Over the last few years, the annual Biggest Morning Tea event to raise funds for the Cancer Council has been a popular event for Luminary. In the past, everyone would physically come together in the name of charity and the anticipation of delicious baked goods. But in 2020, virtual work and Zoom calls rolled in, along with lockdown, taking the usual in-person event off the table.
While we initially had our reservations about turning it into an online affair, our team banded together and ended up more than doubling our previous fundraising record for the event!
How? Well for starters, we divided the event into three – because good things come in threes.
Part I: The virtual bake-off
The first event was our iconic bake-off. But since our team couldn’t actually taste the baked goods this year, we switched it up a bit. Everyone who participated sent in photos of their edible creations and the winners were decided by an online poll. There were three categories:
Most delicious-looking – This creation needed to look tasty enough to make people want to leap through their computer screen and eat it.
Most creative – This is where participants got to let their imaginations go wild – their creation could be Luminary inspired, it could have something to do with the crazy Covid-driven times we found ourselves in, or it could just be something to make people laugh or smile.
Most deceptively healthy – This was a special category for creations that taste good but are secretly also good for you!
Two categories resulted in a draw and there was a final voting showdown between the entries in the categories of Most Delicious-looking and Most Deceptively Healthy! Each of the three winners received a gift voucher for their efforts.
From left: Reggie's Most Delicious-looking cinnamon scrolls, Lachie's Most Creative Luminary lemon slice, Loulou's Most Deceptively Healthy sugarless carrot cake.
There was also a ‘just for fun’ Pinterest-inspired Nailed It! category, where participants could showcase their epic baking fails. The winner of this category was our Design Director, Tess, with her repeated fails in the choc chip cookie department – accompanied by hilarious tales of baking woe (which you can read all about below in our Virtual Bakeoff Recipe Book).
Part II: Tea Cup Sweepstakes
The second phase of the event was the Tea Cup Sweepstakes, where participants donated to enter into the competition and then picked a number between 1-20 from an online poster of tea cups. A number was then drawn from a hat and the winner received a gift voucher, with the entry money going towards our fundraising tally.
Part III: The recipe book
Part of the requirements of entry into the virtual bake-off was that participants had to submit the recipe for their baked goods. Out of this, we created the Virtual Bake-off Cookbook, of which we humbly invite you to download a copy. This book is a labour of love from everyone at Luminary, a memento of us getting together in these tough times any way we could. We hope this little book of joy reminds us all to smile, create, persevere and stay strong together through the pandemic and beyond!
Download a copy of our Virtual Bake-off recipe book
About the Author: An advertising postgrad, Siri is a self-proclaimed geek who likes to slay dragons in her free time.
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