The Great British Fruit Off

The first meeting of the Stamford Clandestine Cake Club could not have gone better. Twelve bakers got together at the Tobie Norris, in Stamford, Lincs, for a very fruit evening.

As the inaugural event, we were all a bit unsure about how the evening would pan out. It was a complete success and everyone got on brilliantly. The cakes were amazing – everyone went to such a lot of effort and there were no disasters, even if the bakers themselves thought there had been.

The Tobie Norris was a welcoming and generous host venue. It’s a brilliant pub that serves the most amazing pizzas, in a beautiful old building that’s thought to date back to the 13th century when there was a medieval hall on the site. The staff were all intrigued by the notion of a cake club and asked all about it. Their service was second-to-none and brought all our drinks up to our hidden room, to save the bakers’ legs climbing the stairs and balancing cups of tea. The room itself was atmospheric and full of character – just like the club members!

The theme was ‘The Great British Fruit Off’ – a nod to everyone’s favourite BBC TV programme, and a chance to indulge in some lovely autumnal fruit flavours. As this was our first meeting, I wanted to pick a theme that had a lot of variety to it and would offer everyone a chance to try something traditional, favourite, or completely brand new. We had a great range of cakes:
Sticky toffee spiced apple cake
Pineapple upside-down cakes x2 (one light and fluffy, the other with a brilliant crunchy caramelised crust – the baker thought it was burnt, when in fact the crunchy bits were a highlight of the evening)
Fruit loaf
Disaronno cherry cake
Spiced apple cake
Sticky orange marmalade cake
Raspberry Bakewell cake
Rich chocolate fruit cake
Apple and almond cake

Selection of cakes

All were delicious, and everyone tried a piece of each – we were all suitably caked out by the end of the evening. We spent two hours chatting non-stop about cake, baking, and other cakey themes. One member is the editor of Making Cakes & Bakes magazine and hopefully our club will make an appearance in its pages in the future.

My spiced sticky toffee apple cake

Thank you to everyone who attended and here’s to a long and happy future for the Stamford CCC. There are so many lovely potential venues in this gorgeous Georgian town and so many cake themes to enjoy – here’s to the next meet!