Great British Bake Off inspires local cake designs
Fans of the Great British Bake Off have been waiting all year for this week, with the new series bringing inspiration and calamaties back to our screens. It's also been inspiring local viewers to submit entries to Repair Café Portsmouth's Cake Design competition.
Repair Café Portsmouth has launched it's first ever cake design competition this month, asking local residents to submit designs for a celebratory cake being made for this year's Repair Day and the 15th Anniversary of the first Repair Café.
On the 18th October 2009, Martine Postma ran the first Repair Café in Amsterdam and in the 15 years since, over 3000 groups have started across six continents and in over 40 countries. There are over 600 groups in the UK alone, and Portsmouth is one of them, having launched six and a half years ago.
Mary from Mary's Fairies will be creating the winning cake which will be cut and enjoyed at the October pop-up Repair Café in Milton on International Repair Day (Sat 19th October). Entrants of all ages are submitting repair-themed cakes.
Clare Seek, Founder of Repair Café Portsmouth said "A chat, cuppa and cake is all part of the Repair Café experience, so we're really excited to have a special cake at our Milton pop-up. As well as cake eating, we'll be helping people repair broken electrical items, jewellery, toys and sharpening tools. Since launching in Portsmouth in 2018, we've seen almost 3000 things, with the most popular item to bring being the vacuum cleaner - we've helped people fix 105 of them! But we see a massive range of items, in fact we helped Mary (who's making the cake) fix her cake steamer and we see a lot of mixers each year."
Repair Café Portsmouth has also contributed to the celebrations being held in The Netherlands, where a giant Repair Café with over 100 repairers will be held at The Hague. As part of the event a long chain of bunting with pieces submitted from groups around the world will be on display, with Portsmouth's contribution having been designed by volunteer, Mariana Rivas.
There is still time to enter your design, with the deadline being Saturday 5th October at midday. Designs can be uploaded to Instagram or Facebook tagging @repaircafeportsmouth or design sheets can be downloaded from www.shareportsmouth.org.uk/news and dropped into Repair Café's Hub in Cascades Shopping Centre, or submitted by email.