text: They say when you have a dream you go for it. Do everything you can to achieve and don’t let anyone stop you. Because if you are truly passionate about something you won’t let it go. Well, that’s what Connor Bethany Alex and I are doing. Achieving our dreams. My ma had always told me to never give up on my dreams. Never give up was our family motto, whenever she saw me struggling with something I was passionate about she told me to not give up until all the other possible solutions don’t work. And that was one of the best pieces of advice she could have given me because I always found out that the other solutions worked out in the end. And it was the best advice I shared with my group. The crew and I had lived on never giving up. Which explains why we managed to achieve most of our dreams and were satisfied with our lives. But today we were going to achieve our biggest dream and excited would be an understatement of how we felt. You see in our group we’re all bakers and cooks. We love to do it it’s just what we do and we wouldn’t choose to do anything else. All of our future dreams are to be one-day famous cooks and bakers and we are all one step closer each time our successes get recognised on our socials. No matter how many times we screw up the recipe we won’t give up on this one. We’ve tried for months and months and we’ve all decided that if we can get this right we can cook anything. A Guinness world record we’re going for and a Guinness world record we are going to get. We have the support of everyone around us, Our extended families, other kids from school, workers at our parents’ workplaces, our neighbours, and surprisingly the support of famous chef Gino D’Acampo and that gives us the massive motivation boost but also a little panic. But we’re doing it to impress Gino! A huge inspiration to us all. “Connor, get all the equipment and ingredients Beth give him a hand. Today is the day you lot, Today is the day we are going to impress everyone and achieve that world record that I know we can get if we all work accordingly” Alex motivated and praised us. Alex and I whipped up the recipe and measured everything out and Connor and Bethany drew out the plans and discussed them while we measured. We’ve mastered the talent of measuring things accurately while having a conversation and that surprised everyone at the start but now they admire it. “Okay here’s the plan” Bethany announced. We were going to make the biggest cookie you could ever imagine. Bigger than the biggest. We wanted to achieve the world record for the biggest cookie. When we all heard about the world record and a challenge to beat it our faces lit up and we planned a get together on a weekend. We’ve tried multiple times trying the same thing but it didn’t work so we had taken a break and tried again this weekend. Connor had come up with a new solution to try and make this recipe and we were all impressed and kicked ourselves for not thinking about it sooner. We decided to make five batches of ingredients separately rather than all in one because that’s where we were going wrong. We gathered all our ingredients and I loaded them in the car. We were going to use the outdoor oven that Gino invited us to. Once we had gotten the ‘Okay’ that we could make a public announcement about going to the outdoor oven we announced it on all our separate socials and our group account. When we arrived we weren’t expecting to see such a big crowd of people that had come to support us and our journey of achieving our long-term dream of achieving a world record and impressing our favourite chef. We had set everything up and went round to meet and greet everyone before we had to start. Everyone had fueled our determination and excitement and before we know it, it was time to begin baking the biggest cookie we’ve ever made. Time was ticking and there were several ‘take this’ ‘put this in there’ ‘mix this with that.’ We were cooperating well as a team as well as having fun under the pressure to remove it and that was what we needed. “Bethany where is the third batch of cookie dough?” I asked for the third time hoping she’d have heard me considering she was too busy getting comfortable with Connor. “Oh it’s over there by the whisk near Alex” She called back and I whisked it up and placed it in the bigger bowl ready to be put onto the big tray ready to be baked. We all had to take a separate side of the tray and pour the dough out as big as we can and surprisingly we managed to do it. We had everyone on edge while we were waiting for it to bake. We all stayed together crossing our fingers that it’d bake all the way through in the time given and beat the world record. The time passing felt like an eternity never leaving and I had already chewed down my nails to the skin Connor was beginning to sweat like a pig, Alex kept checking his watch and Bethany was fidgeting at her hair pulling at it. “Times up! Now we check the cookie” Gino announced and walked up to it with several other chefs we didn’t recognise. Probably just small chefs that work in a restaurant maybe? They all checked everything and gathered together and had a small conversation with each other. They turned to face us and I had forgotten how to breathe. “I would like to happily present this world record to Connor Alex Bethany and Emily for making the now world's biggest cookie successfully” Gino praised us as he walked towards us ignoring our group squeal and finished with a small chuckle. I can’t believe it. We actually did it! We accomplished our biggest dream and I was over the moon. My mother’s advice is something I would never forget and I will continue to pass it down to other people because it’s something everyone deserves to know. If you are passionate about something and you want to pursue it into a career then go for it, put your heart and soul into it. And most importantly NEVER GIVE UP! Because it could lead you to amazing opportunities like us, meeting our chef role model. Bite the bullet and take the chance. You have everyone’s support including ours!