Event: The Cake and Bake Show

You may have already read my post about my trip to Manchester last week for the Ideal Home Show at Christmas, which this year had decided to co-locate with the Cake and Bake Show.   This post is all about the Cake and Bake Show element of the day, as my first visit to one of these I really enjoyed it, although it was a little smaller than I expected.

Here are my highlights.

The Great British Bake Off Live

We were lucky enough to see Flora Shedden from this years GBBO cook her Sugar Free Pistachio and Apple Cake.  She gave a brilliant demonstration and answered questions.    There were some TV's so you could see what was going on on the stage.

  

  

After the demonstration she happily chatted and signed autographs, making my 7yr old very very happy when I took him his present home (he loved her on GBBO).

The magical story book cake designed by Jacqui Kelly

How amazing is this chair .... and it's actually cake!!

Jacqui Kelly, a food artist at Totally Sugar, has designed these life size children's story book characters in cake!
Can you spot the following all crafted in sugar?  Paddington Bear, Grandma Wolf, Jack and The Beanstalk, The Gruffalo, Cinderellas Pumpkin carriage, a Harry Potter spell book, wand and wizard’s hat, The Hungry Caterpillar and Mother Goose.

Fantastic storybook cake facts

• It took 4 weeks - around 340 hours to make all the characters
• 72kg of Renshaws Sugarpaste was used to make the characters, including 14kg of Renshaws Chocolate Paste on the Gruffalo alone!
• The characters contain a mixture of cakes - including Vanilla cake, Toffee cake, Ginger cake and Chocolate cake
• The characters also contain rice krispie treats, rocky road and tiffin cake for the more structural elements
• 9kg of chocolate, 3 litres of double cream and 20kg of buttercream was used to create the characters
• The characters have polystyrene bases supplied by Dummies Direct to help with transportation between the shows
• The life-size Grandma Wolf stands at 5ft 8in!
• Grandma Wolf head is made out of toffee cake and arms are ginger cake!

Home made cakes

The Cake and Bake show had a competition for armature, home bakers to display their creations and there were some amazing offerings.

  

  

Sponge

How cute are these tiny mini cakes.  I bought one for my mum as a thank you for babysitting but wish I'd got one to try.  I must have been stood there for 15 minutes trying to decide which flavour I wanted.

Sponge Special: Mince Pie, Salted Caramel and Toffee, Spiced Orange & Cranberry, Strawberries & Cream

Traditional: Chocolate, Coffee, Elizabeth, Lemon, Victoria

Quirky: Apple Crumble, Bakewell, Carrot, Chocolate & Orange, Sticky Toffee Pudding

Sponge Stars: Caramel & Peanut; Coconut & Chocolate; Millionaires; Rocky Road

  And these baby ones were soo cute at £1 each - they also do larger ones on their website  www.sponge.co.uk

Big Bakes Bakery

The boys loved their 'small' gingerbread men we took home for them.  I tried a bit and can honestly say it was some of the best gingerbread I've ever had.

http://www.bigbakesbakery.co.uk/

Disclaimer:  I was offered a pair of tickets to the Cake and Bake Show, Manchester in return for writing a couple of posts,  All opinions are my own, the companies mentioned are my own selection and have not been consulted about this post.

Apologies for the slightly off photo's my screen has gone funny in my digital camera which makes focusing challenging... I've asked Santa for a new one.