Take Part in our Death Cake Competition

Earlier this year Emma Freud wrote an article in the Guardian about how to organise a funeral.

She said:

If you remember nothing else about this article, I’d love you to remember this: at a funeral, everyone would like to feel useful or helpful.

Hence the deafening chorus of: “Let me know if there’s anything I can do”, which always makes me want to say, quite loudly: “STOP ASKING ME, JUST THINK OF SOMETHING AND THEN DO IT OR AT LEAST BUY ME A PRESENT.”

But there is a constructive answer: “Could you please make a cake and bring it to the funeral tea?”

This is a win-win-win – the person you’ve asked to bake at last feels useful. They arrive at the funeral feeling like someone who is contributing, rather than someone useless who is trying not to cry. And your funeral tea will be glorious, giving everyone lots of chances to say “Bernard would have adored the battenberg”, and opportunities for quite a lot of Great British Bake Off-style banter.

This has inspired to organisers of the Ideal Death Show to put on a Great British Bake Off-style funeral/mourning cake competition.

We’re challenging the UK’s morbid-minded cake-makers to use their imagination to bake a cake to impress the visitors to the first Ideal Death Show.

All you have to do is tell us you’d like to take part - click here to get in touch, design a cake, and bring it along to The Beeches Hotel in Bournville on Saturday 6 September to exhibit to visitors to the show.

There is a £6 charge to enter. The winner will get a meal for two in one of Birmingham’s smartest restaurants.

“We know a competition like this was pioneered by Respect Green Burials at an event in Brigg in Lincolnshire as part of Dying Matters Awareness Week. It’s a great way to respond creatively to feelings of grief and sadness.” said organiser Brian Jenner.

“It’s also about restarting a tradition. In Yorkshire, funeral Cakes tied with black crêpe were delivered to homes in the village as invitations to the funeral. Another Northern tradition is to bake a cake or biscuit specially to be eaten at funerals. The biscuits were traditionally decorated with a heart symbol to represent the soul of the deceased.”

You can view more examples from the Respect Green Burials Brigg event here.

The competition will be judged by Annabel de Vetten from the Conjurer’s Kitchen.

 

 

Guidelines

You may use non-edibles i.e. support structures, polystyrene dummies, wires, etc. The cake can be in any style, but we suggest that there should be a story associated with it about someone who has died. We’d like the cakes to be meaningful in some way.