Clandestine Cake Club loves Dundee

Ooh, it was that time again - another meeting of the Dundee branch of Clandestine Cake Club.  Yippee, a chance to chat, eat cake and talk about cake - for no reason at all other than that we all love cake.  A perfect Sunday night out, no?

The theme this time was simply 'I love cake', chosen because it was near to Valentine's Day and was quite a loose theme in that people could bake a recipe they loved, a recipe they really wanted to try out or even a heart-shaped or decorated cake.  Allowed a lot of room for manoeuvre, right?

I hadn't thought I'd be able to attend as a baker this time, as we were due to move house a few days later, but that all changed.  So I baked.  I couldn't decide between a chocolate and salted caramel cake, a maple and pecan cake or a seriously chocolately cake.  Mr Becca was no help at all, as he didn't particularly fancy the sound of any of them, so I asked a friend.  And she liked them all.  No help whatsoever, ha ha.  In the end I chose maple and pecan as it felt kind of wintery and North American to me, and I love true Canadian Maple Syrup - what a taste!!

I'm really pleased to say that it went down a storm, and there was barely an inch wide slice left at the end for me to take home, woo hoo!  

Here's the full array of deliciousness on offer.  We have a coffee cake, shaped like a cup of coffee, a white chocolate and orange cake with handmade flowers on top, a chocolate chip and vanilla bundt cake, a monster-sized strawberry cheesecake cake, a chocolate guiness cake, a cherry bakewell cake, my maple and pecan cake, a black forest swiss roll, a red velvet and vanilla heart-enclosed cake, an apple streusel cake and a greek yoghurt cake.  Hungry yet?

 A closer view of the left hand end of the table.

 The middle section of the table.

The heart inside the red velvet bavarian creme vanilla cake.  The baker here had never tried this technique before, and was really pleased with how well it turned out.  Yey Louise!

 The cakes from the other end of the table.

A selection of our guests, happily munching away on slivers of each cake.  You have to take slivers you see, otherwise you simply can't manage to try each cake.  And that would be a shame for you, and would seem downright disrespectful to the bakers, wouldn't it?  If you think you'd like to join in on a meeting as a baker, please do get in touch on cccdundee@gmail.com  And be sure to let them know where you heard about the group please.

Chocolate truffles aren't as yummy as I expected

I kept buying double cream (heavy cream in America I believe), in the mistaken belief that I needed it to make chocolate truffles.  Then never could find the recipe to which I thought it belonged, before the cream went out of date.  Bother.  So this time, I made ganache from roughly equal parts near-boiling cream and chocolate and just waited until the mixture was fairly solid in the fridge, then rolled little bits into balls.  And coated them in either cocoa, chocolate line sprinkles or icing sugar.  What a mess!!  My hands, which never seem warm, and in fact turn blue, then white, reguarly (from poor circulation) were suddenly too warm to do a non-messy job of rolling the chocolate balls.  So the shapes aren't too even.  But it was fun trying to roll them in the toppings.  And only marginally less messy.  Boy am I glad The Team were at school for this experiment!  Especially as I didn't even think they tasted all that great anyway...  Even with the addition of some smooth peanut butter.  Ah well, the girls' class teachers enjoyed their samples  ;)

We made peppermint bark, again

The girls saw the spare boxes of candy canes in the pasta cupboard (that sounds like a good hiding place, doesn't it?) and insisted that we make bark again.  Because they ate it all so quickly last time.  Not a problem I said, and we got to smashing up the candy canes.  They had a blast unwrapping and cracking the canes, then trying to crush them with the end of the wooden rolling pin.  We did an okay job...

Then I melted the chocolate in a bain-marie for the best result.  Well, I say bain-marie but really it was a ceramic bowl over a saucepan of boiling water.  Sounds a lot less fancy like that though, doesn't it?  Mini-2 stirred in the milk chocolate and candy canes

 And Mini-1 did the white chocolate portion.

And we all gobbled up the resulting bark in a matter of days, yummy!!!

Big girls like birthday cake too

I had a long and involved series of conversations with a loving Dad, who decided that for his daughter on her 21st birthday a broken iPhone was the way to go.  Seriously.  Apparently she'd managed to break about 6 screens between when she'd first got the phone and her upcoming birthday.  Crazy clumsy.  But she had been sensible and purchased insurance, so was fine.  Until the next time that is.  I was quite impressed that he knew his daughter so well, and he chose a classic victoria sponge in black and white for her.  And she loved it.  Happiest of birthdays to you Chloe!