How to Host a Great British Bake Off Inspired Event

Things are hotting up in the Great British Bake Off kitchen as the seventh series (and last one on the Beeb) approaches its show-stopping conclusion.

If you’re feeling full of inspiration, don’t pour it all into a soggy-bottomed pastry… cook up your own, brilliant GBBO-style event! From Macmillan’s long-running Coffee Morning to Great Ormond Street Hospital’s ‘Bake it Better‘, baking and bake-sale events have risen in popularity across the UK, and they’re a fantastic way to raise money for a cause too.

(R-L) Karen Timbrell and her daughter Holly

Karen Timbrell has organised a Bake Off themed event for four years, raising thousands of pounds for brain cancer charity Brainstrust. We asked her about her experiences and to share some practical advice for people thinking of hosting their own event.

Why did you decide to host a Bake Off style event and what format does your event take?

I do lots of fundraising events for brain tumour research because my daughter has a brain tumour. I was inspired to run a baking event after watching the show on the TV and wanting to take advantage of all the excitement and interest surrounding it. My daughter likes baking too, so it seemed a good fit.

We did the first ‘Great Charity Bake Off’ event four years ago, organised on a Saturday afternoon in a local community hall. People were encouraged to enter their bakes in three different categories – Best Overall Cake, Best Decorated and Best Cupcake. It was free to enter, I just asked people to let me know before the date so I had an idea of how many entries we were going to get.

The public paid £5 to enter and got five tokens to taste the cakes and a voting sheet. They could taste any five cakes they wanted and vote for their favourites out of those. We totted up which cakes had the most votes and had a trophy for the winners from each category, which were announced at the end of the afternoon. We also sold off the cakes in the Best Decorated category to raise extra funds.

The event was a massive success; there were lots more entrants than I was expecting and loads of people coming just to taste the cakes. The venue was really quite crammed and I realised we’d have to move to a bigger space for the next event.

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How did you promote the event?

Mostly through social media. The event has its own Twitter account and Facebook page. With Twitter I used Bake Off on the TV and was tweeting throughout the series to draw people in and get more local people interested.

As soon as I’ve got a date for the event, at least a month or so out, I’ll announce it and then build it up slowly and surely. It’s quite a lot of work but that’s what it takes to drum up the interest.

I also try and get local bloggers to blog about it, and get a photographer in on the day to take photos. The press coverage afterwards can still be useful because we have Just Giving pages for all of the events we do under Holly’s Helpers and it helps to raise awareness.

The first year we also had some small businesses involved with the event. Because it was the first weekend in December I invited people I knew to have stalls selling handicrafts or gifts, which added a bit more interest to the day.

It was something for people to do while they were tasting the cakes, but it also covered the cost of the room because I charged them to have a stall. It was only £10 but it covered my costs, which meant more profit. They also helped to promote the event within their network. Braintrust also took a stall to promote themselves.

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Were you able to grow the event further once you moved venues?

Yes, we moved to Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, which is a much bigger venue and meant we could expand. I also moved the date of the event back to November so it tied in with the end of the Bake Off on TV. People were still hyped from that and therefor it worked better.

The move also meant we didn’t have to worry about providing teas and coffees because Chapter has its own café. They actually let us have the venue for nothing because it was a charity event and because it meant they had more people through the door themselves.

To make the most of the new space we added a new category, for under 12’s. I contacted local cookery schools that do cake decorating classes for children and invited them to enter and we had some really good entries.

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What have you learned with regards to organising your event?

Just making sure you’ve got lots of pairs of hands on the day, plenty of volunteers to help cut the cakes and serve them. You need people to go around collecting all the rubbish so it doesn’t get too messy.

Help with setting up is also important. We go in an hour before, set the tables up and decorate the room. We ask people who are entering to bring their cakes an hour before so we can lay them out and prepare them before the public start coming in.

Overall, it’s a great event format for getting people engaged and raising money for charity. It really works being in line with the Bake Off on the TV and we’ve had such great feedback from people. However, this year we have decided to shake things up a bit and host an afternoon tea instead, still with plenty of delicious cake! It will take place on November 5 at Cotswold Community Centre in Bristol.

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Karen’s guide to planning a Bake Off event

Venue

Consider the size of the hall verses expected numbers. Will it attract the right audience? Is there passing footfall?

Look at the venue facilities – does it have tables to display cakes, room for stalls, tea and coffee making facilities, toilets, microphone if planning to talk to the guests/speech/raffle draw etc?

Dates

Check for clashes with local sporting events. Men will enjoy this event but not above football or rugby!

Publicity

Invite local journalists and bloggers to write about it beforehand and to come along.

Use Twitter – Tweet local venues, what’s on guides etc. in the area and get them to re-tweet you. Local delis and cafés are often great at social media and can be a good way of spreading the word and networking both for attendees and raffle donations.

Create a Facebook event page with full details and share the event in local Facebook groups, such as free ads pages.

Don’t forget offline publicity – run off some posters or event flyers and ask if you can put them up in shops and cafés.

Photographs

You will want some good publicity photos of people with their cakes and all of the cakes on display before they have been cut. Try to get a stand or banner with your charity’s logo on for the pictures.

Cutting the cakes for the judging

You should consider allowing some time after the cake entries have arrived and photos have been taken for cutting the cakes into slices.

Cutting them all beforehand allows you to ensure all slices are of a consistent size, otherwise it can be a bit chaotic!

Tea/Coffee/Juice

Will this be included in the price of the entry or extra? What is at the venue? Kettles, cups, spoons? You could make some extra money on this but you will need to buy coffee, tea bags, milk, sugar and soft drinks for children up front.

Facilities at the venue

Are there tables, knives for cake cutting, coffee/tea making facilities? Is there a seating area? It’s better if the attendees can sit down to eat their cake and drink their tea/coffee. Most will still mingle but need somewhere to put drinks down. Don’t forget to think about a parking bay for buggies/pushchairs.

Helpers

You will need plenty of helpers: people on the door taking money, giving out cake vouchers, explaining how it works, on the cake tables cutting slices and exchanging the cakes for tickets and to clean up afterwards!

Voting

You will need a box with a lid with a slot for people to put their votes into!

Prizes

You can get engraved trophies relatively cheaply and it’s a good idea to have the year included i.e.:

Winner
Great Charity Bake Off
2016

But you could have the category too. It’s a good idea to have an extra trophy in case of a draw.

Shopping list

Tablecloths
Serviettes
Paper plates

Leftovers

I took all of the leftover cakes to the homeless shelter; they were overwhelmed! But it’s a good idea to let them know you are planning on it.

Boxes

Approach a local cake shop or bakery and ask them to donate some cake boxes either for people to buy extra portions to take home or to transport the leftovers.

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