Baby-Cakes

Our friends at Baking Mad got in touch recently to invite us to join them in their latest campaign - celebrating the impending arrival of the Royal baby! We were asked to place a guess as to whether we thought our Duke and Duchess would be having a little prince or a little princess – Cake’n’Bake Club style!

Now, being a Royal celebration, we could have gone for a number of recipes from www.bakingmad.com. They have some great recipes for scones, or a Traditional Victoria sponge, but we went for cupcakes. (I especially like their chocolate cupcake recipe!)

After whipping up a batch of yummy cupcakes, I headed to the club meeting armed with two piping bags of butter cream – one pink and one blue! At our meeting, members were asked to “vote” by decorating their cupcake either pink for a princess or blue for a prince:

Once all of the votes had been cast (and the spare cupcakes consumed!!) two of our more mathematical members set about displaying them in graph form to indicate our results:

We think pink! The royal baby is due in just a few weeks now, so it won’t be long to wait to find out if we’re right. In the meantime though, if you wanted to play along and make your own cakey poll, Baking Mad have a great video tutorial on how to make cupcakes :-)


Happy baking!

Macmillan World's Biggest Coffee Morning

We at the Cambridge Cake'n'Bake Club have been bitten by the Charity bug this month, and would like you to join us in raising funds for some very worthy causes. On the 28^th of September this year the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning is going to be taking place. This is a fantastic one day fundraising event hosted by Macmillan Cancer Support to raise money for people with lives affected by cancer.

Our friends over at Baking Mad have let us know about a fantastic new competition that Silver Spoon, the official sugar sponsor for the World's Biggest Coffee Morning, are launching as part of their activity. On the 24^th August 2012 Silver Spoon and Macmillan are launching Silver Spoons Little Local Hero Awards. They are scouring the country for local heroes under the age of 18 who have done something truly special. Your local little hero could have looked after their little sister when they were ill, gone to great lengths to make Mother’s Day very special, or done something fantastic to raise money for charity.

If you know someone under 18 in your local area who you think would be a worthy winner, just follow this link and explain in less than 100 words who you are nominating, why, and what you would bake them to say thank you

www.macmillan.org.uk/littlehero

Master Pâtissier Eric Lanlard, star of Channel 4’s Baking Mad with Eric Lanlard, will choose a Silver Spoon National Little Hero and to celebrate he will bake them a special cake of their choice! 10 runners up will also receive a Silver Spoon Baking Hamper packed full of exciting treats.

There are sure to be some amazing stories from our local little heroes all over the country, but in the meantime don’t forget to register to hold your own coffee morning on the 28^th September, just follow this link and you can help to raise money for people with lives affected by cancer. http://coffeeregister.macmillan.org.uk/2012/register.asp. And, if you're planning you're own coffee morning don't forget to head over to your local Marks and Spencer's Cafe to pick up The Little Book of Treats - it's a fantastic little recipe book with lots of great ideas for luxurious treats to bake and sell at your coffee morning. 

Most of the recipes were submitted by celebrities and celebrity bakers, but if you pick one up you might recognise a familiar name - we're in it! It's only £4 and all of the proceeds go to Macmillan, so we'd definitely recommend you head to your nearest M&S Cafe to pick one up - they'll be on shelves from 5th September.