Phil Gillam: A great way to cook up cash
When our sons were little, I would assist them in the kitchen to produce Tom and Jerry cup cakes or Scooby Doo cup cakes or Harry Potter cup cakes.
You know the sort of thing.
Bite-size cakes with edible pictures that sit on the icing.
All the ingredients would come in a brightly coloured packet, complete with easy-to-follow instructions for small children and their grown-up helpers.
Flour would fly everywhere. Icing would drip onto the floor.
I suppose, in a way, I was Shropshire's answer to Paul Hollywood … Yeah, right!
Cup cakes for beginners represented about the height of my baking accomplishments.
So you won't see me rushing to join the competitors in this year's Great Shropshire Bake Off.
But what a lovely event this is!
The charity-boosting Great Shropshire Bake Off is back again for its third year – and this time at a new location: Shrewsbury High School.
The county's own take on the phenomenally successful television show has already become a firm favourite for Shropshire's bakers.
And planned for this year's Bake Off there's a stack of add-on extras from storytelling to a vintage pop-up cafe, from food demos and craft stalls to art and craft activities including pottery, painting and printing.
Says Julia Wenlock, the Great Shropshire Bake Off organiser: "The Great Shropshire Bake Off was a huge success last year, with lots of keen bakers entering cakes and pastries into the competition. On the day we were really well supported by the local community with many families bringing bakes on the day to enter."
At the very heart of the event, of course, are the competitions – a formal bake off and a general bake off (and you can find application forms for these at http://www.shropshirebakeoff.co.uk/entry-forms/).
Oh. And some very brightly-coloured special guests will be joining the event this year in the shape of two beautiful metal hens, created by the British Ironworks. These striking birds will form a display at the High School for all visitors to enjoy.
For 2015 the event (being staged on Sunday, September 27) is raising money for the Shropshire RCC, an organisation which each year works with more than 600 voluntary and community groups, offers support to more than 3,500 individual family carers, and develops and delivers projects and services for a wide cross section of Shropshire's residents.
The RCC helps with a kaleidoscopic range of services and projects including hearing loss support, tackling fuel poverty, getting Shropshire online, surveys and questionnaires, funding advice, good neighbours, training for groups, a resources library, meal share, an equipment library, the Wise and Well scheme, sight loss support, social enterprise advice, volunteering, cash grants for community organisations, as well as providing information and support for carers.
Find out more at http://www.shropshire-rcc.org.uk
So that's it – a baking competition which (a) is lots of fun, and (b) raises money for good causes. It's a win-win situation. Whether or not Tom and Jerry cup cakes will feature in the competition, I couldn't rightly say.
But I have no doubt the Great Shropshire Bake Off 2015 is destined to be another sweet success.
