Last Friday we tootled off to Central Street Cookery School, to enjoy an event baking cakes organised by Stork Margerine  I’d seen this event on Eventbrite and thought it would be perfect for us, not least to allow hubby to get into the kitchen and bake his very first cake.

The kitchen was a beautiful space to work in,

so well organised and pretty.

with lots of ingredients,

that looked very yummy,

and lovely old wooden spoons to work with.

The cakes we could make were a strawberries and cream cup cake or a lemon and elderflower drizzle, we both chose the lemon.

Recipes at the ready and we got to work with Jemma from Iced Jems who was a lovely host to the evening, we had many a cake based conversation during the evening, her knowledge and enthusiasm for all things cake was wonderful and her web site looks pretty good too.

Hubby carefully measures out his ingredients,

Such a thing of beauty,

and beats for all his worth.  I must say that even though the stork with butter was fresh out of the fridge, it comes together really easily, even with the all in one method and a wooden spoon.  It would be quite handy to have on standby in the fridge should the urge for cake making strike late into the evening, which it often does with me. 

Hubby and I making our syrup for the cakes.  I must say he did seem to be enjoying himself.

And then we reached the critical stage of any cake making, the decision making of whether its ready or not. Because we had doubled the recipe to better suit the pans that were available, this was a bit of guesswork, testing, more guesswork and then testing and testing again.   It doesn’t take me to tell you, all those that have watched Bake Off, just how tense this moment is.  Not least that there had been a couple of tricky moments for the other two ladies cooking this evening and I certainly didn’t want a disaster for a first cake.

Whilst waiting we made the butter filling.  It was at this point that hubby said to me, ‘Id no idea there was so much involved!’ – and we hadn’t even done the washing up, we had an army of washer uppers attending to our every whim.  I laughed, ‘yes dear’, I replied, ‘that’s why I’m all… ‘what did you think of my cake..’ and badger you for more detail  of what you think when you give a single word response’.

The cakes came out of the oven, hubby’s was well risen, actually it was the best risen out of the four and without the addition of baking powder.

Mine had suffered in a too cool oven, but we had rescued it and all came good in the end.

We then allowed them to cool in the tin for a while, then on a rack, cut them in half and slavered one half with butter cream and one half with lemon curd and put together.

Hubby on the water icing, we added a capful of the elderflower cordial along with the lemon juice which made it even more delicious.

Ta Da !!! Hubby’s first cake. How wonderful is that.

And together.

We packed them up as carefully as we could with my parting comment, ‘if you hear about a cake disaster on the underground, you’ll know whats happened’.

However, we did manage it, nearly intact.

Quartering it up for the freezer, we are hoping the buttercream will be fine, whats the worst that can happen, we may have some very tasty sponge to go with custard.

Thank you so much Stork, we really enjoyed this opportunity and Stork with butter is definitely a winner it made our cakes lovely and light and the buttercream was divine.  I also had no idea about the recipe section on both Jemmas and Storks web site, I will be having a good look at them when I am looking for my next cake recipe.