Recently I was invited to the Big Bakes Christmas bake launch party. Big Bakes run baking experiences in London, Birmingham and Manchester (Salford). I went to one of the London locations - they've actually got 2 in London, London East which is in Haggerston, and London South on Tooting High Street.
I teamed up with Emily from Emily's Cooking, as you bake in pairs (their website says if there's an odd number in your booking they'll arrange a team of 3) and we were set the challenge of baking a Christmas wreath cake. Safe to say, it was the most chaotic 90 minutes of my life!
I didn't know that we had to actually bake the cake as well as decorate the cake in about 60 minutes - I though we'd just be decorating it! The last, probably 30, minutes was spent presenting our attempts and cutting into the cakes, and the moderator judging who had won. Emily and I came in 3rd place, which was very unexpected, as there were some amazing cakes. I'm actually so surprised we placed at all.
I would recommend for anybody to go to the Big Bakes. It's a lot of fun; even if you're not someone who's big on baking, it's still a lot of fun. You don't need to be good at it. If you actually want to win, it does help obviously if you've had some cake decorating experience, but even if you haven't, it's just so much fun. Cocktails were flowing, the whole energy in the room is just really electric, everyone's buzzing and running around (just like on Bake Off!), and it's just so hectic - I even had icing in my hair - but it's a great activity to do.
I would definitely recommend this experience, I would do it again in a heartbeat. I would give it 9 out of 10 and recommend it for anyone who's looking for a Christmas foodie experience, or Christmas baking experience. Everything is provided, and they even do the washing up! They've still got tickets available for the Festive Wreath Cake session next week over on their website, but then they'll be doing another theme after that and I bet it's great any time of the year. If you're stuck for a last minute present idea, they sell gift vouchers on their site too.
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