How to Host Your Own Great British Baking Show Party
Listen to Chrystina talk you through how to host your own Great British Baking Show party series in Episode 08 of the Party Ideas & Logistics with Chrystina Noel podcast, above.
This is definitely one of the more ridiculous party ideas I’ve ever had. Why is that? Well, because it’s kind of a series of parties, instead of just a one off party.
If you read my recap post of how my Great British Baking Show Themed Party series went, you already know that we chose 5 different Sundays this summer to have competitions.
Week 1 was cake.
Week 2 was pie.
Week 3 was biscuits.
Week 4 was bread.
Week 5 was baker’s choice.
It was a heck of a lot of fun. And I always love when my friends humor me with these ideas I have. It’s especially fun when 8 people show up who don’t know each other at all, but by the end they’re talking like they’re old friends.
It was also a super easy party to put together because it doesn’t take much actual party preparation (yes, there’s baking preparation, but it’s only one item as opposed to an entire meal). If you’re interested in hosting your own Great British Baking Show themed party, here’s how to make it happen:
Step 1: Decide whether you want to have a single party or a series of parties
This is totally based on the amount of free time you have and the level of commitment you think you can get from people. I chose to do 5 weeks. I think if I did it again, I would choose 3 or 4. Five is a lot of weekend days to commit to things if you’re a busy person.
Step 2: Choose the dates
While it probably would have been best to be able to say things like, “I’m hosting this party every Saturday in July” that just wasn’t a possibility. My schedule was a little too weird for that and I had too many trips already booked, so I went ahead and chose a bunch of random days throughout the summer that I was free.
Because the bakers needed time to make their creations, I decided that Sunday at 4:30pm was the best time to do it because it gave people all weekend (and all day Sunday) to bake their goods. And then still gave them time to get over, eat, and head home before their whole day was over.
Step 3: Decide the theme of each week (and whether there will be any special criteria)
Now, you could do what I did and decide that the best way to choose what people should bake is to do your research by watching as many episodes of the Great British Baking Show as you could, or you can go read the website and just choose from there.
There’s a few different ways you can think about the themes:
No specifications: We only did this one week, it was “baker’s choice.” It was
Minimal specifics: You can choose a general category of baked goods like I did: pies, biscuits, cakes, breads, pastries, cookies, etc. This gives the bakers some creativity in what they show up with.
Moderate specifics: You can choose a specific type of item for everybody to bring. For example, a creme brulee, and then everybody can show up with their own take on creme brulee.
Pretty specific: You can give everybody the exact same recipe and see who does it best.
Most specific: You can give everybody the exact same recipe, and tell them that there’s a time limit that they’re each expected to hold to (baker’s honor).
Here are a few additional things to think about when choosing what each of the bakers will be making each week:
Give the bakers a minimal number of items to make. (For example, 12 biscuits, 12 cookies, two loaves of bread, etc.) This way everybody puts in roughly the same amount of work.
Add some kind of rule or challenge to the mix. For example, during cake week I said that people could bake whatever type of cake they’d like, but they needed to include sugar work on top. I only did this one week, but everybody said they had a lot of fun figuring out how to do it. Another example of this might be that they cannot bake the bread in a pan or that they must use cutters for their biscuits or every item must include homemade jam. Remember that people are able to be most creative when they’re working within a set of parameters. (I think I read that somewhere anyway).
Ask everybody to bring or share the recipes. This I didn’t do, but I think it would have been fun in retrospect.
Step 4: Develop a rating system and methodology
I talked a little bit about this in my recap post. Essentially, here’s what you need:
Decide what the rating system is going to be. We chose 4 categories: originality, level of difficulty, presentation, and taste. Each one of them was ranked evenly, so your overall score was comprised 25% of originality, 25% of level of difficulty, 25% of presentation, and 25% of taste. It’s up to you if you would like taste to count for more.
Decide how the scoring will work. We decided that each judge would give each baker a score from 1-5 in each of the 4 categories. In order to do this, I provided 1 sheet of paper to all of the judges and one person filled it out for the group.
Decide whether you want the bakers to judge their own baked goods. We decided no. We decided that the hard part was over for the bakers and they should just be allowed to enjoy the rest of their eating experience. Besides, the judges should have to do some work, right?
The reason you’re deciding this before you send out the invitations is because you’ll want to include the judging criteria in the invitation so that bakers know how their creations will be graded.
There were a few tricky things that came up in the judging:
Level of effort category: We included level of effort as a category because if somebody baked their bread in a bread maker instead of by hand, it definitely wasn’t quite as much effort, and since the point of this was to try making something new and exciting, it shouldn’t count for quite as many points. That said, this could create a problem because if somebody didn’t have time to practice theirs ahead of time, or didn’t perfect their recipe, they would already be behind in points even if they had the best tasting baked goods.
Taste category: If people brought condiments on the side, we decided that it didn’t count as part of the taste of the overall baked good, but it did count towards level of effort and presentation. This motivated people to kick it up a notch and really think about the overall experience of sharing food with others.
Allergies: There was one week that someone was allergic to the hazelnuts on one of the pies. We decided that she could still judge because only 1 out of 4 categories actually had to do with taste. For that category they averaged the other judge’s scores.
Not enough judges: There was one week that we didn’t have enough judges and we ended up having some of the bakers judge. It turned out fine, but it was a little trickier to ensure no bias was given.
Step 5: Send the invitations (to both bakers and judges)
You’re going to want to be pretty specific on these invitations since it’s a pretty specific type of gathering. Here’s what my invitation said:
“Please comment if you will be attending and whether you’d like to be a baker or judge.
Week 5 of the Summer Bake Off competition featuring Baker’s Choice.
If you are interested in being a baker: You can make anything so long as it’s baked. Make at least 12 servings. Baked goods will be judged based on level of effort/difficulty, originality, presentation, and taste. Feel free to bring condiments, they will be factored into the level of effort/difficulty, originality, and presentation, but not the actual taste of the baked goods. Bakers will be asked to give a short speech on their baked good and the process. Bakers will not be involved in the judging.
If you are interested in being a judge: Feel free to bring something else for attendees to snack on in addition to the baker’s entries. We’ll probably stay away from alcohol so it doesn’t affect the taste of the food. After everyone tries all of the entries, the judges will be left alone to judge each entry based on level of effort/difficulty, originality, and presentation. One of the judges will be nominated to present the results.”
One thing that I absolutely do recommend, even if you are doing a series of parties, is to send a different invitation out for each day, because otherwise you’ll have no idea who is coming to which event.
Two things I did before sending out the invitations:
I found somebody who was willing to bake every week with me. This way, even if no one else was able to make it there would at least be two of us and we could try each other’s baked goods.
I went through my mental Rolodex of who I knew that loved to bake. I had a completely different invite list for this than I do most of my parties. Not all of my friends love to bake, so I made sure to focus on the ones that I knew liked to bake and try new things. I also just generally posted about it on Facebook to see if anyone was interested that I didn’t think of.
Step 6: Bake your own baked goods
I guess this only counts if you’re going to be a baker. Technically, you could host it and just always judge and just have people bring you food to eat. That doesn’t sound like a bad way to do it either.
The reason I put this on the list is because I feel like every week I forgot the part where I was going to have to bake and felt like I never quite had enough time to make it to the store, bake, and let it cool before people showed up. Let alone practice early in the week. People got pretty intense.
Step 7: Setup and wait for guests to show up
This is the easy part! Put out the plates, put out the napkins, grab some cups and a pitcher full of water, and you’re good to go. I wouldn’t recommend serving any alcohol at a party like this because it may affect the taste of the baked good. Which is cool, because that makes it an overall pretty cheap party. (Unless you spend $50 on baking pans. Which happens sometimes apparently.)
Step 8: Eat and enjoy!
This part is easy.
That said, I do have a few tips to facilitate:
First we decided that all of the bakers should give a little speech about what they made. This would help the judges in determining originality and level of effort. The bakers talked about how they sourced their ingredients, how they chose their recipes, and how the baking process went.
Make sure everybody tries the baked goods without the toppings and extras before trying them with the toppings and extras.
We also decided that it would be best to give everybody a bite of all of the baked goods at the same time. It seemed like the fairest way to really be able to compare flavors and not forget what the first one tasted like by the time you get to the last one.
Step 9: Let the judges do the dirty work
Let the judging begin.
Now. I had a co-worker who was super worried that the judging wouldn’t be “fair.” That said, when your friends are a bunch of people who have engineering and science backgrounds, that’s really the only option. Respect the process, y’all.
My understanding is that they would start with category one, for example: level of difficulty. Then the judge lead would say the name of the baker and each judge would hold up a number of fingers from 1 to 5 and then someone would record that answer. That said, many times there was discussion around these numbers.
In addition to writing down official scores, each judge also chose their favorite item, which, believe it or not, didn’t always align with the winning item. (Which was better for me because I learned that I don’t have all that much patience for good presentation, but my baked goods were some of the folks’ favorites.)
Step 10: Tally the score and announce the winners
The judges tally the scores and then announce the winners. It’s up to the judges how much detail they want to give, but they always made sure to say something nice about every entry, and explain that all of the entries were delicious. (I mean, after all, they did just eat a lot of free baked goods.)
The winner is then awarded the honor of Star Baker. If you’d like, you could buy a prize, a crown, or even a grocery gift card for the winner. We just played for pride though.
That said, I plan to host a one-off competition this winter (you know, when it gets really dreary in the world, maybe sometime in February, when it makes sense to have your ovens on all the time) and I’m thinking about having each judge bring $10. Then the Star Baker would win the pool of money. Or we could split it up between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place if there was a large enough pot.
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And that’s it. How to host your own British Baking Show Themed Party. It’s actually pretty easy. The hardest part was understanding who was coming which week, that is until I deleted the series invitation and then finally just sent individual invitations. Oh, and patience. That part was hard too. I think I’m not meant to bake pie crusts.
For more about my personal experience, check out my recap blog post.
