We had a fantastic night of festive fun. Most of us made a good effort to look festive and Julia Ogden led the crafting by showing us how to make lovely paper stars and a whole host of other things
Our Christmas hamper raffle was drawn and won by Vanessa Kay. The funds raised from the raffle are for our charity
We had outside caterers who provided a fantastic Thai buffet for us and we all left the meeting feeling very full of Christmas cheer
On 21 March 2016 we celebrated our 5th birthday, and what better way to celebrate than with lots of cake in the form of a bake off?
We kicked the evening off with canapés & fizz, and enjoyed a culinary quiz whilst the serious business of cake judging got underway.
The village fete style competition included five baking classes – the Victoria Sandwich class adhered strictly to the time honoured WI recipe, no icing sugar or buttercream in sight, please!
We were delighted with both the quantity and the quality of the bakes, our members and guests did us did us proud!
Jen assisting with the registration.
We welcomed Mike and Moira, from our local ‘Love Grows’ Tea Rooms as our guest judges. They recently secured a Deliciously Yorkshire award in the ‘Best Afternoon Tea’ category so we knew we were in good hands! They did an excellent job in channelling their inner Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood in the taste tests, and presenting the awards to our winners.
And the Results are in…
Our lovely member, Brenda Alderson, was crowned ‘Show Champion’, winning a bottle of bubbly, and an afternoon tea for two voucher. Brenda had a great night, also winning a Highly Commended in the ‘Free From’ class, as well as First Place in the Victoria Sandwich competition, a star baker indeed!
| Class | First Place | Highly Commended |
| Free From | Fliss Johnson-Standley | Brenda Alderson |
| Savoury | Polly Williams | – |
| Biscuits/Flapjack/Traybake | Jeni Wetton | Ruth Gosden |
| Decorate a cupcake | Ruth Gosden | – |
| WI Victoria Sandwich | Brenda Alderson | Vanessa Kay |
With ‘Guess the weight of the cake’, and ‘Guess the number of sweets in a jar’ competitions, and donations from the bake sale at the end of the evening, we raised almost £90 for the Women Centre in West Yorkshire, our nominated charity of the year.
It was lovely to have so many representatives from other WIs to help us celebrate our big day, including friends from: Siddal, Wadsworth and the Mytholmroyd Marmaladies. Special thanks go to our Bake Off mastermind and organiser-extraordinaire Karen Cunningham.
We all thoroughly enjoyed our 5th birthday party – we’re already looking forward to our 6th birthday celebrations, and, many more to come!
Hebden Bridge WI 