The Berkley Bake Off: Taking Baking to Another Level

Three chefs. Three homes. One cake each. And a judging panel of residents who know exactly what they like. Small wonder chef Colin is feeling the pressure. He lets slip too that his cake consultant is also only eight years old. His daughter.

She loves watching Bake Off, so when her dad needed a design capable of winning a competition, she helped him plan it: a beautiful chocolate, cherry and almond cake with a mirror shine chocolate ganache. “It’s also a flavour I know our residents really love too,” says Colin, who has come from Leycester House to defend the honour of his kitchen against two other Berkley patisserie talents. “So, I’m going for a bit of a crowd-pleaser.”

The contest is the Berkley Bake Off, first of a new, fun, annual fixture in which three chefs from three Berkley care homes bake one cake each and put them in front of the only critics whose opinion really counts – our three resident (quite literally) judges. Presiding over the day is also Richard, Head Chef at Portobello Place, with all the neutrality of a man who knows all three chefs very well and has to work with them afterwards. “They are all very talented chefs,” he laughs, “and with three different styles of cakes that they’re producing, it’s going to be very, very difficult to choose a winner. I wouldn’t want to be in the hotseat.”

From Badminton Place comes a technical entry. Complex, tricky. With some room for errors. Kieran arrived at Berkley from a fine dining background, with Michelin-starred kitchens behind him, and it shows in the brief he has set himself: coffee walnut cupcakes with tiramisu icing and a walnut praline finish. All from scratch. A lot of moving parts.

Finally, from Portobello Place, Petre has gone the other way entirely – plumping for something he knows and bakes regularly. A classic coconut and raspberry cake. “I think this is a really good choice, personally. I know it well and I know it always tastes great.” In a field of praline and tiramisu complexities, with the timer running, the simplicity is a solid strategy.

Why do Michelin-trained chefs work in care?

Kieran’s CV raises the question most people eventually ask. Why would a chef who has cooked at the highest level choose care?

Part of the answer is that a Berkley kitchen is far closer to the restaurants these chefs have worked in than the words ‘care kitchen’ might suggest. It is, in short, on another level. Everything is cooked from scratch, every day, in every home. No factory cakes, no reheated anything. The pastry work is done by hand each morning for the four o’clock tea and the cake trolley. As one of the chefs puts it: “We cook everything from scratch with fresh ingredients, because we want our residents to have a care home menu that is a restaurant quality experience. They deserve that and we know how much the menus, the dishes and everything that comes from our kitchens means to them and their day.”

That standard is why Berkley recruits from the top of hospitality. Emilia Williams, Hospitality Manager at Leycester House, spent twenty years in fine dining and Michelin-starred restaurants before changing direction. “Berkley combines care with a luxury environment, which felt very familiar to me coming from that background,” she says. The chefs make the same discovery: the ingredients, the technique and the expectations all carried over.

Because the bigger part of the answer is the one thing a restaurant can never offer. A restaurant chef almost never meets the people they cook for. Diners arrive, eat and disappear. A Berkley chef knows their diners by name, by table and by preference, and cooks for them again the next day, and the day after that. “We really give back to the residents through food,” is how Kieran explains it. “We serve them every day such a broad range of dishes. We get to see them. We get to spend our lives with them and take them on journeys through our cooking.”

This is why Colin’s cake choice was never really a gamble. When a chef tells you that he knows the residents really love chocolate, cherry and almond, you know it is knowledge earned, day after day.

Why hold a bake off in a care home?

Berkley is different to other care providers in its commitment to making incredible bakes in every Berkley home, every morning. And a little competition seemed a fun way to celebrate that with the residents while creating a buzz among the staff.

But there is a serious point underneath the fun. Care home cooking has had something of a negative reputation in the past, earned by decades-old stereotypes and other care providers. Meals cooked off-site and reheated, cakes arriving mass-produced in plastic trays. Yet food is inevitably one of the first things families ask about when choosing a home and one of the most telling things they can ask about too, because how a home feeds its residents tells you a lot about everything else.

Just put three chefs on their mettle in a bake off, give them one cake each to make under pressure and you see immediately the gulf between that old world of care home cooking and Berkley’s approach to dining. No brochure required.

The Judging

As the cakes come out of the ovens, the trickiest part of the day begins. The whisking has been survived (“I have to be careful not to whisk it too much”, as Petre said) and so has the assembly. All that remains is the bit every baker dreads: easing a finished cake into position “without it all falling apart and sliding” as Colin puts it.

Waiting for the cakes in the bistro are Toni, Judith and June, who have the best seats in the house. Three residents, three forks and three types of cake to work through with no obligation whatsoever to be kind. All three have cooked for families over a lifetime and they are here to spare no-one’s blushes. “No soggy bottoms,” June declares with a laugh.

The first verdicts are promising. Then comes the line of the day. Toni leaning over to Judith, who is a tad overwhelmed devouring a whole slice of the coconut and raspberry: “You don’t have to eat the whole thing, you know!?” It gets the biggest laugh of the afternoon.

When the deliberations end, the votes are in. An incredibly narrow win and the crown to Petre. The coconut and raspberry cake. The judges know what they like, and they go in for second helpings.

Friends cooking for friends

The result matters less than what the day reveals. Three chefs who could be running restaurant kitchens, competing to please the people they cook for every day. Residents who take their judging duties seriously (almost) and a competition that feels less like a contest and more like friends cooking for friends, with bragging rights attached.

This is what Berkley means by care reimagined. Residents eating like winners every day.

To try our incredible daily bakes, drop in to any Berkley Care Home.
Or book a tour with us today.