I'm in the club!

NO! Not that club, the cake club or to give it it's proper name The Clandestine Cake Club. Clubs are popping up all over the place it seems. I'd read about it, seen posts from people I follow on Twitter, marveling at the cakes they'd seen and tasted and I'd even visited the website. I was very intrigued and so this time when I was invited to go along I said yes (the first time I declined you can read about that Here)

Every CCC meeting has a theme, set by the event organiser, in our case a lovely lady called Helen. The theme for this event was the Patron Saint of cakes. You can interpret the theme in any way you want to. I, as usual, put way too much thought into what I was going to do, to the point I got really stressed! Helen assured me that this really isn't what cake club is supposed to be about and it's certainly not a baking contest.
I decided to make my take on an Angel Cake, not an angel food cake, but the old fashioned pink, yellow and white cake that as a child we had with our Sunday tea. I didn't want to make it in a slab, or bar as you buy it in the shops as it needs to go round a fair few people. Being 'Angel' cake it fitted in with the heavenly theme quite nicely but also I used a recipe from my own saint of cakes, my lovely Mum. She was always baking something. In years gone by she and my Dad had made celebration cakes for people, Mum always baked for church events and often she would disappear, only to be found in the kitchen whipping up a Victoria Sandwich or a batch of jam tarts! So I used her recipe, what she used to call "4,4,4,2" (Butter, Sugar, Flour in ounces and 2 Eggs)  I used a triple quantity of that mixture, added some Vanilla extract, divided it into 3 bowls and coloured one portion pink and the other yellow and baked the three sections in sandwich tins.

I sandwiched the three cakes together with a simple vanilla butter cream, dusted the top with icing sugar, sprinkled on some glitter, stood back and started to panic!

Was it big enough? Would it be too simple/plain/ordinary? Would my cake look like the poor relation among all the other creations?

I'm happy to say I worried for nothing. When I arrived at our venue,(always somewhere different and never revealed until about a week before the event) I was greeted by welcoming smiles and a table full of cake of every kind.

Everyone finds a space for their cake on the table, then fills in a slip with their name and the title of the cake that they've baked.

I'm pleased to say my humble little cake didn't look out of place at all.

After a brief welcome from Helen and an informal introduction from us bakers, of us and our cakes it was time to dig in. Our venue was Cheshire Cakes a cake shop that doubles as a coffee shop. They kindly let us use the shop on the understanding we purchased tea and coffee. So it's like being in a nice coffee shop but having free reign of the cakes. I found choosing which to try really hard. There were sixteen cakes to choose from! I wanted to try as many as possible so chose to take tiny slices in the hopes I'd be able to sample a lot of the selection.

I think I managed six tastings and I didn't finish them all, as hard as I tried. There wasn't a single cake that I tried that I didn't like, they were all lovely.
We spent the evening chatting, eating cake and drinking tea. I got to know some of my newer friends a little better and forgot about the things that had been troubling me through the day.
There was a lot of cake left over, but never fear none of it is wasted. One of the great things about cake club is you get to take lots of cake home! We each cut slices of the cakes we'd wanted to try but hadn't got round to or the ones we really liked and wanted another taste of and filled our cake carriers with slices to take home.
What could be better than that? An evening eating cake, drinking tea and chatting to lovely cakey people, fantastic.
I really was worrying for nothing. Everyone was so friendly and I'll most definitely be putting my name down again.
I came home to Mr P, whose eyes lit up at the sight of my cake carrier laden with slices of cake. I simply got him a fork and he got stuck in. I'd had enough cake for one night so simply told him which was which. He didn't eat it all, there were about about eight slices, but he did have a try of each. This afternoon when the children came home from school we sat down with cups of tea and forks and did the same. It was all very civilised!
M's favourite was the Maple and Pecan, which was also one of my favourites. It reminded me of the Maple Brazils my Mum used to treat me to if ever she saw them in a nice sweet shop.
L's favourite was the double chocolate and cinnamon and R couldn't decided which he liked best, he liked them all, which is a huge compliment as he doesn't generally eat that much cake.

If you think it's something you'd like to take part in have a look at the link at the top of this post and see if there's a club near you and if not why not set up one of your own? You'll get all the information and advice you need. I can guarantee you won't regret it, we're a really friendly bunch!