Can you believe that we are 1 already? This year has gone really quickly, but we've had a lot of fun along the way...
The Cake'n'Bake Club came into existence out of a passion for baking (and eating) all manner of goodies, the desire to share that passion, to learn more about baking and improve our current talents, and to meet like-minded people in a relaxed and friendly environment.
Around mid-October 2011, I sat at home looking for a baking club in Cambridge to join, but couldn't find one that suited me. I'm an obsessively organised person, so the thought crossed my mind to just start my own club. I sent a little Facebook message out to gauge interest amongst my friends, and Craig, Joy and Sarah all seemed keen, so that's how the ball got rolling...
The Cake'n'Bake Club Facebook group was created shortly after that, and our first ever meeting set for Wednesday 2nd November. That first meeting was our smallest, with only four of us in attendance, but since then we have grown considerably: we now have 41 members of our Facebook group, 12 blog authors, and usually have 8-10 people turn up to each meeting.
We've also achieved a considerable amount in the wider baking community during out first year. In February our blog was selected as one of 15 to receive a bundle of baking goodies from Baking Mad, with which we had to bake something Valentine's themed. Five of our members got together for an epic day of baking and we created our
Valentine's Cheesecake, which won 3rd prize in the competition!
In March we were invited to take part in another one of Baking Mad's competitions - for the best Easter bake. Five of our members submitted their Easter recipes and we voted for our favourite to put forward into Baking Mad's Easter Competition:
Jaymes' Polish Mazurek. Jaymes won the first prize - a half days' workshop with Eric Lanlard in July.
We were also invited to submit a recipe into another competition in March - this time to win a space in Macmillan Cancer Care's Little Book of Treats. The club voted for our favourite recipe once more, and my own
Valentine's Cake Pops were put forward. A few weeks later we found out that our recipe had been selected to appear in the book, which went on sale in M&S stores in September - our chocolate cake pops appear on page 41!
We decided to convert our August meeting into a Blooming Great Tea party in order to raise funds for Marie Curie Cancer care, and raised a whopping £105.22 for the charity!
At the start of September, our chocolate cake pop recipe popped up again, this time in the Good to Know magazine's top 10 recipes of the month (we were number 3, if the photo isn't obvious enough!)
And at the end of September, we had our very first family outing, to the Cake&Bake show at Earl's Court in London! It was not exactly what we expected, but we still had a great day. (And it was a great excuse to order in some club t-shirts!)
We'll be celebrating our amazing first year with our very own Birthday Party on Wednesday but I wanted to take the opportunity, one year on from our very first meeting, to say a massive thanks to everyone who has helped to make the Cambridge Cake'n'Bake Club truly amazing. THANK YOU!
