The 2017 A&U/Murdoch Books Bake-off

It’s that time of year, where our bakers get competitive and compete for the highly coveted title of bake-off champion, and the rest of the staff stuff themselves silly on all manner of incredible bakes and cakes, and we raise some money for Cancer Council with Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea.

This year, we mixed up our judging, and had two past winners trying to tackle the bake-off from the other side of the table. First we had Wenona Byrne, who recently took up the position at the Australian Council as Director of Literature having previously been our International Rights Director. With one of her greatest achievements listed as winning the coveted bake-off wooden spoon in 2015, with her Autumnal Apple Cake, and having competed over many years, she was perfectly placed to judge. Joining Wenona, was last year’s winner – our Sales Director Matt Hoy, who was upset not to be competing but willing to step up to the plate(s) in helping with the judging.

They certainly had a tough task ahead of them, and were full of respect for the challenges facing past judges in both the judging and the eating of all the entries!

The entries

Here’s all our entries, across the categories of bakes, cakes, gluten free & savoury!

Our winners!

There were so many highlights across the categories, with some incredible decoration and technically excellent cakes, some punny names (the “Bad ‘Ombre” was noted for it’s great name & description, plus a fantastic crumb) and a fantastic breadth of offerings. However, with difficulty, the judges narrowed down our winners to the following: