The World's Biggest Coffee Morning is a nationwide event that Macmillan Cancer Support has been putting on since 1990. Back then guests would gather over coffee and donate the cost of their brew to Macmillan in the process.
The initiative has been so successful it has grown year-on-year and raised over £200,000,000 for Macmillan to help them carry on with their excellent life-saving work.
A number of us here at Employment Solutions having been affected by cancer and its devastating effects so feel strongly about the great things that Macmillan do day in, day out to help those in need and so decided to hold our own Macmillan Coffe Morning.
As part of our Coffee Morning event for 2018, we decided to host Employment Solutions first 'Great Bury Bake Off'. We invited all of our staff and the chaps from First Logistics to bake a cake and face the wrath judgement of our special guest Antonella Brollini.
Those of you not familiar with Antonella, she is the face of her own Facebook page "Antonella The Uncensored Reviewer" which has over 1.3 million followers. Antonella is famed for her straight-talking and no-nonsense approach to her reviews.
We opened the event with a Pin The Cherry On The Gateaux competition, Everyone had a good crack, and my attempt ended up on the wall a good 4-ft away from the gateaux, The eventual winner was our Operations Manager David Burdaky who won afternoon tea for two at Slattery's in Whitefield with his pinpoint precision.
We also had raffle prizes up for grabs which included boxes of chocolates, bottles of wine, a lovely bottle of ginger and rhubarb gin and the main prize - a bottle Champagne! Antonella's ticket was drawn for the bottle of bubbly, and she decided to auction it off to raise even more money! It finally sold to Gary from our Blue Collar desk for £26.
Next up the main event!
Our bakers had channelled their inner Paul Hollywoods and executed their cakes with Mary Berry like precision... or at least they thought they had.
Antonella dived into the judging armed with a sharp knife and her even sharper tongue. I got disqualified in the early stages as my Oreo cheesecake had melted... Not a great start.
It was a well-fought battle, and after a lot of what I will call "adult" language, the eventual winner was First Logistics Mark Tickle with his rocky road fridge cake, winning a meal for two. Second, went to Ian Pilkington of First Logistics with his Strawberry and White chocolate cake who won an extra day off, and third place, taking home a voucher for lunch on the company was given to our very own Samantha Worsh for her top-notch Lemon Drizzle Cake.
A special mention to Dean Carthy who picked up the wooden spoon prize, a "my first baking" book and a mini bakers set as well as a worst bakers mug and coaster for failing to bake and bringing in a shop bought chocolate fudge cake instead!.
Between the bake-off, raffle, games, auctions and cake sale we raised a fantastic £555.52 which our company has since kindly agreed to double this making, our total Donation £1111.04.
Still want to get involved?
If you still want to donate it isn't too late! please click here and give all you can to this VERY worthy cause.
A massive thank you to everyone for getting involved, and the wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, mums and nannas that helped with the baking of the cakes (yes Mike I'm looking at you).
Now I'm off to try and burn off the 10,000 calories that I've just eaten.
Video to follow soon!