This year we received a fantastic 50 entries from across 17 Social Care services and 19 Health Care services, and 3 entries from Cygnet colleagues.
Once again, our panel of judges were overwhelmed by the quality, creativity and hard work that went into making each and every cake. From melting snowmen to festive train stations and Christmas trees, service users and colleagues have embraced the spirit of the season to come up with some truly fabulous bakes.
It’s been wonderful to hear about service users really taking the challenge to heart, getting involved with choosing their flavours and decorations, buying and weighing ingredients and getting creative with their inspirational designs.
There are three winners for each category, with first, second and third prizes of £250, £150 and £100 awarded, to be spent at the Health Care and Social Care winning services and £30 gift vouchers for the colleague category.
And the winners of the Great Cygnet Christmas Cake Off 2024 are…
Health Care
1st place – Cygnet Appletree
The first prize was split between Bramley Ward and Pippin Ward, who both submitted excellent entries, leaving the judges unable to pick a single winner.
Sarah Lillico, Specialist Occupational Therapist for Bramley Ward said: “When we were planning our cake this year, we were inundated with ideas. Beautiful ideas, ambitious ideas and some of them thoughtful and poignant. But when it came down to it, the resounding thought was for something happy and fun, and who else to portray this effectively but Buddy the ELF! Service users were challenged in the kitchen to make our rich and festive fruit and spice cake. They worked as a team, demonstrating their creative skills to decorate and make Buddy and his friends as well as a hand painted New York skyline!
Joanna Smith, Specialist Occupational Therapist for Pippin Ward said: “The Occupational Therapy team and service users came together to develop the idea of the ‘Elf Workshop’. Service users were involved at every step of the process from developing the idea, baking the cakes and decorating the final product.”
2nd place – Cygnet Hospital Woking & Cygnet Lodge Woking
3rd place – Cygnet Hospital Sherwood
Social Care
1st place – Supported Living in Wombourne South Staffordshire
Cassandra Palin, Deputy Manager at Supported Living in Wombourne South Staffordshire, said: ‘Senior support worker, Janet Jones, worked with a service user to create the cake. When I put the poster up about the Bake Off competition, he was so excited and couldn’t wait to get started. He loves The Polar Express film and decided he wanted to chose this theme and a colleague brought in the track to go around the cake. He never gave up and was so proud of what he’s achieved when he saw his vision come to life. It’s his first time entering the competition and he absolutely loved it. The Christmas tree is vanilla sponge, the small train is chocolate sponge and there are some gingerbread buildings’
2nd place – Ranaich House
3rd place – Broughton Lodge
Colleague Category
Well done to Becky Casson, Rachel Roberts and Paul Rush, our 3 winners of the Colleague Category with their fantastic entries.
Heartfelt congratulations to every service user and colleague who took part in this year’s competition. We hope you had as much fun baking your cakes and biscuits as the judges had looking at them and reading your stories.