On Wednesday, the 13^th of November, I hopped on a train down to London before getting the tube to Knightsbridge. After a short walk, I found myself at the doors of the Divertimenti Cookery School. My nerves were building but settled immediately after meeting the event organisers (before returning when I saw how many cameras there were!)

From the start, it was a warm and welcoming environment, with everyone just wanting to enjoy themselves and have fun getting to know each other (and eating plenty of cake, of course!)

Alongside the other two finalists, we were shown to our baking stations for the afternoon and given the top-secret carrot cake recipe. We were given the same equipment, ingredients and cooking utensils from the Zyliss range, and we were off!!

Once all our cakes were in the oven, we had a minute to relax and have an informal interview as part of the media to be released after the event. This was a great time to get to know everyone involved and see their baking journey, which ultimately led them to this event!

Once our cakes were cooled, we started the cream cheese icing. We were allowed to bring any decorations or extra ingredients we wanted, and I opted for some food colouring and a piping bag to do a fun design on top of the cake!

After all my icing was ready, I removed a few spoonfuls before using the food colouring to dye one-half green and one-half orange. Can you guess what I piped on top yet? Tiny carrots, of course! Something about these makes me think of Wallace and Gromit, don’t you think?

Once we were all finished, we put our cakes on the judging table before being shooed away to check out all the goodies on the shop floor while the judging took place. After about 10 minutes, we were called down for the results, and I found out that my carrot cake had been chosen as the best! I was so excited and proud, but overall, I had such a good time that the winning part was just an exciting bonus!

One of the best parts must be telling the Two Chimps team, who were over the moon (and excited to have cake for breakfast in our weekly meeting the next day!)

I want to give a huge thanks to everyone at Pic PR, Jules, Jo and Heidi, for such a lovely event, and I look forward to seeing them all again next year, as I have been invited back to judge the 2025 event! Wahoo!

To register your interest for next year’s Best Office Baker competition, please visit https://www.zylisscompetitions.com/. See you there!