On a slightly rainy Sunday in late March, to mark the start of British summer time and the end of the University of Glasgow's second semester, we held a virtual baking fundraiser along with the University of Glasgow Baking Society to raise money for our expedition.
The week before, on the March 21st, we promoted the fundraiser on the University of Glasgow's Instagram page, reaching an audience of over 3,500 people and gaining several more followers!
In the true spirit of the pandemic, we logged onto zoom at 2pm on the 28th of March with the aim of making cakes. The recipe we used allowed the measurements to be adjusted depending on the cake tins we had at home, and with a ingredients list sent out before
hand, we joined ready to bake. The cake calculator is linked at the bottom if you want to use the same recipe we did.
Our aim was to make a plain vanilla sponge with buttercream icing and marine themed decorations, although there was some variation by the more experienced bakers who made lemon cakes or added chocolate.
The event was primarily organised by Jennifer, who is a member of the University of Glasgow Baking Society and the fundraising officer for our expedition. After a few practise bakes (right), she led us through the method and offered assistance to all those having problems, including, letting us know if our mix was curdling and how to fix it if it did - by adding a spoon or two of flour ;)
"I absolutely loved hosting the bake-along with the rest of the expedition team! It was just lovely seeing everyone's friends and family on one call and baking together. The finished products were all utterly amazing and so creative...even [team members] Kerry and Dylan's after they finally got their cakes in the oven!" - Jennifer
With 25 people on the zoom call, there was a little chaos. As we were all tuning in from home, everyone had slightly different equipment. Some people used electric whisks and were finished in record time, while many of the student bakers were struggling to cream the butter and sugar with just wooden spoons (especially when we realised we had not let our butter reach room temperature!). There were also a few speedy people who obviously had significant baking experience, leaving the more amateur among us in their dust! Never the less, by the end of the day, everyone had edible cakes (although we were told afterwards that one pair flooded their oven with cake mix and had to restart)!
While the cakes were in the oven, and the
bakers without electric whisks were furiously mixing their icing or finishing their cakes, Lois (one of the expedition's co-leaders) talked the participants through our expedition aims, detailing some information on the importance of seaweed farming and the organisms that benefit from it. Once Lois had talked about our plans, we opened the floor to questions. We were asked some fantastic questions, including: "Is all seaweed green?" (No, not all seaweed is green. It comes in many different colours).
While some bakers were starting to take their cakes out of the oven, other were still desperately trying to get the lumps out of their batter, so we chose to end the zoom call and let people decorate (or bake) their cakes in their own time - we didn't want the call to last too long! The bakers proceeded to send us pictures of their finished cakes and we were blown away! The standard of decorating was so much higher than we expected!
When it came down to it however, the bake along was a competition and unfortunately, we could only choose one winner. The team collated the photos sent to us by the bakers and voted for our favourite, giving the winner a £10 voucher to their choice of either Nando's, Wagamama's, or Paesano Pizza (a renowned Glasgow based pizza place). The winning cake (right) was baked by Niamh Pinkerton! We love the
seabed theme and the variety of marine life that she included!
Due to the high standard of decorating and baking, we created a Baking Hall of Fame to highlight some of the other cakes that we loved! All 5 of the Hall of Fame cakes are below:
Best Baking Skills Required
Most Original Design
Most Creative
Best Made On A Student Budget
The Cake That Made Us Laugh The Most
If you want to see the full gallery of cakes, including the names of the bakers, you can find them here in our Facebook photo album!
We received some really nice comments via email and some of them are included below. It was so nice to see everyone on the zoom for a truly enjoyable afternoon:
"Thanks for the baking tips we really enjoyed it"
"Enjoyed the afternoon bake session it was good fun"
"Thank you so much for the zoom - it was so lovely and I really enjoyed it!! I hope your research project goes well:))"
"I thoroughly enjoyed the Bake-Along and look forward to joining for all the other events you guys have planned."
"Thank you all for organising this..... fantastic way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon!"
"Enjoyed the zoom call this afternoon, good luck with all your finding."
Finally, we would like to say a MASSIVE thank you to everyone who donated money to our GoFundMe page during the event! We are getting closer and closer to our fundraising goal!
If you still want to donate, you can find the link here.
See you at our raffle on June 3rd for our final fundraising event,
The Seaweed Team
If you couldn't make it to the event but want to bake a marine themed cake, use this cake calculator:
It will edit the recipe to fit your chosen cake tin so you don't have to buy any specialist equipment. Don't forget the marine decorations and send us a photo of the finished cake, either to our social media or email:
Instagram: @thailandexpedition2021
Facebook: @ExpeditionThailand
Twitter: @GU_Thailand2019
Email: seaweed.expedition@gmail.com
We look forward to seeing your photos so please send them our way!
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