The School of Physics determined its most proficient baker and most successful baking team recently,  in the annual baking competition “The Great Physics Bake Off” organised by PhD students Sara Carreira and Janina Möreke.

Staff and students enjoyed an evening of wine and home baking on the 5 June for this year's cake competition, and the cakes sold to raise money for the Bristol branch of the international homeless charity Emmaus -  Malcolm Thorne from Emmaus Bristol described how the raised money will help people to rediscover their sense of purpose.

Judging the 20 competing cakes was tough - who better for this task than Head of the School of Physics Professor Nick Brook, Graduate School's Professor Walther Schwarzacher and Dr Andy Young, administrator Briony Maitland as well as Research Fellow Dr Dave Cussans.

After half an hour of cake tasting and ranking according to taste, creativity and decoration, the winner was determined: Sebastian Knauer (Centre for Quantum Photonics), whose football world cup themed cake earned him a Toshiba Excite tablet. Micro-and Nanostructural Materials group earned  the group trophy, and Richard Brooke’s cake showed his experimental set up measuring conduction across a single molecule junction and won for best scientific relevance.  People’s Choice awards were determined during the cake sale - the three cakes that sold out first were made by Nick Russell (Centre for Quantum Photonics), Sophie Richards (Particle Physics) and JP Hadden (Centre for Quantum Photonics).

Our baked masterpieces paid off as £508.77 was raised for Emmaus Bristol.

Event sponsors included Toshiba and Bristol businesses Pieminister, Parson’s bakery, QED Bistro, Chin!Chin! and Square Food Foundation.