Host your own Cake Club

Well, I did it! I hosted my first Clandestine Cake Club on Sunday – and survived. In fact, I did more than survive..I actually enjoyed it.

How to go about hosting your own CCC:

I’m not sure what came over me the day I thought about hosting my own event. I have been to two other Clandestine Cake Clubs in Manchester and Warrington and wanted to stretch myself.

It was really quite easy and not that much work is involved. Lynn (The Boss) is super organised, very supportive and great with ideas (And I’m not just saying that because she will read this!)
1. The Venue –
This was my biggest challenge. We have a mere 2 coffee shops around here, both of which would be perfect. However, when I broached the subject of bringing our own cake and hosting an event in an evening, the reaction was slightly lukewarm. I know from experience that owning your own business in food involves very long hours so understand completely.
Not to be deterred, I looked around for other solutions and came up with our local church hall. I had V’s 5th birthday party there in June and know it is basic but spotless. There is a kitchen to provide drinks and it doesn’t cost the earth to hire …and it was available!!

My Pink Velvet Monster Cake

2. The Theme –
We have to come up with a theme to bake cakes in. I felt it was a little bit far away from Christmas (and didn’t want to end up with 15 stollens) so came up with Colour. I wanted the cake decorators to have change to show off if they wished but wanted enough scope for a variety of cake flavours. People really came up trumps with their selections:

Red Velvet Cake – Just look at that gorgeous colour!

Red Velvet Cake (Karen & Giles)
Lemon Drizzle Cake (My Mum and her friend, Pat)
Orange Drizzle Cake (which were amazingly really different to each other) (Anne & Helen)
Frangipani colours (Yep, I didn’t know what to expect either!) (Anne & James)
Pink Velvet Cake (Mine)
Apricot Delight (Cara. My birthday cake from last year which I can confirm is YUM!!)
Coloured Chocolate Surprise (Susan and her Mum, Edith)
Black Forest Gateaux (Mine again – I had made it for the Weekly Bake Off and spent that long on it I didn’t fancy eating it)

3. What to do:
I wanted to have something to keep us occupied in case conversation became difficult (it didn’t) so asked Bill to devise a quiz – It was amazeballs, a picture quiz with a cake theme. Genius! And I even remembered to take a little prize – Congratulations to Karen who won with a massive 18 out of 20!

The Chocolate Cake – I never did ask if the one purple smartie was significant?!

4. What to take:
I’m very used to organising parties and self catering holidays so admit to being a bit obsessive about taking EVERYTHING when using another kitchen – even down to antibacterial spray, a spare bin bag and a cup for donations (I charged a couple of pounds to cover the cost of refreshments and room hire) I do intend on writing a post about self catering very soon.

Any Hitches?
Of course! Aren’t there always when you are organising an event. As expected, there were the inevitable dropouts – We were expecting another red type cake and a Chocolate Orange Cake but had more than enough.

My biggest fear was a problem with the venue and last week it turned out there was a problem with the lighting in the room. By Sunday, we were allowed to use the venue but with limited lighting and no kitchen. I decided to go ahead and brought the kettle and drinks out into the hall and we made ourselves cozy in the part of the hall with lighting. And you know what? It didn’t matter, if anything it made it homely. (I will admit to having a mild panic that we would end up back at my house which had seen tidier days after hosting a 9yo sleepover the night before!)

Would I do it again?
Very possibly. I’ve even had people today saying they would have liked to come and will I be organising another. I would think about it again after January (once people’s New Year’s diets have ended ;-))
About half an hour before it started, myself and Cara had finished setting up and looked at each other, saying ‘Why do we do this?’
The answer is because you only get one chance at life and you might as well fill it. If we hadn’t done the CCC yesterday, we wouldn’t have got to eat loads of lovely cake, have a flippin good laugh and get a massive sense of achievement.
I highly recommend hosting your own – Give it a go!