Sometimes you’ve just gotta put a sieve on your head

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Last month we put sieves on our heads hosted the second in our series of family baking workshops, this time at Ann Tayler Children’s Centre near London Fields.

It almost goes without saying that we had fun, a whole lot of fun! The staff were great; our bakers – who helped run the session – were great; the parents were great; and the kids? They weren’t too bad either!

We’re joking, of course – they were super great and it was fab seeing them really get stuck in, taking control of the mixing and measuring, getting creative, and yes, from time to time, sticking a sieve or two on their heads, but we won’t tell Environmental Health if you won’t!

All together now … “Ground control to Major Tom…”!

Sieves on heads weren’t the only funny occurrence mind you.  One child added an egg to the mixture.  As in, a whole egg, just popped in there with the flour, shell and all.  We heart kids!

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We got some amazing feedback from the families at the session, some of which we thought we’d share here because it made us feel warm and fuzzy and because hopefully it will give you a little glimpse of why we do what we do, and why we’re so glad that we’ve expanded our service to incorporate these local baking workshops. So, from the mouths of the mums:

“I really liked cooking with my children; it was nice seeing them smile.” (We love seeing them smile too!)

“Doing the workshop helped me interact with my children more. I would usually go home and let them watch television but the workshop gave us time together.” (Baking as a family instead of watching the gogglebox = good!)

“I love cooking but don’t have the equipment so thank you for giving me all the things I need to bake with my children at home.” (Our pleasure! We love knowing that families will go on to bake at home together.)

And finally, a comment that gave us a clue that the workshop went down well… “MORE BAKING WORKSHOPS PLEASE!” (If we can, we will!)

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So everyone went home happy, clutching their FCFK Hackney goody bags. And some carefully packaged their precious homemade muffins up to take home, while others just couldn’t wait…!

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Happy not-so-new year

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We’ve been a bit slow off the mark this year but, still, we don’t think it’s too late to wish you a happy 2014. Fourteen days in, hey?! How’s it been so far? For us … not too shabby actually!

On Saturday we had our FCFK Hackney committee “away day,” which didn’t actually take place away and didn’t last a day, but we’re not going to nit-pick! Apart from stuffing our faces with amazing Ottolenghi-inspired hazelnut and white chocolate brownies (what January detox?!), we came up with some great plans for the coming year. We’ve already got a baking workshop taking place this week at Ann Tayler Children’s Centre, but we’ll be putting in some grant applications to hopefully get us the funding to enable us to do more, and we have some very exciting ideas for another cake decorating event and a monster fundraising extravaganza. We will reveal more as soon as we can but let’s just say that a cafe takeover may be on the cards. Eeee!

FCFK - wreath cakeWe cannot not mention how amazing our bakers were in those final crazy few days before Christmas…

While some of us were running around doing last minute shopping, wrapping and last minute last minuting, a few bakers stepped in to make some cakes for a children’s centre’s Christmas party, including this, frankly beautiful, wreath cake, as well as a cake for a child who had her birthday on Christmas Eve. It would have been so easy for that child to have been overlooked but, as you’ll see in our forthcoming Cake of the Month feature, that most certainly did not happen.

The referrals have been a bit thin on the ground so far this year but we have a strong army of bakers with wooden spoons at the ready just waiting to tackle any cake request thrown at us, so if you work with children or families and know of people who could benefit from our service then please do get in touch.  The more cake referrals the merrier, as they say.

We’ll leave you to get on with your second Tuesday of 2014 shortly, but firstly, three quick links:

One: Did you know that if you donate £10 to us through Local Giving then that tenner will be matched so we get £20 instead of just £10?  Pretty awesome, yes?  The pot of money is running out though so you only have until 28th February to double your donations to us if you’d like to.

Two: Remember we mentioned that we now have aprons that you can buy?  Well those aprons were expertly printed by the lovely guys at Print Club London and they’ve gone one step closer to ultimate loveliness and written about us on their website.  (Thanks again guys!)

And three: Can’t get enough of us?  We’ll soon be sending out our quarterly newsletter.  If you aren’t signed up to receive it then why the hell not?!  Sign up now … pleeease!

New year admin: done!  Over and out.  FCFK Hackney xxx