Whilst the Lambe’s day room, on a windy and damp December lunchtime, is not exactly the Bake Off tent in the height of Summer, entrants in the first Inter-house Christmas Bake Off contest rose to the occasion with a creative and delicious variety of bakes, from across the Houses, thrown into the mix.  Clearly inspired by the festive season, there were some excellent Christmas creations including a superb chocolate reindeer cake, TWO Christmas pudding chocolate Malteaser cakes and a delicate mince pie Christmas tree amongst many others.  The heat was definitely on in the kitchen between the various Houses, with every baker keen to show they were the cream of the crop.  Ultimately though, there could only be one entry from each House which could take the title of House winner and these proved to be Maddie’s salted caramel brownies for Lambe’s (I think I’m still recovering from the sugar overload); Alex’s superb gingerbread cake for Holdgate/Westminster (the gingerbread men didn’t last long…); Simone and Grace’s beautiful snowman sponge for Clothworkers (how fantastic were those marshmallow snowmen?) and Ben’s unique sundried tomato and thyme bread rolls (complete with olive oil dip) for Founders. 

From here an ultimate ‘Star Baker’ needed to be crowned and when all was done, it was decided that Ben’s sundried tomato and thyme bread rolls ‘kneaded’ to be declared winners of the competition.  Dr Henshaw, SVS’ own Paul Hollywood and chief judge for the contest, described Ben’s entry as ‘soft and doughy, whilst full of flavour’.  He was very complimentary about the technical skill required to produce such successful rolls, which finally swayed the decision in Ben’s favour.

It was a superb contest with fantastic entries across the board. Thank you to all who came along to sample the bakes and donate some money to charity; over £20 was raised in total.  Not bad going when items could be bought at 20p each.  Clearly, the contest was a recipe for success!

Mr T Sealy

Housemaster of Lambe’s