Bake cake, eat cake, talk about cake, and take cake home – and make
new friends in the meantime. That’s the ethos behind
Clandestine Cake Clubs, and especially
the Stamford branch.
We met on January 7th to have a cakey birthday party – everyone was
given the theme to inspire their favourite birthday cakes. Whether it
would be a cake you loved from your childhood, or your favourite treat
that you’d love to receive this birthday, all Stamford bakers gathered
together for a new year natter and some delicious cake.
As organiser, I did create this theme with my own 30th birthday in
mind (it was five days before we met), but who can resist a birthday
cake?
There were a few new year cancellations unfortunately, so baker
numbers were down to seven, although we were joined by a local
journalist, Kerry, who is writing a feature about the group. She kindly
baked a cake too, so we were up to eight cakes in total. Hopefully our
journalist friend will also become a regular member.
The cakes were as follows:
Caterpillar cake
Traditional cherry cake
Raspberry Victoria sponge
Vanilla sponge with flowers
Chocolate marble with fudgey decorations
Lemon drizzle
Chocolate and raspberry cake
And, the piece de resistance, a chocolate and vanilla teapot cake.
 |
| Paul the Baker's amazing teapot cake |
The teapot cake was made by
Paul the Baker, as a birthday present to me (he
knows I am as obsessed with tea as I am with cake). Thoughtful, crafty,
creative, and massive, this was a mammouth cake. It was half chocolate
and half vanilla, designed to look like it was half full of tea.
Amazing, and I think everyone agreed it completely stole the show.
The caterpillar cake was a great throwback to childhood, and was
incredibly sweet – both in appearance, and taste. My own creation was
the raspberry Victoria sponge, with lemony buttercream and raspberry jam
as well as actual raspberries. I toyed with allsorts of fancy designs
for a birthday cake, but I realised that as I was making one for myself,
that simple recipe would keep me very very happy.
Anthea’s raspberry chocolate cake was a great success – the topping, a
mix of melted raspberry jam with cream and chocolate – was a real
surprise and loved by everyone. I think we’ll all be borrowing that
recipe for future bakes.
This month’s event was held at
The Crown in Stamford, a wonderful venue. The staff
were really helpful and welcoming, and loved the cake afterwards that we
gifted them. They arranged the room really well, although the lighting
was very atmospheric – meaning all the photos are a little dark I’m
afraid!
Hopefully the upcoming feature in the local newspaper, The Stamford
Mercury, will create an influx of new members, as we’d love to make new
friends and eat even more cake.
A lovely meeting again, and a great start to the year which will
hopefully be full of more CCC events and fun venues. I have lots of
ideas in the pipeline for where to hold events, and all the members had
lots of ideas for different themes we can have. It’s important to
remember that the themes are just for inspiration, and not to be scary
or stressful – you can simply make a lovely cake and talk with lovely
people, irrelevant of the theme.
If you like the sound of our little cake club, please get in touch
and join in – everyone is welcome, all ages and both men and women (we
have three male members at the moment!) – simply message me on this site
or email me at stamfordccc@gmail.com
