Event: Cheese

Sorry for the long delay in arranging our next meeting.  Life has been pretty hectic so some things have had to be on the back burner for a while.  Anyway, I'm pleased to announce our next meeting will be on Sunday 2nd July 7:30-9:30pm.  Unfortunately The Pig & Butcher can't host us that evening so I'm looking for an alternative venue.

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The theme for our next meeting is Cheese.  This gives you a huge range or ideas to choose from, think sweet or savoury - cream cheese icing (so red velvet, carrot or Guinness cake), cheesecakes, cheese scones or muffins, cheesy tarts, cheesy biscuits...

You could use cream cheese, cheddar, goat's cheese, mozzarella, halloumi, Stilton, Parmesan, brie... the list goes on.

I'm going to bake pear & blue cheese muffins, email me with your choice of bake to reserve your place!

I really fancy some cheese now!

Event: Our First Birthday!

Our first meeting last year was on 10th February, we will be celebrating our 1st birthday on Sunday 19th February, 19:30-21:30.

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This meeting's theme will be birthday party food!  Bake us your most fabulous bakes for our birthday bash!  Think retro or modern, sausage rolls and birthday cake, sprinkles and vol-au-vents and all manner of miniature foods!

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As always, if you'd like to join us, just choose a bake to bring and email Becky to reserve your spot.  Duplicate bakes will be asked to choose again so get in quick if there's something specific you'd like to bake!  

If you're new and want to know more about what goes on, you can see previous event reports here and read more about how it works on our about page.

Event Report: Christmas Party

We had our Christmas do last night and as usual enjoyed some lovely bakes.  Again, a nice mixture of sweet & savoury, all with a Christmassy theme.  

Left Column: Chai Spiced Baked Chocolate Cheesecake, Black Forest Cheesecake Brownies, Peanut & Chocolate Cookies 

Middle Column: Rosemary & Sea Salt Shortbread with Baked Camembert, Ginger Reindeer Biscuits

Right Column: Cranberry & White Chocolate Cookies, Guinea Fowl & Ginger Sausage Rolls, 

Baileys Cheesecake, Christmas Pudding Scones

We had 8 bakers this evening (Nadine isn't in the pictures as she came later) but we had 9 bakes as Lilian had dropped hers off earlier in the day but couldn't attend in the evening. 

You can see the full list of who made what in our event preview.

Pamela brought a bottle of Prosecco which we thoroughly enjoyed, with some Elderflower Fizz for the drivers.  I've had so much fun at Baking Club over the last 11 months and can't wait to see how we grow in the new year.  We'll hopefully have one or two practical sessions and be sharing many more recipes on the blog.  Thank you to everyone who's been along to one of our meetings, I've loved meeting you all and trying your delicious bakes!

Enjoy the festivities over Christmas and New Year, I'm going to have a bit of a break but will be back in the new year to organise our next meeting.  Merry Christmas!

Event Report: Autumn Vegetables

Well, what a turn out!  We had 14 lovely bakers at November's meeting and some seriously yummy bakes!  It's a bit more difficult to try 14 bakes so you have to be more tactical and take teenie slices before going back for bigger chunks of your favourites!

Since we had so many this time, I've added all the photos to a collage rather than making you scroll through 14 images of cakes and bakes.  For the list of who made each bake, please see our event preview.

L-R Top: Carrot & Orange Spiced Cake, Butternut Squash Scones, Butternut Squash & Ginger Tea Loaf
L-R 2nd row: Beetroot Chocolate Brownies, Courgette & Lime Cake, Kale & Apple Cake
L-R 3rd Row: Sweet Potato, Cinnamon & Honey Cake, Free From Carrot Cake,
Coconut & Carrot Flapjacks, Butternut Squash & Maple Cupcakes
L-R Bottom: Handwa, Spinach & Feta Pies, Parsnip & Lemon Cupcakes with Ginger Icing

It was also a bit of a squeeze getting everyone in to my living room as we were just short of the 15 required for a certain venue in town to accommodate us.  I've had a new idea of where might suit though so watch this space for a new venue if we continue to be popular!

I had a fantastic evening and everyone really seemed to enjoy it.  There were plenty of interesting combinations to try among the bakes and some surprising hits!

It was lovely getting to meet so many new baking enthusiasts, we had such a lively meeting with lots of cake based chat as well as general chit chat.  I can't wait for the next one!

(The next event is our Christmas party on which you can find details here.)

Event Report: Fruit & Flowers

We had another fab meeting last week with the Fruit and/or flowers theme.  We had 6 bakers again with one newcomer.

I ran out of time to make the elderflower mascarpone layer cake so I went for a Waitrose magazine recipe, Peach, cherry & almond cake with elderflower syrup:

Sharon made this lovely spiced currant & orange blossom loaf cake:

Lynda made an unusual but delicious gooseberry fool tart with a cakey pastry:

Laura made a decadent dark chocolate cake with raspberries:

Lyndsey made these lovely moist Lemony lemon blondies:

And Pamela made this scrummy light Elderflower & raspberry cake:

Event: Autumn Vegetables

Our next event will be on Sunday 20th November at 19:30 - 21:30.  The theme is Autumn Vegetables.

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Think root vegetables like carrots, beets and parsnip or pumpkins and squashes (although technically fruits) or even greens like broccoli.  Remember, your bake doesn't have to be sweet nor a cake, anything baked is allowed.

As always, to come along and take part, just email Becky with your choice of bake (first to email gets first choice if there are any duplicates).  Details of the venue will be emailed to participating bakers a few days before the event.

A few ideas:

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Of course, there's the obvious carrot cake (please no walnuts as I love carrot cake!) or perhaps a parsnip version with ginger.  (I've made this Pear & Parsnip cake before and loved it!)

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Or there's beetroot cake, with or without chocolate.

 And courgette cake is another vegetable based cake:

Image Source - Courgette & Orange cake with cream cheese icing

Or there's traditional American pumpkin pie:

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And a few savoury options:

Parsnip & Leek Tarte

Courgette, Pine nut & Ricotta tart

Beetroot, red onion & goat's cheese tart

Beetroot & Goat's Cheese Pie

GBBO Inspired Event: The Report

We had another fab evening with our Great British Bake Off inspired bakes last week.  It was just us regulars this time which was lovely as we all caught up over a cuppa and chatted about our bakes, Christmas, WI and lots of other topics.  And of course sampled each others' scrumptious bakes!

We had another lovely selection of bakes to enjoy.  Laura D made Millionaire Shortbread with a stunning gold topping.

Lynda made a lovely refreshing Pistachio Lemon Drizzle Cake:

Pamela made these nutty spiced Florentines which we all thought would be fab at Christmas:

Helen made Paul Hollywood's beautiful light Victoria Sponge:

And I made Nadiya's savoury muffins from a recipre featured in an issue of WI Life magazine (with a few changes - I'll be publishing the adapted recipe soon!)

All of the bakes went down a treat, it was nice having a savoury option to break up the sweet, I might do the same again next time!

The date polls are still open for our next meeting in Autumn http://doodle.com/poll/diiebethkkw4n5sf and our Christmas Party http://doodle.com/poll/gpc3xqckdq5zx97g but they'll be closing soon so hurry up and tick your dates if you want to come along!

Next Event: GBBO inspired

Our next event will be on Thursday 22nd September at 7:30 - 9:30pm.

The theme will be "Inspired by GBBO".

You could bake a recipe by any current or previous contestant, whether it was on the show or from one of their books.  Ditto for any of Mary Berry's or Paul Hollywood's recipes.  Alternatively you could bake one of the technical challenges or showstoppers!

As always, to come along and take part, just email Becky with your choice of bake (first to email gets first choice if there are any duplicates).  If we have enough participants this time, we have a venue in Uckfield town centre who can accommodate us.  Details will be emailed to bakers a few days before the event.

Next Event: Fruit & Flowers

Our next theme is Fruit & Flowers, a lovely summery theme which should be an easy but interesting one.  We'll hopefully have lots of mew members as our WI ladies are officially joining us after signing up at the last meeting.

We'll be meeting on Sunday 31st July, 7:30pm at a venue TBC.

Image source via Pinterest

There are plenty of things you could bake for this theme, fruit or flowers or both can be included and as always, sweet or savoury, cake or tart, biscuits or meringues... anything goes as long as it's baked.

A few ideas for inspiration:

Elderflower Lemon Mascarpone Cake (Someone please make this, it looks awesome!  Actually, I think I will!)

Orange Almond Cake with Orange Blossom Buttercream

Berry Lavender Cake

Rose & Basil Dark Chocolate Macarons or Lavender & Dark Chocolate Macarons

Fig Frangipane Tart

Crispy Prosciutto Cups with Goat Cheese & Figs

Again, I've pinned a few more fruity and/or floral ideas on our Pinterest Baking page.

If you'd like to join us, please email Becky with your choice of bake.  As usual, it is first come, first served when it comes to your choice.  If someone else has already chosen it, you'll be asked to choose something else.  Please can I ask that you only email if you are going to come as we had to ask someone to choose an alternative bake last time but the other baker didn't show up on the night.

Next event: Boozy Bakes!

The theme for our next event is going to be boozy bakes!  At the end of our last meeting, it was suggested we have alcoholic cakes as our next theme as I'd mentioned my favourite cake is Chocolate Guinness Cake and other ideas were flying around, so boozy bakes it is!

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Obviously I will be baking the Guinness Cake so that's already taken but get in quick with your choices as other ideas could also be popular!  Some suggestions on the night were gin & tonic cake, marsala cake and tiramisu cake.  Or think cocktails - mojito or pina colada cupcakes for example!  I've pinned LOADS of ideas on the Uckfield WI Pinterest page too.

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Our poll to choose a date is now closed and the most popular date is Sunday 29th May at 7:30pm. 

As always, if you'd like to attend, please email Becky with your name and choice of bake and you will be sent the venue details a week before the event.  Places and choice of bake are allocated on a first come, first served basis so get in quick if you'd like to attend as places are limited  :)

Event: Yellow on 3rd April

The theme for our next event will be Yellow, to celebrate spring and hopefully a bit of sunshine!

Our second event will be held on Sunday 3rd April at 7:30pm.  This was the most popular date from the poll sent to those on our mailing list and on our facebook page.

A few obvious ideas for the theme include lemon drizzle cake, banana loaf, yellow cupcakes, egg custard tarts, cheese muffins...  Or think outside the box with a caramelised onion & mustard tart or curry spiced chocolate cupcakes!!  The finished product doesn't have to be yellow, as long as there's something in there that ties in with the theme, we're not strict!  ;)

If you'd like to attend, please email Becky with your name and choice of bake and you will be sent the venue details a week before the event.  Places are allocated on a first come, first served basis so get in quick if you'd like to attend as places are limited (and we are getting more popular!)  :)