It was my privilege and honour to be invited to St Swithun’s Primary school in Portsmouth recently to be a judge in their Fairtrade cake baking competition. We have come to know the students and staff at St Swithun’s well over this past year and we are always made to feel very welcome and treated as one of their own.
As expected, the number of entrants was very high, as was the quality and array of cakes on display. Joining me on the panel was the local community officer from ASDA Tracy Smith, and school governor Brian Hookway. We soon agreed that it would be impossible to judge the cakes on looks alone, and since we couldn’t taste them all we had to come up with another way to judge them. Each cake was accompanied with the list of ingredients used to bake it, so we decided that the winners would be those who used the most Fairtrade ingredients in making their cake. This too formed a challenge since the students had really thought about what it was they were doing, and tried to use lots of different Fairtrade ingredients. The winner had five different Fairtrade ingredients in their cakes. What’s more, when we did get to taste them, they tasted great too.
On a personal note, Andy and I would like to wish the head teacher Anne Jones all the very best wishes in her retirement. We would also like to wish all our Koolskools friends a very happy festive season.