Win the Baker's Delight/Menu for Hope

Once a year food and wine bloggers put together prizes for the Menu for Hope raffle, with the proceeds going to charity. For every $10 donated, you earn one virtual raffle ticket to bid on a prize of your choice. At the end of the two-week campaign, the raffle tickets are drawn and the results announced on Chez Pim.

This year I am offering the Baker's Delight (prize code UW18) a fabulous baking kit designed for a home baker or professional pastry chef with brand new cookbooks, a selection of artisanal American chocolate and a set of silicone spatulas.

The package contains four of the years' best baking books:

* Chocolate Epiphany: Exceptional Cookies, Cakes, and Confections for Everyone by French pastry chef extraordinaire Francois Payard

* Baking for All Occasions by much loved author Flo Braker

* The Sweeter Side of Amy's Bread: Cakes, Cookies, Bars, Pastries and More from New York City's Favorite Bakery, your source for bakery treats like Amy's signature scones, White Chocolate Cherry Chunker Cookies, Definitely Devil's Food Cake, Soft Brioche Rolls with Melting Chocolate Centers, etc.

* The Pastry Chef's Companion: A Comprehensive Resource Guide for the Pastry Professional, an excellent reference guide for every kitchen cookbook shelf

It also includes four pounds of E. Guittard chocolate wafers, a top choice of professional bakers and chefs:

* One pound E.Guittard 72% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate, this super-dark chocolate has a smooth mouthfeel and provides intense chocolate flavor. It’s the perfect choice when a dessert is unequivocally about chocolate – flourless cakes, molten chocolate mini-cakes or an unforgettable chocolate fondue.

* One pound E.Guittard 61% Cacao Semisweet Chocolate, the super-rich chocolate flavors last and last, with a refreshing chocolate finish. This chocolate is extremely popular with pastry chefs, and makes a great eating chocolate as well.

* One pound E.Guittard 38% Cacao Milk Chocolate, enjoy bold, rich, milk chocolate flavors with caramel accents, fresh dairy notes and a signature hint of cinnamon that set this milk chocolate apart from all the others. It’s an extremely versatile blend that can be used in recipes ranging from crème brulée to ganache.

* One pound E.Guittard 31% Cacao White Chocolate, this French-style white chocolate has a sweet, fresh cream flavor with nutty undertones and lingering hints of citrus and vanilla. It adds a balanced dairy flavor to any recipe, and stands alone as an extraordinarily smooth white chocolate with rich cocoa butter taste.

To use with your next recipe:

* A set of four silicone spatulas, perfect for mixing, scraping and folding, they won’t chip or crack and can be used can be used to stir extremely hot mixtures

The Baker's Delight prize package is worth nearly $200! A big thanks to Guittard for the chocolate, and to Clarkson Potter, Chronicle Books, and Wiley for the books.

Where does the money go?
The funds raised by Menu for Hope this year will got to a school lunch program in Lesotho, Africa. Providing food for the children helps keeps them in school so that they learn the skills to feed themselves and their families in the future. The program in Lesotho is a model program in local procurement - buying food locally to support local farmers and the local economy. Instead of shipping surplus corn across the ocean, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is buying directly from local subsistent farmers who practice conservation farming methods in Lesotho to feed needy children.

To win this or other fabulous prizes:
1. Choose a prize or prizes of your choice from our Menu for Hope at Pim's site, the Baker's Delight prize is UW18
2. Go to the donation site or click on the Menu for Hope logo below, to make a donation.
3. Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice. Please specify which prize you'd like in the 'Personal Message' section in the donation form when confirming your donation. You must write-in how many tickets per prize, and please use the prize code. For example, a donation of $50 can be 2 tickets for EU01 and 3 tickets for EU02. Please write 2xEU01, 3xEU02
4. If your company matches your charity donation, please check the box and fill in the information so we could claim the corporate match.
5. Please allow us to see your email address so that we could contact you in case you win. Your email address will not be shared with anyone and no one but us will be able to see it.

Click here to donate:

For the US West Coast prizes specifically, please visit Matt at Matt Bites, the West Coast host (and food photographer extraordinaire.)