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.