A year ago, I couldn’t cook anything. I would come into the office with stories of failed attempts at cooking romantic dinners, birthday dinners and normal dinners. My first attempt at baking was similar – I decided I would bake some brownies. Apart from ending up with batter in my hair and on my face (and some in my tummy!!), I was quite proud of myself – until I opened the oven and saw that my brownies had turned into a large rectangle of burnt crusty chocolate which had been baked permanently onto the baking tray. Over the last few months, I have tried to build my crappy skills for various CML bake sales and am proud to say that I think I am finally getting the hang of it (if you don’t count my overcooked chocolate chip cookies and undercooked chocolate cupcakes from the last bake sale).

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and as a result, we decided to host a bake sale to raise funds for this great cause. To learn more about Breast Cancer, you can read one of my previous blogs HERE.



If you walked into our office right now, you would be met with the sight (and smell) of chocolate/vanilla cupcakes, chocolate and liquorice spiders, gingerbread men – and more!

The entire office was asked to donate a short amount of their time to bake some goodies for the bake sale. Several reminders were sent out to all staff, as well as a notification that there would be awards for ‘Most Creative’, ‘Best Dressed’, ‘Laziest Chef’. So naturally, being the competitive lot that we are, we all made an effort to do something special with our baked goods. Well. Almost all of us. Some people didn’t bake at all.

It is great to see the effort that people put into the bake sale. We have gingerbread men, women and children, breast cancer ribbon shaped cookies, and cupcakes with all sorts of icing… who knew how creative we could all be? Well. Almost all of us. Those who didn’t bake were not creative at all…

We had the following contributions to our bake sale:

Victoria: Gingerbread Family (Mums, Dads, kiddies!), and cupcakes with Raspberry icing.
Kym and Chris Bailey: Halloween themed chocolate spiders with liquorice legs.
Jamie Ware: Vanilla Rainbow bit cake
Catherine: Sugar cookies in the shape of pink ribbons
Tiff and Chris Turrell: Sponge cake with chocolate icing, and the words ‘Feel UR Boobs’ on it
Me: Chocolate and Vanilla cupcakes with white icing and pink breast cancer ribbons
Steve: Pumpkin cupcakes
Jamie Carter: Brownies
Chris Fenn: Cupcakes with pink icing

You may realize there are a couple of names missing from that list… Sinead (Who is travelling), Louise (Who has been ill all week, so she is also forgiven), and Simon. Who has no excuse. Therefore, I am pleased to announce that he is the winner (or overall loser) of the Laziest Chef. Although he did make a generous donation, so I won’t give him too much crap 🙂

I am so excited to announce that I won the best dressed and most creative awards for my little cupcakes, proving that I have indeed improved my baking skills. Well, I would be excited to announce that, but I actually didn’t win any of the categories.

The CML team has made it our mission to contribute to the cause so we can spread Breast Cancer awareness annually. We are looking forward to seeing what our members have up their sleeves for next year’s BCA bake sale!