The first rule of Bake Club is you have to talk about Bake Club. That splits off into sub­sec­tions about using hash­tags and Insta­gram. The sec­ond rule of Bake Club is that I sup­pose a link might be help­ful. And the third rule is I’m going to put in a jump cut here. After the break, bak­ing, SCANDAL and ran­dom pic­tures of cats. 

Essen­tial­ly 83 groups of bak­ers formed all over Welling­ton, and for the past month and a bit, they were issued with week­ly chal­lenges. My group was called All The Eggs and Bakin’, and we met up at Hashigo Zake every Mon­day, where the staff rec­om­mend­ed beers to match our bak­ing, and made us feel right at home.

We baked scones and brown­ies and pies, all using Welling­ton ingre­di­ents (Zany Zeus, Whit­tak­er’s and Hansells fea­tured promi­nent­ly), and even­tu­al­ly it came down to a slice-off. One bak­er emerged vic­to­ri­ous from the sug­ar coma, and tonight she com­pet­ed against the best from 82 oth­er teams. Her bis­cuits were DELICIOUS.

a plate of Belgian biscuits with additional cat pics on them

How­ev­er, there was some seri­ous com­pe­ti­tion — behold these sheep, this Welling­ton sign and even these Welling­ton on a Plate themed bis­cuits. These cof­fee cup bis­cuits appar­ent­ly took 20 hours to make. TWENTY HOURS.

ridiculous tiny coffee cup shaped biscuits

In 20 hours, you could pos­si­bly fly to Paris to buy mac­arons instead, but maybe that’s not as much fun. In the end, the $4600+ worth of loot went to some­one who is appar­ent­ly a pro­fes­sion­al bak­er, — and the best friend of the woman who won last year.  Luck­i­ly for me at least, it was­n’t real­ly about win­ning, it was about ris­ing to the chal­lenge of bak­ing rather than cook­ing, and hav­ing anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to socialise.

EDIT: She was a school teacher, not a pro­fes­sion­al bak­er is the offi­cial word. Ahh twit­ter back-chan­nel, how impor­tant it is to take you with a grain of salt!

Although it was the only Welling­ton on a Plate event I’ve attend­ed that involved NO ALCOHOL, it was still a fun night, for which cred­it must go to the awe­some Pos­i­tive­ly Welling­ton Tourism team, who kept the spot prizes and scan­dalous coin-toss­ing going for the long time that judg­ing took. You should def­i­nite­ly enter Bake Club next year, if you go into it for fun rather than being too com­pet­i­tive.