Stamford cake club dodges the rain

This month, I risked the British summertime and planned an outdoors cake club in Stamford. I was watching the weather all week long, and it looked like it would be fine... There was the risk of rain at 4pm on Sunday but we should have been finished by then.

So, we all met on the Meadows in Stamford and scoffed a range of cakes baked to the theme 'A Novel Idea'. The bakers all found this theme a bit tricky - ironically, all the members who had requested this idea weren't able to make this meeting. But we had a good variety of cakes:

Bruce Bogtrotter's chocolate cake from Matilda by Roald Dahl
Chocolat by Joanne Harris cake
Harry Potter Butterbeer cake
Sponge cake shaped into 'Sophie's World' by Jostein Gaarder

We were surrounded by artists partaking in the Great Stamford Brush Off watercolour competition - I wonder how many of their artworks featured us in the background.

My cake was a simple Victoria Sponge traybake, covered in rolled icing and piped icing to look like a cake. It wasn't amazing, and reminded me why I normally focus on taste rather than decoration. But everyone enjoyed it, which is the main point.

Classic Victoria Sponge and a review of the Oregon Scientific kitchen timer

I was recently sent a Oregon Scientific kitchen timer to review for this blog. I was undecided about what to bake for a review post, when I realised, what's more of a test than a classic Victoria sponge cake? Not only is this a delicious, simple, wonderful cake to eat, but it is also a traditional challenge for the home baker. If you can't make a good Vicky sponge, there's no hope. Something that was captured on this year's Great British Bake Off in the final.

The recipe I used was your classic and simple Victoria sponge:
6oz butter
6oz caster sugar
6oz self-raising flour
3 eggs
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla paste
Dash of milk (semi-skimmed)

I don't follow Mary Berry's rule of bung it all in together and mix - I stick to the traditional creaming of butter and sugar, add the eggs and paste, sift in the flour and baking powder, and add a bit of milk.

Here comes the science bit - bake for 22 minutes at 170C degrees.

I decided it was a good idea to figure out how the Oregon Scientific  kitchen timer worked before making my cake - I didn't want all the air to sneak out of the mixture while I was frantically pressing buttons. But I needn't have worried, as it was really simple to set up. There are two windows, as you can set two timers at once - this will be really handy for Christmas dinner when you're cooking a million different dishes at once. You can use one window as a clock too, and there's a stopwatch option too.

Thankfully setting the timer didn't mean a hundreds beeps - unlike the timers used on GBBO (one of my favourite memories of this year's show was Chetna pressing her timer a thousand times, I think because of Jo Brand's An Extra Slice). I was impressed with how easy the timer was to use.

It was accurate and certainly rousing - I wandered off into our lounge to see how easy it was to hear the timer from across the house - nothing to worry about there, as it was louder than our smoke alarm. I would like to see more of a volume control, as I'm sure the neighbours knew my cake was ready too. There is a switch to select mute, quiet, or loud, but I didn't dare try the 'loud' button as I'm sure the local fire engines would have arrived. I'd like more control over the volume.

The only other downfall was the strength of the magnets - the timer wouldn't sit happily on the front of my fridge, but kept slipping down. But I wouldn't keep it on the fridge anyway, so that wasn't really an issue.

Oh, and the cake was delicious, by the way...

The Oregon Scientific kitchen timer was given to me in return for a review on this blog; this is not a paid-for blog and all opinions are my own. 

Clandestine Cake Club picnic in Stamford

On Sunday, June 2, the sun was shining upon Stamford CCC as we indulged in a chilled out picnic on Stamford Meadows. 16 bakers got together with 12 cakes in the sunshine with picnic blankets and chairs a-plenty.

In the background of cake club was a Victorian cricket festival, with cricketers in traditional garb competing from the local pubs, plus several children’s teams enjoying the gentle thwack of leather on willow. Some skillful dodging of flying cricket balls had to be done by the cake club members, but luckily none landed slap-bang in the middle of anyone’s cake. We also we treated to a fly past by a Lancaster (gosh, I know how to pull all the stops out!)

It was a very different club meet for us, which required me to act as main cake slicer, ending up in the middle of the blankets encircled by the other members. It did mean we couldn’t mingle as much, but we all chatted away regardless, and enjoyed some excellent cakes baked to the theme ‘Perfect for a picnic’.

The cakes included:
Apple and apricot – Sophie
Victoria sponge – Steve
Sultana baked cheesecake – Rachel
Blueberry and coconut crumbly cake – Kelly
Ginger cake – Simon
Lime and coconut cake – Kerry
Raspberry Bakewell – Rhoda
Battenburg – Vic
Sultana cake – Vicky
Lemon loaf – Esme
Toffee sponge – Sarah
Lemon cake – Susan

Vic’s Battenburg fared best under the sunshine, as the marzipan melted a little and made the cake even better! Simon was meant to bring a raspberry layer cake, but his mother got involved (we shan’t go into details) and he had to hurriedly make a ginger cake which was still warm when it got to us.

Luckily, no one was chased by a goose.

Stamford CCC loves birthday cakes

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