Get your bake on!

The Great British Bake Off is (nearly) back!

Tuesday August 28^th is B-Day – 8pm. Put it in your diary!

There was a lot of chat before last year’s series about how it would fare on Channel 4, with the loss of the hilarious Mel and Sue, and of course the baker supreme that is Mary Berry.

But much to our surprise, we all loved it. Despite the annoying adverts. At least they gave you time to grab a cuppa and a biscuit to stave off the rumbling stomach brought on by looking at cakes and pastries for an hour.

There’s nothing like the Bake Off to get people talking – kids, parents, grandparents – a love of baking surpasses all genders and ages. Even if we’re no good at it, we can still appreciate when other people are. And who doesn’t love a great cake – from both a visual and gustatory perspective. We love the adverts for the GBBO, with Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” accompanying a series of sorry looking bakes, which slowly change into an absolute masterpiece. Maybe the message is practice makes perfect and encouraging us all to don an apron and give it a go.

A recent report from social media experts Immediate Future, revealed that last year there were over 941,000 mentions of Bake Off just on Twitter alone, not even taking into account the other social media channels. People love to chat about the good and the bad, picking things up through the show, but also carrying on the conversation through the week – and throughout the entire series. In fact, the report demonstrated that the programme drives many wider conversations about baking and cooking all the way through until Christmas. 

We’re pretty sure that most offices experience an increase in home-made baking brought in during the series’ duration, as people are encouraged to dust off their mixing bowl and sieve and give baking a whirl. How hard can it be? Well, pretty hard if you’re looking at a technical challenge from Paul or a showstopper from Prue, but of course there’s no one timing you or insisting you don’t refer to a recipe in your kitchen. Unless it adds to the fun for you!

So, if the new series inspires you to give baking a go, come in and see us for some great ingredients to help make your own great signature bake. And if your baking is more about the taste than pristine appearance, we have some great decorations to add that finishing touch!

If you’re really more about the eating than the producing – never fear. We’ve got plenty of cakes, bakes, biscuits and pastries to keep you happy too. After all, an appreciation of baking has to work from both sides!