Photo: Sven Menschel
Happietaria Wageningen’s cake baking competition The Great Wageningen Bake Off might have been held on Saturday 1 April but it was no April Fool’s joke. Baking enthusiasts of all ages brought their cakes to the ideological pop-up restaurant. Wageningen locals could eat as much as they wanted for five euros. The proceeds will go to a healthcare project in India.
‘27 people registered but one girl phoned in the morning to say her cake was burnt,’ says Gerdine Bakker, a WUR student and Happietaria Wageningen committee member. So in the end there were 26 cakes on display on the table. That was more than enough, says jury member Annemarie Pronk, the winner from the Dutch bake-off TV programme Heel Holland bakt. ‘I thought 26 tiny bites would be OK but all in all, it was actually rather a lot.’
The jury was very positive. ‘All the cakes were of an extremely high standard. We did our best to give as detailed an assessment of the cakes as possible so that the participants would be able to use the feedback.’ That was precisely why some of them took part. For example, Hebert Perez-Pereira from Den Helder, who came third: ‘I want to introduce more people in the Netherlands to my Uruguayan cake so I was curious to find out what this jury thought.’
The visitors were mainly friends of the participants and local residents who dropped in. Others came purely to gorge on the cakes, like WUR student Irene Leemans and her newly graduated friend Maritza Bode Bakker, who tried 15 different cakes between the two of them. ‘I wouldn’t be much good in the jury — I think they’re all delicious,’ says Irene.
Happietaria Wageningen at Rustenburg 5 is open until 26 April.