Pink (Breast Cancer) Bake Off Morning Tea at work (Oct 2009)

        This is more for my non facebook followers, my facebooks friends would have already seen this posted up in my photos. So here is the part where I tell you a little about my work background. I work in administration for a pharmaceutical company, more specifically I'm the support person for the Engineering and Operations departments of our manufacturing division here in Sydney. I've been in this job for about a year and a half now. I used to be a florist before this but I'll save that story for another day.

        So one day in October last year we all received these little postcards on our desks promoting National Breast Cancer awareness and coincidentally our company manufactures drugs for breast cancer. We were going to have a morning tea to raise funds for the McGrath Foundation and you were invited to either bake something for the morning tea or to come along and donate money in exchange for goodies. I decided to do both. One of the managers in my office area suggested we start circulating an email just to make sure that we get people participating and that we don't get more people there to eat than what is available to eat. We wern't quite sure if these little postcards would be noticed or not. Boy was it a suprise to show up to the cafeteria the morning of the event! They were awarding prizes for 3 categories: Most Creative, Most Pink and a People's Choice award. One of the senior manages was given the job of awarding the first two and the last one was voted by everyone who attended the morning tea.

        Most Creative Award: This lady made little cupcake ballerinas. I didn't get to have a closer look because they were snatched up so quick. I'm not sure how much of it is edible but arn't they so creative and cute??

        They had to hand out a second "Most Creative" award - seriously though, who would have thought! (Just in case you don't see it - it's a pair of melons with a pastry bikini).

        Most Pink award. I see white! I thought there were more pinker things! (*cough* my profiteroles *cough* hehe).

        This plate won people's choice award! These cookies disappeared so quickly too! There's women wearing pink bikinis/underwear(?) with a pink ribbon symbol "tattoo" on the leg and men wearing pink underwear/speedos(?) with a pink ribbon symbol "tattoo". And they were made buy the one and only guy who contributed.

        There were so many cupcakes there, I'm glad I didn't make cupcakes!

        My profiteroles were not the prettiest... but they tasted pretty good!

        A great cause! We had a lot of people from the factory on night shift interested in holding their own event to raise money and in total our manufacturing division (about 470 staff in total) raised over $2000 for the McGrath Foundation. Good stuff!

        This bottle is all you need for making anything for Pink Ribbon Day =D.

        I decided to make profiteroles for the morning tea, as I've said before everyone LOVES profiteroles! I just made regular profiteroles with my vanilla bean creme patissiere (vanilla custard for you non foodies).

        The custard turned out perfectly pink! I was worried it wouldn't take on the colouring.

        This is the flour butter and water mixture before the eggs.

        And it's still pink after the eggs! *Phew*

        I swear they looked like candy or something. Mum was curious as to what I was making because she didn't recognise what it was. I had to explain the pink concept to her.

        It was a very hot evening when I made them - and they puffed up so much. I piped them to a size I thought would give me "mini" puffs but they just expanded so much they ended up being huge!

        I havn't had alot of luck when it comes to melting white chocolate, am yet to figure out the science behind it, it never melts the way I want it to sometimes going gluggy.

        My contribution - I really should have cut one open to see what it looked like, and it probably would have given me an edge for the "Most Pink" award =D. I wonder if they will do it again this year at work.