The phenomenon that is tea and cake sweeping these pleasant isles came to Saltaire this afternoon.
The occasion? A book promotion for the Clandestine Cake Club recipe book.
I have been the organiser of the Saltaire Clandestine Cake Club group for nearly a year now and this was our most ‘public outing’. It’s all about secrecy after all so we could be forgiven for feeling a little nervous.
Salt’s Mill Bookshop had approached me to hold the event and I jumped at the opportunity. They very kindly arranged space in the book shop for us to display the cakes and arranged refreshments for everyone.
The idea was for members to bake a cake from the book and bring it along for punters browsing in the book shop to be able to try and piece of cake with a cup of tea. This would be a great way of demonstrating how great the recipes are and how easy and accessible they are for the average baker (which we all are).
We had 14 cakes in all and we could have done with double that amount because it was like feeding the five thousand! We ran out of everything – paper plates, forks, serviettes. We had to ration sampling of the cake too in the end as the queue nearly disappeared out the shop door.
It was a great success by all accounts and I was very grateful for my trusty helpers as this wasn’t our normal relaxing cake event where you can while away two hours relaxing and chatting over copious amounts of tea and cake at your leisure.
There was lots of smacking of lips and licking of fingers by all who came to partake in the cake feast and plenty of positive comments on how delicious their tastings had been.
The book sales were reportedly very good with the lovely Lynn Hill herself, and the reason for all this delicious mayhem, on hand to do some signings.
There were a lot of people that hadn’t heard about the club and were very interested in joining so I might need to ‘hold onto my oven’ as a flurry new members will hopefully be joining us which will be great.
There were literally only crumbs left for us members to have a nibble on with a cup of tea at the end making it official: Saltaire loves cake!
For more details about the club, check out the website: www.clandestinecakeclub.co.uk