TALENTED bakers are being urged to enter a new baking competition in Highcliffe for this year's Christchurch Food Festival.

The Highcliffe Revival Food Festival, which is in association with the main Christchurch event, will hold the competition on Saturday May 16.

It will take place outside Vanilla Pink Cakes in Lymington Road.

For adults, categories include an iced chocolate cake, six meringues, a Dundee cake or a show stopper with a beach theme.

Children can enter either six cupcakes or gingerbread men or a novelty cake with a beach theme.

Organiser, Mary Reader, president and founder of Christchurch Food and Wine Festival, said: "As an extension of the Food Festival I have been working with the team in Highcliffe this year to help to develop a food festival in order take more business into the village.

"We all felt that the cake competition would fit in well with the local food theme that Highcliffe is going to develop. We hope to have entrants from all over the area not just from Highcliffe."

Entry forms are available from Vanilla Pink Cakes or on highcliffevillage.com/foodfestival and should be in by Monday May 11.

The cakes will be judged by cake expert Helen Shaw and Alex Aitken of the Jetty restaurant.