Clandestine Cake Club - Bury St Edmunds - 12th May 2012

You might remember me posting about my first encounter with the Clandestine Cake Club when I attended an event in Cambridge in March.  Well, this month I finally had the chance to host my own event in my local town. I had been trying to set one up for some time but I had trouble finding a venue. Finally, though, I happened upon the perfect spot. The Apex is a new venue in the heart of Bury St Edmunds with a large auditorium designed for hosting music, entertainment and a variety of other events and as I was passing it a few weeks ago I remembered that they also have a lovely spacious cafe/bar area upstairs. They kindly agreed to let us take up some of their space for a couple of hours and a date was set. Each meeting has a theme chosen by the organiser - I decided that "Fabulous Favourites" would be a good one to start with.

So at 10.30am on Saturday the 12th of May seven fabulous cakes arrived accompanied by ten lovely ladies. Drinks were purchased and we were soon tucking into our cakes.

We were all thoroughly spoilt by the range of cakes to choose from and I was really pleased that we had a good variety with no duplications.

This first one is Karen's Carrot Cake which was full of aromatic flavour and was served with extra cream cheese icing. It was also topped with delicious home-made chocolate shards flavoured with orange and ginger.

Next is Helen's Chocolate-ccino cake. I don't think I've come across a chocolate cake flavoured with coffee before but it was a great combination that I'll definitely be trying out myself sometime.

This beauty is Corinne's French Opera Cake. Corinne was quite right in saying that it's like a tiramisu in cake form. I wish I'd taken a picture of a slice so you could see the different layers. Corinne has recently set up her own business selling authentic French Patisserie - you can find her website here.

Rene brought along a Butternut Squash and Orange cake which was moist and delicious. She also revealed that her silky smooth icing was a result of whisking up butter that had been melted rather than just softened (although apparently this wasn't necessarily done on purpose ; ) )

This one is Lynda's Apple and Five Spice cake. I've used five spice many times in savoury dishes so it was interesting to see it used in a sweet dish. I thought it added a lovely sweet spicyness which really complimented the apple.

Here we have Shauna's Victoria Sponge.  Shauna confessed that she wasn't very good at baking cakes but after tasting her contribution we didn't believe her!

Last of all we have my contribution - a Chocolate Fruit and Nut Cake. I first came across this cake many years ago but hadn't made it for ages. Since rediscovering it a few weeks ago it's now firmly back on my list of favourites.  I'll try and post the recipe soon.

I think we each managed to have a taste of most if not all of the cakes on offer but at the end of the morning there was still plenty leftover.  Before we left we all filled our various tins and containers until all the cake had been evenly distributed. You can see below some of the goodies I got to bring home with me (this was taken after we had begun to tuck into them!)

I certainly had a lovely morning and hopefully everyone else did too. A few suggestions were made as to the next venue and theme so with any luck the Clandestine Cake Club will be visiting Bury St Edmunds again soon!

Many thanks again to The Apex for letting us use some of their space.

If you would like more information about The Clandestine Cake Club and events in your area then you can have a look at their website here.