Macmillan World's Biggest Coffee Morning and Little Book of Treats

Macmillan Cancer Support held its World's Biggest Coffee Morning last Friday; the organisation encouraged individuals, companies, schools and community groups to hold a coffee morning and bake sale on the same day to raise money for the cancer charity. I think it's a great cause and we had a bake sale at work - I work in an office with a couple of hundred people, and even though only a tiny percentage bakes cakes, almost everyone buys one or makes a donation to the charity.

Macmillan publishes a recipe book in advance of the coffee morning event, featuring recipes from celebrity chefs and a handful of amateur bakers as well, called the Little Book of Treats. I was exceptionally pleased  to find out my recipe had been selected to appear in the book. It's not every day you get a recipe published in the same book as Mary Berry!

I submitted a recipe via a competition on the Baking Mad website earlier this year and decided to enter my toffee popcorn cupcakes - you can see the recipe here. They consist of toffee cupcakes (with toffee chunks), toffee frosting, and popcorn on top drizzled with toffee sauce, and I used cupcake wrappers that look like retro popcorn buckets.

There are recipes in the book from Hugh Bonneville, Mich Turner, Lisa Riley, Tom Parker Bowles, Rachel Khoo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Dolly Parton, Gizzi Erskine, Eric Lanlard, Dame Maggie Smith, former Great British Bake Off contestant Ruth Clemens, Antonio Carluccio (who writes the foreword to the book) and of course Mary Berry. I still can't quite believe my recipe is in the same book as all of them!

The other bloggers whose recipes were chosen are: Sarah Wilson of heylittlecupcake.co.uk; Karen Burns Booth of lavenderandlovage.com and Kate Harries of whatkatebaked.com,  (both of whom I know as the co-host of Tea Time Treats, a monthly blogging challenge I enter - and in turn they regularly enter my challenge Alphabakes); Rebecca Norris of florencefinds.com; Nicola Flowers from cherrapeno.com, and Charlotte (Lottie) Verrill of lottiesworldofcakesandbakes.eu (another Alphabakes entrant who is familiar to me, and I love her website).

All the recipes look brilliant and this is a great little book; you can pick it up exclusively in Marks & Spencer for a suggested donation of £4, but only until tomorrow (October 2nd). In fact this is the only downside to the whole thing - the book has been on sale since September 26, but Macmillan and Baking Mad failed to tell me my recipe had been selected - which they have since admitted was an oversight - so I only found out about it from someone on Twitter a couple of days ago! Needless to say I rushed out and bought several copies, but it would have been nice to know in advance of the big coffee morning event.

And what did I make for the bake sale at work? Well, I will post the recipes as soon as I have time but here's a sneak preview of my chocolate and peanut butter and white chocolate and star anise cupcakes. The icing didn't quite turn out as I'd hoped so perhaps there is some way to go before I truly am on a par with the other bakers in this book!