Bake Off

It has now been one week since we left our home in Birmingham USA and began our adventure to the big city of London, UK. Just like every day since we arrived it has been in the upper 30’s to mid 40’s with very, very, very overcast skies. We literally have not seen the sun since we landed, and the weather prediction is that this will not change any time soon. It almost feels like very later afternoon all day long.

Today was the first day of classes and the first class was the Vocation class that I co-teach with Jo. All students must attend the class and so we had a full house and some lively conversations. We will be going through a book on vocation that Brian Pitts who used to work at Samford created. It is really good. This particular class only meets every other Monday, and we will have several guest speakers as well. All the students will begin their internships this week as well and many took off to go to their first meetings. They all have to ride public transportation and find their way to the place they will be working. It is a great experience for all of them.

After class Becky and I went and found a healthy fast-food place, Leons, and grab some lunch. It was only about a 10–15-minute walk away. Then we hoped on a bus and went to the Super Tesco and did some grocery shopping and to see what they have. We then rode the bus back. It is within walking distance, but you have to walk down a very busy road to get to it and carrying groceries it is easier to just hope on the bus.

The afternoon was just getting caught up on somethings. Then in the evening the fun began. The whole house met up in the parlor at 7:30 and Tom lead us out to the tube and after 3 changes and a short walk we arrived at the Tooting and The Big London Bake. It is a tent in which 12 pairs of folks work on baking a given recipe. All ingredients are laid out, but you and your partner have to follow the recipe, but can add flavorings and decorations as you see fit.

Our group broke into pairs and of course Becky and I were a team. You have about 80 minutes to do the bake and they give some coaching along the way if you need it and do give you time updates. We had to bake two bundt cakes and put them together with butter cream frosting we made and a fruit compote we cooked. The decorated end result needed to look like a giant doughnut. We could also use fondant they had made. It was a great deal of fun and we all laughed so hard at all the many mistakes we all made along the way. The truly amazing thing was that every cake created looked great when full decorated. So many talented decorators in our group, including Becky who made our cake look amazing.

We had 9 teams and then there were three other folks who rounded out the 12 teams in the tent. Yes, it was a tent. Then the head person went through every team’s cake and asked us our flavors and why we created what we did. If we wanted, he would cut our cake and look at the “layers”. Most teams did not want their cake cut. He did not taste the cakes but judged on looks and what we told him. I am very proud to announce that Becky and I not only got 2nd place, but we were told by the judge that our cake would “look good in a coffee shop window”.

We then boxed up our very large cakes and rode the train back to the Daniel House. To say the least this large group of people going through the tube with very large boxes of cake really stood out and attracted some very interesting looks.

We got home very, very late. Which was not good since I had my class at 9am the next morning.