Their story, in their words…
For my Mark Evison Foundation challenge, I wrote and sold copies of a dessert cookbook called “Simple Desserts From Around the World”, ultimately raising $858 for charity, with 50% donated to the Mark Evison Foundation and 50% to UNICEF. The cookbook consists of 15 recipes for the most popular desserts around the world, with each recipe shown through a comic book format in order to maximise accessibility and ease of readability.
The first hurdle was having to cope with a disjointed schedule. Since there were still COVID restrictions for flights to mainland China, I could not immediately go back to Beijing and begin testing recipes. I had to test the first half of the recipes in the UK, then move on to documenting those recipes during my 7-day quarantine in Hong Kong and another 7-day quarantine in Beijing. As a result, by the time I returned home I was falling behind schedule, meaning that I had to work more efficiently and rapidly.
The testing process was really fun because I was able to experiment with lots of ingredients and make tasty desserts. I began by following online recipes for inspiration and guidance, then tasting to identify areas for improvement, such as substituting less accessible ingredients with common store-available items or making them with existing ingredients, and tweaking the amounts of particular ingredients in order to achieve the best possible taste. I managed to get some recipes perfect the first time, while others required multiple rounds of testing. Although these failures were frustrating, it all became worth it after each successful end product.
Once testing was done, I organised a bake sale to sell all the desserts. Due to COVID restrictions, selling the desserts in public was not a feasible option. My solution was to sell them at my dad’s office so that there would be a sense of mutual trust and a more successful bake sale. I also sold my desserts in other offices in the building and the outdoor garden. By using an honour system of payment instead of assigning fixed prices, I was able to raise more money for charity – £86 in total. The bake sale was very rewarding because I was able to practice my sales skills before selling my cookbook, but more importantly, I was able to witness first-hand other people enjoying my desserts.
Next, I began with the documenting process using Adobe Photoshop, which was probably the most challenging part because it took much more time and effort than I had anticipated. In the beginning, it took me around 2 days to document one recipe because I had to get used to using a stylus and the process of creating a comic on Photoshop. However, I gradually became accustomed to the process and for the latter half of the recipes, I only needed 1 day to complete each recipe. Despite this, there were still times where I felt that the workload was too overwhelming due to the tight schedule. I managed to cope by taking longer breaks, helping me to persevere towards completing the final recipe, which was a really satisfying moment.
Once all the recipes were finished, I worked on creating the actual book, which was also a lot more complicated than I thought. I first had to learn how to use Adobe InDesign in terms of the book layout, which was when I realised that I had to go back and change the margins of each recipe on Photoshop. All of this was a valuable lesson learnt: always set the correct page layout and margins before writing the content of the book. I then designed the other pages and ordered the printing of 200 copies. Receiving the books was one of my proudest moment because it had always been my dream to print out my own book. Equally gratifying was seeing other people buy my book after I had advertised it on social media – I received over 120 orders from cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hangzhou, raising £707 for charity. Afterwards I printed 50 copies in London to sell at my school, Dulwich College, outside the library. I managed to raise £65 from selling my cookbook to students and teachers.
Overall, this challenge has been a massively rewarding experience for me. I have not only learnt how to write and design my own book, but also how to cook some of the world’s most popular desserts and how to market my own product. I feel that this challenge has motivated me to continue with both my writing and cooking endeavours, and has been an invaluable lesson of perseverance for the future. I would therefore like to thank the Mark Evison Foundation for making all of this possible.
