Last week also saw me visiting the headquarters of those wonderful guys at Beating Bowel Cancer. If you haven’t heard of them they do an astounding job raising awareness and funds to combat bowel cancer. Bowel cancer is the UK’s second biggest cause of cancer deaths. Of the 100 people diagnosed every day, almost half will die. Yet, in over 90% of cases, bowel cancer can be successfully treated if diagnosed early enough. Beating Bowel Cancer is committed to providing information and support to all those people affected by bowel cancer.
During the month of December, they’ll be running a campaign called “Decembeard”– encouraging guys to grow a beard , raing funds for the charity through sponsorship and find their “inner man” or as they say “Real Men Grow Beards”. So it only seems fitting that as a bearded baker I should lend my support.

As mentioned in one of my earlier posts I’ve crafted some exclusive flavours for the “Decembeard” campaign both for cupcakes and brownies. For the Decembeard cupcake flavours I’ve drawn inspiration from various beard styles throughout the ages. So here we are:
The “Van Dyke“: Inspired by the Flemish style of beard, this is a high content cocoa & Belgian beer sponge with speculoos centre, topped with Belgian chocolate & beer buttercream frosting.

The “Verdi“: Italian inspired by the great composers beard style, this is an Espresso and amaretti biscuit sponge with hazelnut liqueur infused Italian meringue buttercream frosting and finsihed with Amaretto crumb.

The “Darwin“: Using a range of quintessentially British ingredients and named in honour of Charles Darwin, it combines a West Country scrumpy cider sponge with rhubarb conserve centre, topped with West Country scrumpy cider buttercream frosting and finished with crispy Wiltshire bacon pieces.

My range of brownie flavours take an altogether more “manly” approach i.e. let’s throw everything’s at it!
The “Roadhouse” brownie is my Decembeard take on Rocky Road: a chocolate-chop cookie base to a rich chocolate brownie with chocolate chunks; peanuts; popcorn and caramel pieces, topped with a bourbon whiskey glaze.

My Decembeard flavour of  “Hot to Handle” brownie: Chocolate brownie with chocolate chunks; crystallised ginger pieces; pecans; topped with chocolate ganache and chilli praline.
I’ll be releasing two of the cupcake flavours and one of the brownie flavours for sale- you will able to buy both the “Van Dyke” and “Verdi” cupcakes and the “Roadhouse” brownie with 1/3 of the sales going to the Decembeard charity. I’ll be making the recipe for the “Darwin” cupcakes and “Hot To Handle” brownies available for download so you can take part and bake your very own Decembeard bakes at home and raise some funds for this very worthy cause.

Look out for further developments in the name of Decembeard. Also you can check out their website and Twitter feed on @Decembeard_UK.

In the meantime remember Real Men Grow Beards and Real Men Eat Cupcakes (and brownies!).