I joined CCC in 2012; my first event was actually the day the Olympic Torch came through Leeds (I remember going to see it with my bestie Rhianne before heading to cake club). I used to attend the events in the city centre and in Headingley as I worked nearby and when we moved to Otley I also joined Wharfedale.

I hadn't been a member of Wharfedale for long when a call was put out by the then organiser Kathryn for someone to help. For 2 years we ran the club together, sourcing venues, recruiting members and hosting all manner of events. 

In 2015 Kathryn decided to step down and I took over full running of the club (while planning a wedding!) and for a while things were ticking along nicely. We had our regulars, events took place every six weeks or so but then numbers started to drop and I had to cancel the odd event. Before long Ethan arrived and time was not on my side. Interest in the club was not the same as it was but from speaking to a few other organisers I knew they were facing the same issue. 

My good friend Amy (who I actually met through CCC) offered to help with the organising but even with two of us, we still struggled with numbers for events. Amy then said she had got a new job and was moving away (boo!) so we made the decision to both step down and hand the reins over to someone else.

I had been toying with the possibility of standing down for ages but didn't have the heart to admit defeat. Even with Amy's help it felt like the club was slowly disintegrating but we knew the time was right to leave. I feel sad about it as CCC was a massive part of my life for so long and without it I wouldn't have had a recipe published, had some fantastic opportunities and most of all met some wonderful people that I now class as dear friends.

To mark our final event, we all got together at Outside the Box cafe in Ilkey. It's a gem of a place that provides work for many people with disabilities. I wanted to make a special cake to mark the occasion so I decided to wing it in the kitchen (as always!) and opted for a Chocolate Crunchie Cake. I tried to turn it in to a drip cake but I think the ganache was a little too thick...

Ganache
150ml double cream
100g dark chocolate
50g milk chocolate

Heat the cream until warm but not hot
Mix in the chocolate and once smooth and glossy set aside to cool and firm up

Cake
2.5 cups SR Flour
2 cups soft dark brown sugar (although any sugar will be fine)
1 cup cocoa
1 cup veg/sunflower oil
1.5 cups of milk
1tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs

Preheat your oven to 160C (fan)
Grease and line two 20cm cake tins
Pop all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk until smooth
Divide between the two tins and bake for 40mins or until a skewer inserted comes out clean
Tip onto a wire rack to cool

Buttercream
200g softened unsalted butter
500g icing sugar
3 tbsp cocoa
a few tbsp milk (to combine if needed)

Cream the butter, icing sugar and cocoa on a high speed for around 5 minutes until light and fluffy

If required, add the milk slowly to loosen the buttercream 

To Decorate

4 Crunchies

Chocolate honeycomb pieces (I got a bag from Asda)

Once cool level off the cake

Sandwich together the two sponges with some buttercream and a scattering of chopped up crunchie 

Coat the outside of the cake in the remaining buttercream

Pop in the fridge to firm up

Pour over the ganache encouraging it to pour down the sides of the cake (it may need a quick zap in the microwave to be the right consistency) 

Tumble over the remaining Crunchie and honeycomb pieces

Enjoy!

CCC is fantastic, a truly fantastic club set up by the amazing Lynn Hill. I'm still going to try and make it to other local clubs for future events and hopefully Wharfedale will find a new organiser so that more people can experience this the wonder that is The Clandestine Cake Club.

   

The sunshine really is good for the soul and following on from this week's horrific events, it's nice to see clear blue skies and smiles on faces as everyone makes the most of this warm spell.

I had planned on sharing this recipe with you earlier in the week but with everything that went on I didn't feel like it was appropriate to bang on about chocolate cake.

I still can't believe what has happened but it is so heartwarming to see how the public are pulling together to help the victims and their families. One victim was from Otley and it's been amazing to see the outpouring of love and support on our local Facebook group with people wanting to help in whatever way they can.

I made this chocolate cake for a very special Clandestine Cake Club event that I went to at John Lewis in Leeds last week (I shall publish a separate post on that event soon). The theme was Never Knowingly Underbaked and if I'm honest I was totally stumped on what to make. I knew I wanted to make something chocolatey and a different type of cake from my usual recipe but I was clueless on what to actually bake.

When I'm lacking in inspiration I often have a flick through Mary Berry's Baking Bible. I've loads of cookery books but for some reason it's always the one that I like to go back to as I know the recipes work. I've yet to make something by Bezza that hasn't turned out well.

Thankfully the Baking Bible has a whole chapter dedicated to chocolate cake (a woman after my own heart) and the recipe for Death By Chocolate Cake looked perfect. There was no need to take some butter out of the fridge to soften and I was able to get it whipped up, in to the oven and baked during Ethan's morning nap. I opted for a ganache instead of the chocolate frosting that Mary suggests purely because I adore ganache and when time is off the essence it's so quick and easy to pull together.

To decorate I dipped some strawberries in melted chocolate and scattered crushed white chocolate minstrels around the edge (they aren't actually white chocolate minstrels, just Aldi's version). You can really tell I was winging it with this cake!


A Super Indulgent Chocolate Cake
275g plain flour
3 tbsp cocoa
1.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1.5 tsp baking powder
215g caster sugar
3 tbsp golden syrup
3 large eggs, beaten
225ml sunflower oil
225ml milk

Ganache
300ml double cream
300g dark chocolate

To Decorate
Handful of Strawberries
50g melted white and dark chocolate
Handful of crushed white chocolate minstrels

Preheat the oven to 160C (fan)
Grease and line two 20cm cake tins
Stir the dry ingredients together
Make a well in the middle and whisk in the wet ingredients
Once combined pour into the tins and place in the oven
Bake for 30-35 minutes until a skewer inserted comes out clean
Tip on a wire rack to cool

To make the Ganache heat the milk until warm but not boiling
Stir in the chocolate until melted and smooth
Place in the fridge to firm up for a couple of hours

Dip the strawberries in the melted dark chocolate, drizzle over the white chocolate and set aside to cool
Spread any remaining melted chocolate over some greaseproof paper and pop in the fridge to chill
Once firm break into "shards"
Crush the minstrels with the back of a knife

To Decorate
Once the cakes are cool, level off the tops and sandwich together with some ganache
Coat the rest of the cake in the remaining ganache
Using a ribbed scraper, pull around the edge of the cake to give a ribbed effect
Scatter over the strawberries and crush chocolate
Gently push the shards in to the cake

Enjoy!

It was a strange one for me as it's the first time I left Ethan even though it was only for 2 hours and I was only 5 minutes away if Mr T needed me. I defrosted some expressed milk that I had stashed in the freezer from when Ethan last had a cold and couldn't feed right, left Mr T with a list of instructions and headed off for some adult conversation but feeling like I was missing a limb. I'll be honest though, I did not like leaving him at all. Even though he was with his Daddy and perfectly safe I still felt guilty but it was nice for them to have some father son time and when I got back Ethan had had a nap and they were both chilling in the lounge watching a bit of TV.

I said to Mr T if I feel like this leaving him for two hours what will I be like when I go back to work in January or do some KIT days before then?

Anyway... going off on slight tangent there! So - cake club! I decided on a simple theme as it was midweek and people don't often have a lot of time with work and family commitments. Also I find some people get stressed or worry about how their cake has turned out when it's a more complicated theme instead of just enjoying the baking process. Going back to basics allowed us all to focus on the simple cakes that we can do really well and look back on those recipes that got us in to baking in the first place.

We also had a few new members turn up which was lovely to see, I do hope they come back again! I've been struggling for new members for a while now and as much as I love all of our regulars I really want to expand the club and share the cakey love.

We held our event at the Chippendale Tea Rooms in Otley and it's a gem of a place. Very quaint and twee it was the perfect setting for the cake obsessed group that we are. With the evening sun streaming through the windows and the sound of live music being performed nearby it was a wonderful place to enjoy a Monday evening fueled by cake.










Thanks to Chippendale Tea Rooms for allowing us to host our Back to Basics event and thanks to all our members, old and new for attending (and baking delicious cakes of course!).

Our theme was Birthday Bakes and when I think of birthday cakes it's always a chocolate cake that comes to mind, in particular that chocolate caterpillar cake that we all had as kids. Apart from the cake being chocolate I didn't know what else to do to it so a couple of days before the event I was stood in the chocolate aisle in Asda willing for some inspiration to come to me. I spotted the Rolos were on offer and not knowing what else to do I grabbed a bag and figured I would just wing it (story of my life these days haha). 

Using Mary Berry's recipe for her Chocolate Fudge Cake from her Baking Bible my Chocolate Rolo Cake was born. I really love the lightness of the sponge in this cake although I did fiddle with the recipe slightly. It's fairly quick to make which suits me perfectly and I was able to get it in the oven in less than 10mins including preparing the tins. The smell coming from the oven was divine, I do love a good chocolate cake!

Our Birthday Bakes event was held in the Little Corner of the World tearoom in Otley and so far it's the only place in the town that serves clotted cream with their scones. Double cream is just wrong with a cream tea so this little cafe was already a winner in my book before our event had even taken place. We did have a slight dilemma of a power cut just before everyone arrived but thankfully it came back on just in time for us to enjoy copious amounts of tea and coffee with all of our cakes.

It would appear we all had the same idea with making chocolate cake which then resulted in 6 different chocolate cakes being consumed - yum!

I owe a special thanks to Sarah at the Little Corner of the World for being such a fab host. If you ever visit Otley I strongly recommend going there for a cream tea (and the best scones in town!)

Anyway... slight diversion there... back to the recipe!

Chocolate Rolo Cake

50g cocoa
6 tbsp boiling water
3 eggs
50ml milk
175g SR flour
1 tsp baking powder
100g baking spread
275g soft dark brown sugar

Icing and Filling
150g dark chocolate
150ml double cream
1 large bag Rolos

• Preheat the oven to 160C (fan)
• Warm the double cream and chocolate together until the chocolate has melted, smooth and glossy. Set aside to cool. 
• Once cool pop in the fridge to set, it needs to be firm but spreadable.
• Grease and line two 20cm cake tins.
• Mix the cocoa and boiling water together in a large bowl.
• Add the remaining ingredients and beat until smooth and well combined.
• Divide between the prepared tins and bake in the oven for 25mins until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
• Pop on a wire rack to cool.
• Once cool sandwich the cake with the chocolate ganache and a handful of chopped Rolos. 
• Spread some more ganache on the top of the cake and scatter over a few more Rolos.

Enjoy!

September saw the launch of the much anticipated second Clandestine Cake Club book, A Year of Cake. Regular readers of this blog will know that I love cake club and I am the organiser for the Wharfedale club. I was also lucky enough to have one of my recipes featured in the book; my Eton Mess Cake – woop woop!

• Preheat the oven to 160C (fan)

• Grease and line a loaf tin.

• Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.

• Alternate adding the flour and eggs until well combined.

• Fold in the lemon zest.

• Pour the mixture into the tin and bake in the oven for 45-50mins until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

• Tip onto a wire rack to cool.

• Stir the lemon juice into the icing sugar until smooth but with a thick pouring consistency.

• Pour into a piping bag and using a zig zag motion decorate the top of the cake.

• Scatter over the blueberries and dust with icing sugar and any remaining lemon zest.