Great Brandleshome Bake Off

This week has been the local Scarecrow event. 120 families and businesses built scarecrows ranging from Star Wars to Rapunzal and everything in between. There was a map so one night after work and school we drove round finding as many as possible the monkeys loved it especially the Spider-man with the button saying press here - E was the brave one who pressed it and the theme tune came on - cue mini dance in the street.

Today all the scarecrows were moved to the local church where the prizes were announced - Spider-Man rightly won one as did an amazing farm display.

There was also a cake competition being held so I thought I'd enter. I don't have lots of spare time I work full time and have 2 children so yesterday in a hurry I scoured my cake books and found a John Waites raspberry and white chocolate cake receipe I'd made once before and thought would look good. I baked it yesterday and made the white chocalate ganache this morning to hold it together luckily not too stressful and I thought it looked nice.

I had a feeling though that the other cakes would be decorated and I was right there were some brilliant creations - the scarecrow in the allotment was amazing.

We left before the results were announced - I certainly didn't expect to be in the top 3. An hour later we are all in the garden and I'm chatting to my neighbour "did you get your prize?" she asked. "Prize? What prize?". I'd won 2nd place I don't think there was a a prize but there're is a rosette floating around somewhere and I am happy with that. Apparently my cake tasted great - and that's what's important - looks aren't everything! 

So a successful weekend. Plenty of baking ahead as I'm organising the Macmillan coffee morning at work on Thursday. Are you taking part?