Cake club - loaf of fun

The fourth meeting of the Stamford Clandestine Cake Club was a roaring success - I'm so proud of our little group. Which isn't so little any more - after a brilliant feature in the Stamford Mercury by member and journalist Kerry, we had an influx of new members. 10 new people came, with the total number of cake at 16 - that's a lot of loaf for your money!

The theme was 'Use Your Loaf' after a discussion at January's meeting about how much we all love loaf cakes. I was impressed at the variety of flavours - I thought we'd end up with 10 lemon drizzles, but surprisingly we had none. Banana was the flavour of the day, with five incarnations of the traditional. We had a controversial savoury offering - cheese and courgette, which I have to admit I didn't try as I don't really like cheese (dare I say it - it has its place, but not in cake for me). My jaffa orange drizzle cake together with home-made jaffa cakes went down a storm, the tropical mango was a favourite of mine, and the chilli chocolate had a heated kick that we loved. The Mars cake, made with 6 Mars bars, certainly satisfied my sweet tooth!

It was great to see so many new faces and hopefully new friendships will be formed. It was brilliant to hear the bakers say they loved the idea of the club as they didn't know how to make friends with new people, and how hard it was to find a local club they were interested in that wasn't during the day, while we're at work.

I know it's just a little cake club, but I'm really proud of it. I love to see how happy people are sharing their cakes, seeing everyone chat with new people that you wouldn't normally meet, and finding the strangest things in common with each other. Cake makes the world go round. I wish I could find a job that was all about cake...

The pile of leftover cakes at the end of the night, even after everyone had filled their 'cake troughs' to take home, was hilarious. I gave the venue, the fabulous William Cecil hotel in Stamford, lots of cake for the staff, which they were over the moon about.

I recommend the venue to anyone - its label is 'quirky luxury' which is right down my street. We held the event in their conservatory, but the restaurant is equally impressive, and I loved the tartan curtains.

I love cake club. You should join in, if there's one near you, or how about becoming an organiser - it's very rewarding. See more about Clandestine Cake Clubs here.