To celebrate Green Impact, and our love of all things baked, the team at Sardinia House organised a Great British Sustainable Bake Off.

 The task? Bake a cake.

The twist? Bake it as sustainably as possible.

 “OK… that sounds lovely. But what does that mean exactly?”

Well, good question. We didn’t really know either! However, with some research we managed to find some inspiration. We came up with the following set of ideas for how to Green Your Bake.

• Use reusable silicon cupcake cases instead of disposable paper ones.
• Use a vegan recipe (cut down on the use of eggs and milk and reduce your carbon footprint­).
• Use coconut sugar instead of caster sugar.
• Buy Fairtrade, organic, free range or local products.
• Invest in a reusable silicone baking mat rather than using disposable baking paper.
• Use unbleached flour instead of regular flour.

The results were delicious. Jennifer made a Raspberry and Almond Yogurt Cake, Claire made a Fairtrade Banana and Chocolate Cake and Vinh made a Vegan Lemon Cake.  Each one was presented with a factsheet on how the cake was more green than usual.

Here’s some of the things we tried:

• We used a lot of Fairtrade and organic ingredients.
• We used vegan butter for the first time.
• We avoided using baking paper to line the cake tins for cooking.
• We ventured to local shops and markets instead of relying on Tesco’s (*where possible – some things are really hard to get hold of in the local grocers!)
• We discovered coconut oil as an alternative for vegetable oil.
• We shunned the electric mixer in favour of the wooden spoon.

Overall, we learnt a lot about sustainable foods and we definitely created some wonderful wares.

If you were lucky enough to visit the Sardinia House office during the GBSBO, we hope you managed to have a taste.

And, if you’ve been inspired and want to attempt your own Sustainable Bake, please send us over a slice!

Or, if you’ve been Greening your way through some other activity in your office, please let us know and we can blog about that on The Grapevine next!

Pssst… There’s still a little bit of each cake left if you’re quick!