Christmas Charity Day 2023
As the sun rose on Tuesday 12th December 2023, team members here at Watson Moore were preparing for our Christmas Charity Day, where we were raising money for Macmillan Cancer Research. The day consisted of a raffle, a ‘guess the number of sweets in the jar’ competition and our annual Bake Off competition!
Everyone in the team was determined to win the title of Star Baker, but it was Josef that had an extra source of motivation to protect his title as reigning Star Baker from our 2022 Bake Off.
The morning started with christmas music and team members wore Christmas jumpers to really get into the spirit! “Mella was especially creative,” explains Chris, “She had a pin badge made with my face on it and my face replaced the star at the top of the christmas tree on her jumper! I guess I should be flattered really.”
“We moved offices earlier this year,” says Joe, “and so our Charity Day gave us the chance to meet lots of the other businesses that we share the new building with. All of them were keen to take part and generously donated or bought raffle tickets. Some of the staff from Pinney Talfourd Solicitors came across the road from their building and took part as well despite the wind and rain… it just goes to show what people will do for the promise of cake!”
Our ‘guess how many sweets in the jar’ competition had people trying very hard to count the number of Dolly Mixture sweets. The prize for winning this was the jar of sweets itself, which made it even more competitive! Guesses ranged from as low as 89 to a high of 165. There were in fact 255 sweets in the jar and so it was lucky Kathleen at Pinney Talfourd Solicitors that received the said jar. Whether any of these were shared with her colleagues we do not know.
Our raffle proved popular, with prizes including several boxes of chocolates, 3 bottles of wine, a jar of Branston Piccalilli, a tube of Oreos and Enid Blyton’s book ‘Stories for Christmas’! One person wanted the book so much that they bought 20 strips of raffle tickets and thankfully they won it!
Finally, it all came down to our Star Baker contest. Anyone who tasted one of the cakes had the opportunity to vote for whom they thought deserved the winning title. Dan explains, “We had some very creative choices from our Bakers – including Josef’s Mexican Dark Chocolate Cake, Abi’s Christmas Biscuits and Ollie’s “Definitely Not From Greggs” doughnuts. (Ollie was spotted leaving Greggs that morning with a bag of doughnuts that looked suspiciously like those he presented at our Bake Off!)”
“But it was Matt that baked his way to victory and won the title of Star Baker 2023, with his Victoria Sponge cake! I’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone that took part in the day, it was great fun and most importantly, we raised £333.10 for Macmillan Cancer Research, which is fantastic!”
Josef has reportedly sworn that Matt will rue the day he took the Star Baker title from him and is already planning his masterpiece for 2024…