The Clandestine Cake Club – A Year of Cake book

Vegan Chocolate Orange Sponge Cake

Vegan Chocolate Orange Sponge Cake

Another Clandestine Cake Club meeting and another cake inspiration. Our secret location was Thyme to Eat, a vegetarian café located in the Shambles area of Chesterfield. Since Thyme to Eat specialise in vegetarian food it was our chance to bake some cakes for various dietary requirements. As this was a Clandestine Cake Club meeting I immediately reached for my Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook as I had previously made the Vegan Lemon Cake in it and it was very nice.

I've obviously changed the lemon to orange and added cocoa to get the chocolate hit. The original recipe uses Limoncello which is something that has never entered his house and probably never will. I substituted lemon extract for it then and used this same trick by using orange extract this time. I use Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Valencian Orange Extract but if you can't get hold it then old-fashioned zest and juice of a real orange could be used. For the soya spread I use Pure Dairy Free which is easily available in supermarkets.

Although this recipe doesn't have the same light and airy texture of a Victoria sponge made using eggs it is a pretty good alternative. It's also excellent even if you are not vegan and find you need to make a sponge cake in a hurry and you don't have enough eggs. As they say the proof of the pudding is in the tasting and I came home with just one slice left and compliments from the owner of Thyme to Eat.

Equipment: 2 x 8in/20cm sandwich tins.

Ingredients

9oz (250g) Self-raising flour

1oz (25g) Cocoa

1tsp (5ml) Baking powder

7oz (200g) Caster sugar

3½ fl oz (100ml) Corn oil

7 fl oz (200ml) Cold water

1tsp (5ml) Orange extract

Filling

4oz (100g) Soya margarine/spread

10½ oz (300g) Icing sugar, sifted

1tsp (5ml) Orange extract

Method

1. Line and grease 2 8in/20cm round sandwich tins

2. Pre-heat the oven to 200°C/Gas mark 6.

3. Sift the flour, cocoa and baking powder together and stir in the sugar.

4. Add he oil, water and orange extract and fold in until the mixture is well combined. It should look more like a muffin mix.

5. Spoon the mixture evenly between the two tins and cook for 15-20 minutes until the sponges are cooked and springy to the touch

6. Leave in the tins for a few minutes before removing and leaving to cool completely on a wire rack.

7. For the filling put the margarine/spread in a bowl and then gradually beat in the icing sugar. Add the orange extract and beat well until the ingredients is mixed together.

8. Spread the top of one of the sponges with the filling and carefully place the other sponge on top. 

9. To finish off dust the top with either icing sugar or cocoa powder.

Beer Cake

Beer Fruit Cake

Beer Cake! Yes, that's got your attention. However, you may be asking what the teetotal Ness is doing baking a beer cake. I'm a member of a number of Clandestine Cake Club groups and each meeting gives a new theme and hence the opportunity to make new cakes. The Chesterfield group held a meeting with the theme of 'Festival' in conjunction with the Chatsworth Road Festival. For those not local to area Chatsworth Road is a long road running from the bottom of Chesterfield out into the Peak District and onto the magnificent Chatsworth House. Our lovely organizer Fiona has arranged a number of our gatherings on the Chatsworth Road due to its abundance of thriving independent businesses.

While most of the other attendees focused on the 'Festival' theme I was immediately drawn to the Chatsworth Road element. Another reason Chatsworth Road is well-known is due to the the high volume of pubs situated along it. On its way out to the Peaks it runs through an area called Brampton and this is the inspiration for the challenge that is the Brampton Mile. Whilst the number of pubs has decreased over the years many a stag or hen night has started at one end of Chatsworth Road with the intention of having a drink in each of the pubs along the way down. With this in mind I decided to make a cake with beer and found one from the appropriately local Thornbridge Brewery, based near Chatsworth House.

According to Thornbridge Brewery, “Five malts and six hops combine for bitter chocolate flavours with dark roasted fruits,” for the Wild Raven IPA. This seemed perfect for adding to a fruit cake. At ABV 6.6% it also had the strength to hold its own when cooked. Since the recipe calls for just 150ml of the 500ml bottle you may be wondering what happened to other 350ml. Sadly my CAMRA member husband had been temporarily stuck down by a particularly nasty affliction which had rendered him teetotal. So 50ml went in the Christmas pudding (next year's vintage) while the remaining 300ml formed the basis of a beef in beer casserole in the slow cooker.

As this recipe uses dried fruits I am entering it for this month's Tea Time Treats hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Kate at What Kate Baked as the theme is dried fruit.

 

Vine fruits is also the theme this month for One Ingredient run by Laura at How To Cook Good Food and this month's host Nazima at Franglais Kitchen.

 

With the local beer this recipe has to go over to Elizabeth at Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary for her Shop Local challenge which highlights the use of local produce.

Equipment: 1 7in (18cm) cake tin (I used my Lakeland deep fancy tin), electric whisk/beaters

Ingredients

8oz (225g) Self-raising wholemeal flour

½ tsp (2.5ml) Baking powder

4oz (110g) Unsalted butter, softened or baking spread

4oz (110g) Demerara sugar

1tsp (5ml) Mixed spice

Zest of 1 Lemon

¼ Pint (150ml) Beer (Real Ale)

2 Large eggs

12oz (350g) Mixed dried fruit (including citrus peel)

Method

1. Prepare the tin by greasing it.

2. Pre-heat the oven to 170°C/Gas mark 3.

3. In a large bowl put all the ingredients except for the dried fruit and beat well using an electric whisk or beaters.

4. Stir in the dried fruit and then transfer the mixture to the tin.

5. Cook for 45 minutes and then check to see if the top is cooking too quickly. Cover with greaseproof paper if it is.

6. Cook for a further 45 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

7. Leave to cool in the tin before turning out.

This cake is best left a few days to mature if you can bear to leave it. Just make sure it is covered with foil or greaseproof paper and stored in an air-tight tin.

Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook – Book Review

It's the baking phenomenon that started just two years with the idea of agreeing to meet up with strangers on the premise of bringing a home baked cake, sharing it with others, eating it and taking a selection of leftovers home. The 'clandestine' nature of the club is that the location of the gathering isn't disclosed by the organiser until a couple of days beforehand. Started by Lynn Hill in her home town of Leeds in 2010' the Clandestine Cake Club  now has so many branches that I'm not going to state the number because by the time I publish this post I'm sure it will be outdated. I can tell you though that enthusiastic bakers are now forming groups in all four corners of the world.

Helped by the growth in baking fuelled by the BBC's 'Great British Bake Off' and all things vintage and homemade à la Kirstie Allsopp, cake making has been the UK's recession beater. With more and more people becoming concerned about the provenance of their food quite often the only solution is to make your own from scratch. If you're after classics such as Victoria Sponge or Battenberg they're in here with an added twist. I'd have to say though if you are a novice baker this probably isn't the first book you should reach for as there are a dazzling array of ingredients, methods and cake tins to contend with. If things don't turn out as planned there is a very helpful section entitled 'Cake Wrecks'. Along with advice on burnt or soggy cakes there are tips on how to rescue your cake if you drop it – the nightmare of every Clandestine Cake Club member en route to a meeting.

One of the first things that struck me about the book was the beautiful photography. While I do like to see a picture of every recipe in a cook book (greedy, I know) this one doesn't fall far short. Dreaming up different settings and props for the number of photographs in a book isn't an easy task. It's one that has been worth the effort as I found myself continually flicking through the book and drooling at the cakes on display. Onto the index (inadequate or non-existent book indexes are another pet peeve of mine) and the recipes are listed by both cake name and main ingredients. Annoyingly however is that although there are a number of bundt tin recipes in the book none of these are gathered together under 'bundt'. This is just a small gripe and probably I'll be the only person bothered by it.

Lynn Hill has contributed many of the recipes herself but credit should be given to the weird and wonderful combinations put together by members of Clandestine Cake Clubs around the world. There's a wheat-free 'Blood Orange and Rosemary Cake, a 'Magic Bean Cake' which contains a tin of haricot beans and a love it or hate it 'Chocolate & Marmite Caramel Cake'. These are the type of recipes most baking books wouldn't dare publish but see them in print and you'll be looking for an excuse to bake them.

So what to try first? I fear I may have copped out a bit as I went for one of my favourite cakes in the form of the 'Heavenly Carrot Cake' by Kirsty Lloyd of Abergavenny. My only defence is that I had every ingredient listed in the recipe in my kitchen already, including a glut of carrots that needed using. This carrot cake contains no bananas (a personal 'hurray') but gets texture and moistness from walnuts and orange juice soaked sultanas (tick, tick). I thought I was going to have to abandon this recipe before I even started as the method calls for the sultanas to be soaked overnight in orange. Helpfully the shortcut of gently heating the sultanas in the orange juice for a few minutes is given. As the book is officially released on Valentine's Day I decided not to use the recommended 20cm tin but use my 22cm heart shaped tin instead. Once cooked as per the exact instructions and cooled I made the traditional cream cheese topping. The addition of the vanilla extract in the frosting meant it wasn't as sickly sweet as some toppings are.

I bought this book myself, nobody is paying me to write about but would I recommend it? Yes, I would. I've already bookmarked a recipe for a Clandestine Cake Club meeting I'm going to next month and desperately hoping for a hidden or secret ingredient theme in order to make another one. So buy this book, bake a cake but please remember to share it with some friends or even strangers.