Cake club: Glitz & Glamour

I attended the inaugural Cakes4Fun Cake Club in Putney, London last week. Thank you Caroline for inviting me.  It's a monthly get together where everyone bakes something according to the set theme for that month. It's a great excuse to eat cake, have a drink and chat about baking. The theme for November was 'Glitz & Glamour'. There were 6 very glamourous cakes there, 5 with a chocolate base (clearly great minds think alike) and 1 non-chocolate cake. Obviously there was glitter and shimmer everywhere :)  

Fran was our lovely host and she gave us really useful hints and tips along the way. We each got a chance to 'present' our cake - why we made it and how and answer any questions and then of course the important tasting. It was fun to swap baking tips and stories over cake, tea and wine.  

Next month's cake club is on Jan 26th, the theme being ‘New Year….New you’ Healthy cakes to kick start your January. Contact cakes4fun for more details if you are interested in attending. 

And now I present the lovely, glitzy and glamourous cakes.....

This was a lovely potato and chocolate cake. Yes you read it correctly - potato! It was absolutely delicious and you really can't taste the potato. I love the little gold homemade truffles too.

Next up a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall chocolate torte cake. Love the decoration here. This was lovely and moist and fudgey. 

 Moving on to a chocolate and banana cake with honeycomb on top. As you know banana is one of my favourite baked flavours and the addition of honeycomb made it even better. 

 This was Laura's white and dark chocolate cake. It was lovely and moist and I really loved the decorations! To read more about this cake, check out her blog here.

 Look at the lovely layers... yum! 

 This was made by my friend Caroline and was the only non chocolate cake of the evening. It's a hummingbird cake which is made from bananas, pineapples, walnuts. It was lovely and moist and made a refreshing change from all the chocolatey-goodness we were consuming.  It's one of my favourite cakes to make and eat so I was pleased to see it on the table. She used a gold shimmer spray and made the cute toppers from candy moulds from hobbycraft. Please take a moment to visit her blog which she has recently started. 

 Finally we had my ultimate chocolate cake which sadly arrived in pieces. This cake does not fare well on long bus and tube journeys! The collar had to be broken anyway to cut into the cake so it wasn't a major disaster and everyone kindly said that it looked quite artistic. It was lovely, soft and moist and surprisingly light as it looks like a 'heavy' cake.  Still loving the gold maltesers :) 

 Fran showed us a feather cake she was going to make at the weekend. Can you believe this is all edible? Do check out the cakes4fun website for more amazing cakes. I had a chance to look at some of their display cakes - wow! 

Ultimate chocolate cake

I attended the first cake club at Cakes4Fun last week where the theme was 'Glitz&Glamour' - there will be a post on this with photos of all the delicious cake I got to eat coming right up. I debated for ages about what to make to fit the theme. I had a few ideas and finally settled on Edd Kimber's ultimate chocolate cake from his book the boy who bakes. I had originally intended to make this cake for my friend's birthday but decided on a raspberry ripple cake at the last minute. So I'm glad I finally got a chance to try this cake. 

It's a really soft and moist chocolate cake which was surprisingly light. The chocolate ganache is heavenly and I could quite happily eat it all on its own! Well I did have to taste a little bit you understand - chef's tax :) I decided to 'glitz' it up by making a chocolate collar (first time with slightly disastrous results!) and add gold shimmer spray to the maltesers on top. Has anyone else tried Dr Oetker's gold shimmer spray? - AMAZING! 

The result : a giant chocolate cake wrapped in a chocolate collar (with a few cracks) and gold, glittery maltesers on top. A bit OTT perhaps but it was well worth the effort. It tasted absolutely divine and looked pretty from the 'good' side!  I had strangers stop me on my way to and back from cake club saying they like my cake which was really sweet. I was quite upset that it didn't turn out perfectly and it actually got worse on my way to cake club but more on that later. Back to the cake.... 

 3 layer chocolate sponge 

 making the chocolate collar. measure your cake (diameter and height) and cut out a strip of parchment paper that size. Lay it over a larger piece of parchment paper to avoid mess. I used milkybar giant white buttons which I randomly spread on the parchment paper using a little bit of water to stick them down. 

 Next melt chocolate in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. I used a combination of milk and dark chocolate here. Allow to cool slightly then spread on top of your white buttons, using a small palette knife to spread it evenly. Allow to set then wrap around the cake. Note : do not leave it until it's completely dry which is what I did as it was past 1am and I really needed to get to bed! It will then be very hard and difficult to bend resulting in cracks! 

 spread ganache between each layer of cake, down the sides and on top 

 my cakes were a little wonky (I accidentally put the top cake the wrong way up creating a gap in the middle) Ah well nothing that a bit of ganache and a chocolate collar can't fix!

 hence the collar... this is the 'good' side 

 I love gold maltesers :)

 I had some leftover chocolate ganache and chocolate from making the collar so I put them into moulds and made these. 

Recipe for the cake and chocolate ganache is from The boy who Bakes by Edd Kimber