Courgettes in a cake for Dundee Baking Club

I have baked cakes with vegetables in them before, most notably carrot cake, and a beetroot chocolate cake, and they have been delicious.  I even bought a book a few years ago, all about cakes with vegetables and less sugar (I was going to name and give a link to that book, but for the life of me can't think what it's called.  If I remember, I'll be sure to include it here), but don't think I've even cracked the spine on that one - perhaps don't tell Mr Becca.

This recipe was for the first meeting of the newly re-branded Dundee Baking Club and the theme was Autumnal Bakes.  As you may recall, about 4 years ago I founded the Dundee branch of the Clandestine Cake Club with Jac from Tinned Tomatoes.  We were very happy with our meetings and members and rolled happily along for quite some time.  Stuart of Cakeyboi joined us and together we ran it all enjoyably.  Then we felt we wanted to bake other than just large cakes, so respectfully broke away and this cake was for our inaugural meeting.  I like to bake big cakes, as our family has little appetite for them so baking for others means I get to taste a little but have the fun of  the bake.

Above we see the grated courgette (or zucchini if you prefer), eggs, brown sugar, flour and spices.

And above here we see the disappointingly thin slivers of cake  :(  I don't know how you would feel with these layers, but I was seriously unimpressed at how little they rose in the baking process.  I had double-checked the recipe quantities and method, in case I had done something wrong, but no.  And my raising agent wasn't out of date or anything like that either...

So I made sure I had plenty of cinnamon flavoured buttercream icing and got to work.  I dusted it all lightly with cinnamon and gold edible glitter spray, plus a dose of delicious walnuts and took it to the meeting.

Where I am pleased to report that it was gobbled up and no-one noticed that the layers were a little on the thin side.  

Honey, I shrunk the cake club

I belong to a cake club.  You probably aren't surprised, and probably also already know that.  It's similar to a book-club, in that you all get together to chat, but you bake a cake to a set theme.  Then you eat all the cakes and talk about them.  Seriously.

We decided to go off-piste this meeting (I love the sound of that phrase.  It conjures up breaking-of-rules, and being a dare-devil.  I never went off-piste when skiing, as it was usually the black runs that had the off-piste areas, and they were challenging enough as it was.  Although actually, I think Dad and I did go off-piste once when I was in my later teens.  It was at Mt Hotham, and the run was the Blue Ribbon and I'm sure if you skied directly under the chairlift that was technically off-piste.  I tell you, those moguls were huge!  Ahhh, great times) and go mini.  Petit Fours was the theme, and go small but many was the instruction.

I ummmed and ahhhed over what exactly to bake/bring this time.  Cupcakes are smaller than cake, but I couldn't decide which flavour.  Cookies are smaller than cake, but again I had trouble deciding which ones.  Then I had a brainwave, whilst reading an email.  Brownies bites.  With peanut butter!  A la the late, great Betty Crocker.  And a star was born. 

Other bakers brought mini cupcakes, whoopie pies, chocolate dipped fondants, macarons, baked donuts and so on.  Mmmm, mmmm...

And H came in later with some super-tasty mini eclairs, in chocolate or caramel

We had a few new members this meeting, and here we can see some of them licking their fingers in delight, and giggling at whatever funny thing one another may have said.  Oooh, cake club - another winning evening!

Dundee loves Clandestine Cake Club, Autumn style

It was time for another meeting of our branch of The Clandestine Cake Club and this time the theme was Fall Fancies, the colours and flavours of Autumn.

I really fancied making a pumpkin cake, especially after doing the pumpkin cupcakes a week ago.  I had specially bagged up the pumpkin puree in 200g and 440g (approx 1.5 cups) bags in preparation.  One of my American cake friends, C,  set up a board on Pinterest called Cakes to bake-Pumpkin and directed me to the Brown Butter Pumpkin Layer Cake.  She had tried one or two of the recipes, and this one looked like something I could manage.

After converting all the measurements to metric, I got started.  Once again, the pumpkin seemed to make the cake very moist and dense, even though I baked it for longer than the specified time and the inserted skewer came out clean.  And it felt kind of wrong to burn butter on purpose, but I had to do it 3 times for the brown butter components of each section.  Mmm, what a difference it made to the taste though.  Spiced pumpkin sponge, cream cheese icing and caramelised pecan nuts - yummy.

That beauty is my contribution.  Below are the cakes brought by all the bakers - from L to R we have Jackie's Cinnamon Apple cake, Jac's version of a Halloween Victoria Sponge - complete with choc fondant eyeballs, Ellen's Apple and Bramble bundt cake, Catriona's Pumpkin Maple bundt, my cake, Gary's Beetroot Choc cake and Carolyn's Sticky Pear and Ginger Cake.  Sadly Kelly was unwell though, so we missed her cake.

To each event a baker is invited to bring a guest, called an eater, to help taste and eat the cakes.  So in this case we had a couple more eaters than bakers - because there is always So Much Cake.  You really do need the help, I promise.

And here is the lovely little cafe chosen for this event, on the Perth Road if you are local to Dundee...  Although I think next time we'll need to chose a larger venue - this event had a long waiting list, so exciting!!

Just a query - for those of you who bake with pumpkin regularly, does this slice of cake look good to you?  No, honestly I'm not fishing for compliments (though they will always be gratefully and graciously accepted) but it seems dense to me and my Mr...

 

Clandestine Cake Club hits Dundee, again

I haven't written for a while, and intend to remedy that... soon.  And what better reason than to tell you about another meeting of the super-fun Clandestine Cake Club in Dundee?!  The venue this time was the very posh and lovely Hilton Hotel Dundee, and they had been kind enough to set out a fancy glass table on which to display our cakes, along with a long meeting table for us - giving us plenty of room to eat cake, mingle and chat.

This month's theme was 'Like a kid in a Sweet Shop' and there were a plethora of chocolate based cakes on offer.  Chocolate Lime with a lime cream accompaniment, Choc Orange, After-Eight (choc mint), White Chocolate and Orange, Chocolate Jazzie, Coca Cola and Coconut Lime cakes. 

And here's a photo, taken by the lovely @zoevenditozzi from her Twitter feed, of a plateful of deliciousness

 

Which one is mine, you ask?  Oh dear, I kind of wished you hadn't.  I put the oven on before 5pm on Saturday (the day before the meeting) and it short-circuited the entire house!  That's right, all the appliances went off, and the lights upstairs and downstairs.  And to top it off, it was the one day that Mr Becca was away in another city for a stag-do, so couldn't help at all.  I sent him a few text messages, asking for help and advice, but it wasn't until he received the one saying 'eating microwaved 'baked' potatoes by candlelight for dinner' that he replied.  With a phone call.  And an exortation to get power back to our lovely, large American-style fridge freezer, as it contained lots of his home-made 'ready meals' that he cooks on a Friday night. 

I did what I could, but could not move that fridge for love nor money.  A quick knock on the house next door, and my neighbour D came to help.  His knowledge of electrics was better than mine (I did Year 11 physics and, though I really enjoyed it, I wasn't too good at it) and we not only moved the fridge but fixed the problem so it was only the oven that was out of commission.  Woo hoo!

Except that I had no oven in which to bake the Kit Kat cake I had planned to bring along to Cake Club the next evening  :(

So we had one more eater at the meeting - ah well!  All's well that ends well.  (And you'll be pleased to hear that my oven was repaired this morning, although it did mean I missed my weekly Zumba class, and thus didn't work off any of the excess calories ;))

 

Clandestine Cake Club Dundee number 2

How exciting that we'd managed to organise another meeting of the Clandestine Cake Club in Dundee.  People seemed to have really enjoyed themselves at the first event, and this second one was no different.  Jac and I had discussed possible dates and venues and come up with last night at The Milton Inn, Monifieth.  I had chosen the venue because Team Becca had eaten there on more than one occasion and been impressed with both the quality of food and staff/atmosphere.

The theme we chose was fitting and current - A Right Royal Cake-up; red, white & blue.  Because really, the Queen's Jubilee comes only once in a lifetime.  We contacted everyone on our list, and in the end had 5 bakers and 11 in total.  This was slightly less than last time, but worked out well, as we had more people to eat less cakes.  We all still went home with leftovers and sore tummys though!

I had chosen to make a Red Velvet cake, with cream cheese icing tinged blue.  Thus getting in my required red, white and blue colours.  Or so I thought.  I had lent my Sugarflair Christmas Red paste to my neighbour a day or so ago, and hadn't asked for it back at a certain time, not remembering that I would need it so soon.  So I was all set to make pink velvet and figured I'd just apologise then I found a Dr Oetker Natural Red liquid colour bottle.  Kinda wish I hadn't...  I'm going to show you finished cake first, so you'll feel happy when you look at the colour of the interior at which point you may feel a little sad - I sure did.

Here's how I made the blue part of the swirl - I painted a stripe of blue food paste in the piping bag before I added the cream cheese icing.  So each time the icing passed the blue, it picked up a little bit.

And sadly, here's the interior.  See what I mean?  It's terracotta at best...  :(

So, to cheer you all up after that little disapointment - here are the individual cakes in close-up.  They were all soft, moist and delicious!  Mmmm

Earl Grey cake with a Rhubarb Glaze (and yes, it was very hot that day)

Devil's Food Cake with coconut and berries

White chocolate cake with cranberry & raspberry filling

Raspberry & vanilla cake.  And here we see me cutting into my own cake

Some of the other members trying out the delicious treats

And a lovely smiley group photo...

Clandestine Cake Club hits Dundee!

Have you heard of the Clandestine Cake Club?  No?  It's like a book club, only calorific!  Basically a theme is set, you bake a cake to that theme then take it to the specified venue at the specified time and you all taste each others cakes and chat about them.  You need to register your interest in the first place, then the host emails you to tell you the time and date and theme of the next meeting.  There's always a limit to the number of attendees, and usually each baker is offered the option to bring along an 'eater' - i.e. someone who won't bake, but simply eat the offerings.  So it's a first-come, first-served kind of idea, and the clandestine part is that the confirmed invitees don't learn the actual location of the event until 24-48 hours before the event.  The theme and location changes each time too, to maintain the interest and intrigue.

So, I got on the list for the first event (well, that's a bit modest, I actually am the co-host of the entire Dundee enterprise, with my new friend Jac of Tinned Tomatoes fame) and Jac chose the theme - Getting Fruity.  Why, I hear you ask.  Simply because she likes fruit in cake, need there be a better reason?  As the time for the event got closer, we all had to tell her the cake we planned to bake, to ensure not too many of the same type.

I wanted to do the Blackberry, Lavender, Rose & White Chocolate one from Fiona Cairns' book The Birthday Cake Book (sorry but I can't find a link for this cake anywhere online) as it sounded tasty.  I had done it as a practice run a few weeks ago, and hadn't been impressed.  There was barely a hint of either of the flower flavours and the white chocolate ganache was far too creamy and thin for my liking.  Here's the cake I did in March...

As you can see, I wasn't too particular with smoothing the ganache.  It was more interesting to see how far it spread.  I made notes on the recipe for future reference (I, and Mr Becca, always do that - do you?) and left it at that.

So to yesterday's efforts.  This time I made the compote for the filling from scratch and thus had to leave it overnight to infuse with the lavender.  I had previously used my friend A's homemade Blackcurrant and Lavender jelly, but evidently not enough.  This time I again used her lavender, but actual blackberries.  Even after 24 hours they were still distinctly berries in syrup, so I mashed them and made them more spreadable (once the liquid was drained off).

Not long after doing the last cake, a friend had posted a photo of her chocolate ganache which was really thick so I asked her what I may have done wrong, because mine was really runny.  After some discussion, we realised I hadn't let mine cool long enough, so this time it got 30  minutes in the fridge then a further 45 in the freezer.  Job done, as far as texture was concerned, but that meant it barely spread at all.  Eek!  I ended up with enough to just do the filling and the top of the cake, and so was really quite upset about the look of the cake, as I hadn't taken any care with the filling - imagining that it would be totally covered up.  When asked his opinion, my darling husband stated politely that 'he had seen better work from me' and 'it looked like someone's first-ever cake'.  Gee, thanks.  But after a good night's sleep and some encouraging words from other bakers (including the founder of Clandestine Cake Club herself - reminding me that it wasn't a competition and we weren't there to judge, simply to eat and enjoy), I decided it wasn't that bad at all and took it along to Cake Club...

Where it sat proudly on the table with all the other delicious cakes the other bakers had made.  Those are hand-made chocolates if you were wondering.  I made them by melting white chocolate, adding some food colouring them popping them in my mould and freezing them.  I'm still working on getting all the air bubbles out (but from this distance you can't really see them anyway).

Cake Club 2, buttercream icing

We had so much fun last time, that we wanted to do it again, this time at H's house.  She had learned her icing and decoration skills when working for the American Ambassador in Fiji way back when - it's the way his wife spent her Saturdays.  As you do, ha ha.  Lucky us, we got to learn her skills too. 

We each baked a cake and brought it along uniced, however mine was iced because I wanted to learn how to do a character cake.  Here is the table H had prepped for our arrival, and I'll show you the cakes in turn too.

She had laid out her large set of Wilton icing nozzles, her old but faithful Wilton icing colour set, a ruler, disposable and re-useable piping bags, a Wilton angled spatula and I can't recall what else.  And before you wonder, no I don't have a deal with Amazon or Wilton, but I thought these links would let you see exactly what I mean.

So here, in no particular order, are the cakes we baked and all took turns in icing. Yep, that's right - we each took turns icing sections of each cake, so that we could practice the skills and correct any mistakes. So you'll notice that the icing isn't tidy and uniform all the way around the cakes. Sorry.

We practiced using a flat line nozzle that was serrated on one side, and using a coupler with the nozzle so you could change colours and bags easily.

 Now we tried shell borders, with mixed success.

And finally, we tried buttercream roses and two types of leaf nozzle.  It's kind of pretty, right?  ha ha.

Here we're learning to do a transfer onto the cake of a character, using a pin to prick out the shape.  Then you fill it in with a fine writing nozzle, and then use a closed star nozzle (sorry, but I don't own either of these types of nozzle so can't tell you the number.  Perhaps if H reads this blog, she could comment below with the correct nozzle numbers...) to fill in the shape.  It's not a great rendition of Mickey Mouse's head, but it's recognisable.

And here too we have the addition of buttercream roses and leaves.  They'll appear on pretty much every cake, as we were excited to do something different and new, and were pleased with our efforts.

Here we are learning basketweave icing.  It looks impressive when done neatly and consistently, and we all tried really hard to make it work, ha ha.

From this angle you can see we also learned the rope border technique, and used a press (to make the dots like the pinprick technique showed us) to show the shape over which to use a writing nozzle to make the dots for the heart.  And, of course, the ever-present roses and leaves.

Do you think it looks a bit like a rattan basket??

With this cake, the baker learnt how to ice around corners, and is going to stick to round cakes from now on. We also practiced with the serrated lines, and another style of press but using lilac icing this time.

Here we practiced shell borders again. 

This one was fun, and hard to do wrong.  Called Cornelli Lace, the idea is to wiggle about with a writing nozzle and fill up the space without letting the lines touch or cross over.  We all had a try, then did some shell borders.  Then, as it was a school night and getting ever closer to midnight, we called it a night.  However, the next morning our hostess H and her young daughter 'fixed' the cake and added a princess and some pink...

Cake Club 1, fondant icing

Now, I know that the first rule of Fight Club was that you didn't talk about Fight Club.  That obviously won't work in a blog situation though, so I won't talk too much, but will show you some photos of what we did.  We're basically just having fun and practicing techniques and passing on knowledge. 

Here we have M, with her mini marzipanned fruit cake.  She covered it in white fondant, and is rolling out shapes to make little robins having a snowball fight.  This cake is for sale at her son's playgroup fundraiser.

 M's finished product.  She's even done tiny feet for the one who got knocked over - too cute!

Here we see P cutting off her excess fondant with a pizza cutter.  We found this to be much easier than a knife, so H and I used it too.  P's cake isn't for anything in particular, she was just practicing her skills.

P trying to get smoother sides.  Someone passed her the plastic smoothing tool after this photo.  It really helps you to get a very smooth finish, you just have to be a bit careful that you don't push too hard and indent your cake.

P had a white powder, that had an E number for a name, and it's meant to be added to fondant/sugarpaste to make it more like flower paste (i.e. you can roll thinner and the item keeps its shape).  She decided to try it out on a butterfly or two, and left them to dry in a book to give them a lifted appearance.

P impressed us all with her flowers, and they look great with the butterflies. Then she saw the green colour that H had made, so added in some falling ivy...

Next we see what H did.  To my surprise, H had never used fondant icing before (I was sure we'd talked about it, but was obviously mistaken).  She was keen to use colour and shapes/cutters and decided to try a garden sort of a theme.  Again, her cake wasn't for a reason, but simply to practice on.

We had an old Wilton Yearbook and we all went through it for inspiration (none struck for me, as you'll see below) and H went for the garden idea.  M had done grass before, and suggested H cut into fondant in mismatched long skinny triangles, but she was finding that quite tricky to master.  This idea worked a lot easier, and she simply used a toothpick to press in the lines.  The grass sections were stuck on by moistening the back with a touch of water.  Then she went crazy with the flower cutters and food colours...   Lovely!

And finally we get to me.  Once you've seen it, you'll think I shouldn't have bothered.  Sorry.  Please keep reading, pretty please?  I had done Mini-2's birthday cake and had a bit of an issue with the rolled out fondant not being fully circular and thus not being quite smooth enough.  So we talked over possible fixes and I went for it.

This time the rolling out/smoothing etc went much better.  The only issue is that I came without any real idea of what I wanted to do, so ended up doing nothing much.  I haphazardly slapped on the leaves on the sides, and then wished I'd got down to eye level to do them in a clock formation, so they would have been more even.  I found the Gerbera flower cutter quite tricky to use effectively, even though it was the push-out style.  And M's gold dust wasn't as successful for me as my edible glitter usually is.
So in summary, we all had a great night, learnt new skills and have already booked in our next meeting and decided to do buttercream.  I think subsequent club nights may need to be decorated cookie related, and what else do you think??