Clandestine Cake Club- Mad hatters tea party

My second cake club! When I first heard the theme of Mad Hatters tea party, my mind went into overdrive as the decorating possibilities were endless. I had an idea in my head of making a cup of tea, so I began by making what was essentially a massive cup of tea in a pan, and then setting it with gelatine, and pouring it into teacups to create a solid cup of tea, which I was then going to cover in fondant and place on top of my cake. However, half way through this, I totally rethought my plan, this is cake club, not cake decorating club, so I decided to do simple decoration and focus on the cake itself. There was only one cake to do in my head, rainbow cake!

This is the second time I have made a rainbow cake, I just love the way it looks, but also love the cream cheese frosting, its so much nicer than buttercream and kinda turns the cake into a cheesecake-cake. I kept the decoration really simple, but as I wanted it to be perfect I actually did 3 coats of the frosting, one of which was at 8am before I went to work, but it was worth it as there were no tell-tale crumbs to give away the cake inside.

My cake had to survive a journey from my house in Chorlton all the way into town, I was going to drive but the parking is just so extortionate that I got the tram- bit of a mistake as my cake was so heavy and fragile, but it made it (after we stopped for a swift half in the castle pub of course)

This months clandestine cake club was at North Star Deli in the northern quarter. I had actually been in the chorlton branch on Saturday so was interested in seeing what the town version was like, and I actually think I liked it more. There were so many of us there, must have been close to 30, and so many amazing cakes...

Everyone had been really inventive with the theme which was nice to see, a lot of variation and quite interesting cakes- candyfloss cake that actually tasted like candy floss, an amazing layer cake that had me absolutely puzzled as to how it was baked (apparently each layer was grilled), Jules' amazing malted marshmallow cake, a great spicy tomato cake and so many more amazing treats, it really is a dream come true to have a whole table of cakes and be allowed to try every single one (dream is more specifically being locked in a patisserie overnight). I brought my friend and flatmate Rosie and we got a bit over-excited and loaded our plates up, perhaps a bit much...

We ate so much cake that I thought I might actually pass away, as did Rosie...

 

So we mingled, ate cake, chatted, Rosie drank about a million cups of tea (as North Star had put on an offer for endless cups of many different teas for just £3.50) and then we all gathered up the leftovers and took them home. I crammed as much cake as I could into my little cake tin as I had promised people in the office that I would bring cake in the next day, it certainly went down well.

My rainbow cake has quite a simple recipe, I adapted a traditional recipe to ensure that it was enough to make 6 decent sized layers, as follows:

335g/11.82oz of butter
335g/11.82oz of caster sugar
335G/11.82oz of self raising flour
6 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Dash of milk
Wilton gel food colours

Traditional method, cream butter and sugar add eggs and flour etc. In order to ensure the layers were uniform I weighed the mixture as a whole and then divided it by 6, which worked out as roughly 8oz  (226g) per layer. I then divided the mixture up into bowls, and coloured with the gel colours, these are still my favourite baking item, you need so little and the colour is just so much better than supermarket food colourings. I then baked each layer individually, I only have two cake tins the right size so had to bake them in twos, but they only need around 10-15mins at gas 4 as they are so thin.

I often find cream cheese frosting to be far too sweet, so have adapted a recipe I found:

500g (17oz) of cream cheese
450g (15oz) of icing sugar (though I always just taste as I go along and adapt as needed)
50g (1.74oz) of butter
Splash of vanilla extract

You need to soften the butter, gradually add the sugar until its a sandy texture, then start adding the cream cheese and the rest of the sugar, adding the vanilla at the end.

PS, converting grams to ounces is my new favourite thing as I just got an iphone4s and can just tell it to do this. Although it doesn't understand my northern Irish accent for some things so I have to say "ounces" in a silly mock-English accent.

And that's it!
Really really enjoyed cake club this week, can't wait to hear what the next theme is!

Soph x