Social media-based competition hopes to inspire amateur bakers

The wave of reality TV cooking shows dominating the schedules has served up a whole soup bowl full of clichés. There's the good cop, bad cop routine of judging chefs, either praising the contestants' commitment or scraping their "disgusting" or "inedible" efforts into the bin.

There's the drama of contestants who rub up against each other rather than rubbing along together when team effort is required. While many contestants have started or made a journey, or wish to continue their journey to realise their dreams, all the contestants have their passions.

A new baking contest in Hong Kong hopes to keep the clichés in the TV studio where they belong. The aim of Battle of the Bakers Hong Kong is to lead 16 amateur bakers through an eight-week contest, designed to stretch and improve their skills and impart new techniques. The contest will be tweeted and posted on social media, rather than televised.

Battle of the Bakers, which launched on October 12, is the brainchild of Anouska Mutreja of The Rose Petal Cakery and Nolan Ledarney of Umami Concepts.

Mutreja says the aim is to allow contestants "to learn what they can and take it to the next level". Each week will focus on a different skill or technique such as making cookies or working with choux pastry, the dough used to make eclairs.

Mutreja is originally from Britain. With degrees in maths and finance, she worked as an analyst but found she disliked the long hours. So she decided to leave that world behind when she came to Hong Kong four years ago. Baking cakes for friends, she soon developed a word of mouth reputation that she used to build her business.