Jaffa orange drizzle cake

For this month's Stamford Clandestine Cake Club, I made a jaffa orange drizzle cake. I used a fancy new loaf tin too, which amused me with its 'loaf' wording on the side of the cake when baked.

This cake worked really well - it made quite a large loaf, but was moist, light and fluffy, and the tang of orange with the bite of chocolate on the top was delicious.

140g butter, softened
200g self-raising flour
1 1⁄2 tsp baking powder
200g golden caster sugar
3 large eggs
6 tbsp milk
finely grated zest 1 large orange

For finishing:
3 tbsp orange juice
100g golden caster sugar
50g dark chocolate

Heat the oven to 180 (160 fan) - gas mark 4. Prepare your loaf tin.
Cream together the butter and sugar until really fluffy and pale.
Add the eggs, which you've beaten first, a bit at a time - add a little flour to prevent it splitting. Add the zest at this point.
Sieve in the flour and baking powder, then add the milk. I thought 6 tablespoons might be too much but I stuck with it (and it worked).
Bake in the oven for about 45 - 50 minutes.

While the cake is baking, gently heat the orange juice with the sugar until it's all dissolved. As soon as you take the cake out of the oven, spoon the sugary juice over the top of the cake while it's still in the tin. Leave to cool a bit before taking it out.

Once cool, melt the chocolate, and drizzle over the top of the cake.

It's like a lemon drizzle, but better.

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.

New year, new favourite kitchen thing

It's a new year, we're all trying to be "the new you" when all we really want to be is a bit thinner... But with the new year comes new things. My favourite new thing in the kitchen is most definitely:

Kenco Millicano Wholebean Instant.

Yes, really. I love it. It really is as good as they tell you on those annoying adverts, with the horny parents in the kitchen and the mother in a dressing gown running to school to snatch her pot out of the grasp of the harvest festival.

Smooth, rich, it's delicious. It might even be a bit better than what my espresso machine churns out bell. Maybe not, but it's really nice. Anyone wondering what to get me for Christmas? (A bit early I know - or a bit late?)

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

Birthday cake

What would be your favourite birthday cake?

Your perfect birthday cake?

That's the theme of the next Stamford Clandestine Cake Club, on Monday, in honour of my birthday (well, I am the organiser, so I can pick the theme!).

This could be a lovely birthday treat...

I can't decide what to make. Do I try to recreate one of the memorable cakes from my childhood that my mum artfully crafted, such as the wooden lodge made with Cadbury's chocolate fingers for the panelling, or the spider that had liquorice legs and marshmallow feet? Or, should I go grown-up, with something boozey... Or, just a Victoria sponge, because I like it and what more reason do you need?

I'd love to hear what your idea birthday cake would be. It might give me some inspiration for what I'm going to bake for Monday's meeting. At the moment I'm thinking Vicky sponge with sweets all over it.

All about the taste, not the looks