Clandestine Cake Club Book Launch

photo by Waterstone's Cambridge

Last Saturday we held the book launch for the Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook at the lovely Waterstones branch in Cambridge. With my trusty co-host, Miss Sue Flay, at my side and help from the fantastic staff at Waterstones we welcomed 20 cake club members along with members of the public to eat cake, talk cake and get to know the cake club.

Raspberry Cake by Kelly

If you aren't familiar with the cake club; it was set up by Lynn Hill 3 years ago as a chance for people to test their baking skills, meet other bakers and try their cakes. You bake a cake, bring a cake along, eat cake and then take some cake home! The book is a collection of members recipes (there are over 150 clubs in cities worldwide, from Cambridge to Calgary, Birmingham to Bangalore!) which makes it extra special and bursting with some really original ideas.

I baked a Blood Orange & Rosemary loaf cake for the club, which despite the odd sounding combination, works brilliantly well. Fresh rosemary is milled in a food processor and then folded into a cake mix flecked with blood orange zest and spices. The cake is baked in the oven and then a rich blood orange syrup is poured over before being finished with slices of fresh blood orange. The resulting cake is earthy and rich and the orange works perfectly to balance the savoury flavour of the rosemary. Try it, it totally works!

Normally the cake clubs are for those who pre-book only, but this one was a cake club with a difference. We set up on the first floor of the bookshop and invited passing customers to try the cakes and find out more about the club. It was a little daunting, admittedly, but everyone who talked to us was really friendly and interested - and also, who doesn't love free cake?

We recruited some new members to the Cambridge club that day and we really hope to see them at the next event in April (more details on the cake club site soon). To find your nearest next cake club event see the Events page of the Clandestine Cake website. 

You can buy the cookbook at your local Waterstones or here.

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Orange & White Chocolate Cake - Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook

The Clandestine Cake Club is a wonderful thing. Back in 2010  Lynn Hill set up a small local get together in Leeds for bakers and cake eaters to meet, eat and talk. No competition, no rivalry, just a chance to bake a cake and share it with others. Since then the cake club has spread nationally and internationally, with more than 150 clubs meeting, eating and baking.

As a member, and more recently a co-host, of the Cambridge club, I have met lots of great people at the many meets I've attended and we've talked about everything from the frustrations of buttercream, our thoughts on Paul Hollywood and the best cake tins. My cakey knowledge has come on leaps and bounds since I attended the first Cambridge club in 2011.

The Clandestine Cake Club cookbook came out last week, it is a collection of over 120 recipes from members of cake clubs, is this the very first crowdsourced cookbook? The book is beautifully photographed and there is such an array of different recipes that it is so hard to choose which one to begin with. The book is split into sections - classic cakes, Victorian cakes, fruity cakes, global cakes, zesty cakes, chocolatey cakes (of course), celebration cakes and creative cakes.

There is also a brilliant section about the various cake disasters that can happen to bakers - refreshing to see in a cookbook as many do tend to paint a perfect world of cooking and baking. I can safely say I've had my fair share of undercooked cakes, melting buttercream and cakes stuck to the tin. Fortunately the book offers some advice for how to fix this, or prevent it in the first place.

I've bookmarked about 12 recipes in the book that I must make soon, and for my first bake I thought it would be fitting to bake one of Lynn's recipes. I chose the Orange & White Chocolate Cake - a classic sponge soaked in orange syrup and sandwich with white chocolate and orange buttercream.

It is a delicious cake, quite sweet but the orange really helps to lighten it and make it seem not so naughty! The sponge recipe is straightforward and the buttercream not too difficult - I always find chocolate buttercream a little easier to make than standard as the cooling chocolate helps it to stay stiff and not melt so easily (provided your chocolate is cool).

I'll be trying to resist having another slice of this today, and then bringing the rest in for my colleagues to eat - which I think is in the spirit of the cake club - sharing cake!

The Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook is available to buy from all bookshops and online. The Book People also have it for only £6.99 at the moment, which is a bargain. Pick up a copy, find your local cake club and get baking!

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Margarita Cake & Clandestine Cake Club

Another day, another cake club! My favourite cocktail is a margarita, and I didn't have to think hard when asked to make a cocktail inspired cake for the next Clandestine Cake Club. Apart from anything else, I already had triple sec and tequila in my kitchen, all I needed was limes (oh and butter, sugar, flour...) and a spare evening.

I was also particularly excited because last night's cake club was my first as official co host. It was held at the lovely Greens Coffee in Cambourne, and a dozen cakes and guests settled around a long table filled with all kinds of cakes. We were also joined by the lovely Leanne from Cambridge News, more on that in a couple of weeks....

This cake gets all the flavour after baking - the sponge is a simple vanilla with lots of lime zest stirred in. After it comes out the oven a tequila sugar syrup is poured over the cake to soak in whilst it cools. Then it is topped with even more booze - in the form of a tequila, triple sec, lime and cream cheese icing.

Margarita Cake
makes 1 loaf cake

For the cake:
200g unsalted butter, softened
200g golden caster sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
zest of 2 limes
200g plain flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder

Preheat your oven to gas mark 4 / 160 c fan / 180 c conventional. Cream together the butter and sugar til light and fluffy. Then add in the eggs one by one til well combined. Add vanilla and lime zest. Add in all the flour and baking powder and gently fold in til just combined. Bake in a lined loaf tin for 25-30 minutes.

Margarita Syrup
2 tablespoons of icing sugar
1 capful of Tequila
1 capful of Triple Sec
juice of 1 lime

Mix all the ingredients together til the sugar is dissolved.
When the cake is cooked, leave in the tin for about 5-10 minutes, then remove and put on a plate. Poke small holes in the cake with a skewer and then evenly pour the syrup over the cake. Leave to cool.

Cream cheese icing
100g cream cheese
25g of butter, softened
1 tablespoon of Tequila
1 tablespoon of Triple Sec
juice of 1 lime
150g - 200g icing sugar

Cream together the butter and the cream cheese, then add in 100g of icing sugar and the spirits and lime. Add in more icing sugar as you combine til you have a thick icing, slightly thicker than custard - you want nice pourable icing. Refrigerate whilst the cake cools.

This cake is best iced just before you serve it - which I didn't think through very well because it meant I had to arrive at cake club with a tub full of it and a spoon ready to ice at the table. Just pour tablespoon fulls of it over the cake in a 'rustic' fashion! If you have some left it will freeze well and you can use it for another cake.

Our next Cambridge Clandestine Cake Club is the 24th November, sign up on the website.

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Cambridge Clandestine Cake Club - GBBO special!

A couple of weeks ago, on the night of the final of another fantastic series of The Great British Bake Off, the Cambridge Clandestine Cake Club gathered for an evening of GBBO themed cakes and a screening of the show itself.

The fantastic First and Last pub kindly gave us a venue to watch the programme and eat cake, there were 25 cakes in all kinds of flavours - flourless chocolate hazelnut, grapefruit bundt cake, hummingbird cake, orange and almond cake.. the list was indeed endless!

I baked the Apple Pie Cake from Edd Kimber's first book, The Boy Who Bakes - it is a fantastic recipe which makes a rather large cake! It was my first three layer cake - the sponge is light and gently spiced with nutmeg, cinnamon cream cheese frosting between the layers and finally topped with lightly cooked apples and golden spiced caramel.

Watching the bake off in a room full of 25 other keen bakers was brilliant, we shared the tense moments, the oohs and aahs and giggled at Mary Berry's double entendre. I'm really pleased John won too, he was a fantastic baker and learnt so much from the start of the series.

Our cakey evening also featured in Cambridge Evening News, and my silly face got in the paper later that week, along with my cake of course.

Following the cake club evening I'm really pleased to say I've agreed to be Miss Sue Flay's co-host for future Cambridge Clandestine Cake Club's - so watch out for more announcements from both of us about the next bake off - coming very very soon!

Find your nearest cake club on the site: www.clandestinecakeclub.co.uk

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Recent Eating

I was looking at my blog last night and realised how neglected it has been recently, poor blog. I've been busy with my new job (which is great) and making jewellery but I have still been cooking some nice things. I'm pretty good at snapping pics on my phone and putting them on Instagram, which has been about all the blogging I've been doing lately. Here are some of my favourite things from the last month.

Glazed sesame chicken, thai green butternut squash curry and fluffy basmati rice. 

This chicken is SO good, it didn't think it would cook in time and worried it would burn, but it was great. The skin was like fried chicken, ridiculously good. Chicken recipe courtesy of Jamie Oliver 

Bubble and squeak cakes with roasted fennel and squash warm salad. 

My first go at trying roasted fennel, I always thought the aniseed would be too overpowering but it is just right, adapted from River Cottage Veg, I missed out the spelt to keep it simple, the flavours were still there and it all worked together really well.

The bubble and squeak cakes were some leftover mash, shredded cabbage, an egg, garlic, lots of parsley and seasoning, fried til crispy on both sides.

Clandestine Cake Club! 

I was so pleased to make the latest cake club meeting at La Tasca in Cambridge. Lyn, the founder of Clandestine Cake, was our guest of honour, it was lovely to meet the lady who started it all off. There are now over 60 clubs in the UK and across the world, find your club here. I baked a rhubarb victoria sponge (unpictured, it tasted good but was pretty unphotogenic!). I love going to cake club, I always come back brimming with ideas and high off a sugar rush. 

Some other things that didn't make it on to my photo album but are definitely worth trying:

Crispy Baked Onion Rings - I made these twice in one week. Enough said!

Creamy Avocado Pasta - Avocado is one of my favourite things to eat, this pasta dish is super quick and I found I didn't even need to add parmesan, which is a first.

Crispy Tofu Strips - I am slowly learning to like Tofu, I think it works well in a handful of dishes. Silken tofu is normally my favourite, this is a great way of using firm flavoured tofu (I used basil, but you can also get smoked) in a healthy way.

Teacake in Shepreth - My new favourite tea room / cafe. And it happens to be 2 minutes away from my office. Win win.

Carrot Fries - almost guilt free chips. Almost.


Ta Da! A new blog post. That wasn't so hard :)

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Cambridge Clandestine Cake Club & Banana Oat Cake

Yesterday I went to the 2nd Clandestine Cake Club for Cambridge held at the fantastic Greens Coffee Co. in Cambourne. You really have to love cake to go to one of these, and fortunately I do. Everyone brings a cake along and then you spend the evening drinking tea and eating your away around all the sugary offerings.

There we over 20 cakes this time and every one looked amazing. I didn't try all of them but I managed 4 slices whilst I was there and took some home - much to Mr Giraffe's delight.

My offering was a Banana and Oat Cake with Elderflower Cream Cheese icing. The cake was originally meant to be vanilla sponge but it came out of the oven dense and flat, and my buttercream failed too. Luckily I'd also made banana bread so I jazzed that up with the icing (made at work the next day, before the club!) which worked really well.

Yummy.

The evening is organised by Miss Sue Flay of tea party fame. I'm really looking forward to the next one.
There are lots of Clandestine Cake Clubs being held by other people around the country - check the website to see if there is one in your town. 

The banana loaf recipe started off wanting to be the one from the Hummingbird Bakery book but I edited it so much it pretty much is a different recipe now. I subbed out a lot of the sugar, used less flour and added oats.

Banana Oat Cake

140g sugar
2 eggs
2 bananas (about 200g peeled weight), peeled and mashed.
140g plain flour
40g porridge oats
1tsp baking powder
1tsp ground cinamonn
1tsp vanilla extract
1tsp ground ginger
100g unsalted butter, melted and cooled.

Preheat oven to 170c / gas mark 3. Grease and line a loaf tin. 

Whisk the eggs and sugar together until well combined. Then add in the mashed bananas and mix well again. Fold in the dry ingredients carefully, and then pour in the melted butter and fold again. Pour into the prepared loaf tin. Bake for 35 - 45 minutes until cooked through.

Elderflower Cream Cheese Icing

I really struggle with buttercream, it tends to split very easily for me. I love cream cheese icing because it is just as decadent but so so much easier to make. This recipe is based on the Jamie Oliver recipe that goes with his carrot cake.

100g mascarpone cheese
200g full fat cream cheese
2 tbsp of elderflower cordial
85g of icing sugar

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl and then spread all over your (cooled) cake.

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