next Prue Leith. And how can I secure improving my baking prowess even more, get my most inexperienced cooking friend Kelly to come with me.

The Big London Bake is based in Tooting, in the pub garden of The Castle which is a really chic little pub with a very Instagram and summer worthy aesthetic that I will definitely be returning to once the myth of the sun eventually returns to us. There is also a venue in Birmingham if you are based a bit further north.

Upon arriving at the “tent” we couldn’t help but take photos because we basically felt like we were on the tv show itself. We were assigned our cooking station by the Head Baker, who for us was the lovely Nyssa, and were talked through how the bake would go.

Each month there is a different theme, and for the month of February it was Australian animals, and a percentage of the ticket price went towards charities in Australia following the recent bush fires. We decided that for our Australian animal we would make a koala, mainly because it looked the easiest out of the suggestions on the instructions sheet.

The instructions to make your bake and are really simple to follow, that is unless you accidentally turn off your oven mid bake and so there’s not enough time to actually full cook your cake… Yes, one of us leant on the oven not realising that the touch screen was that sensitive that we had turned it off.

As Kelly can’t have gluten, we made The Big London Bake aware in advance and they were so good in regard to dealing with dietary requirements. Not only were we supplied with gluten free ingredients, but we also had gluten free decorations, biscuits and more.

You have 90 minutes to make your cake and despite our final creation being quite terrifying, in fact we named him Terrifying Trevor, you can create a spectacular creation during that time… As we found out when we saw everyone else’s cake. If you have any questions at any point, there is not only the Head Baker but assistants to help and will even keep their cool when you ask if your buttercream is ready yet for the 20^th time.

Despite the oven mishap we did actually manage to put up a final creation, we’ll just ignore how it looked and tasted, and then it was time for the judging. Poor Nyssa had to taste Trevor along with a few other baking fails, but thankfully more spectacular and tasty creations before selecting a winner. Strangely enough it wasn’t us!

So we won’t be giving up our day jobs and going into the world of baking we did have the best time. I would definitely recommend getting yourself down and taking part in The Big London Bake, whether it’s just with a friend or even as a team building experience pitting yourself against each other for the top spot. Book your tickets now.