Cakey Catering

A close friend recently organised a special event in a local primary school, inviting teachers from all over Devon and Somerset to come along and be inspired to teach bible stories creatively to school children. Claire has been exploring this area for the past year, running a bible story club within a school in cooperation with a local Vicar. She's been busy gathering resources and ideas to share with others and pulled together this event to showcase it all. 

She wanted to provide plenty of cake, tea and coffee on the day and asked me to cater. My first paid catering job! I didn't even go looking for it, so it was rather fun that it found me. 

The event was on a Monday so I spent the day before baking away, preparing lots of cakes and cookies and even some fruit salad as a healthy option. 

I made Nigel Slater's Black Banana and Chocolate Chip Loaf, which is a favourite with Andy and I, and one person who ate a slice said it was the nicest cake she had ever tasted! All credit to Nigel for making such a scrumptious recipe for us all to replicate. If you'd like to try it yourself, click here. We leave out the hazelnuts because we don't like nuts in cakes. I also didn't have any chocolate chips (or rather I'd forgotten that they now live in a pretty jar), so I used a big block of dark chocolate instead, chopped well. 

I also whipped up a quick batch of little plain scones on the day to make into Cream Teas, and a huge quantity of Oatie Crunchies, a favourite family biscuit recipe that I've adapted and am saving for my recipe book.

Then I did some plain little fairy cakes with some defrosted frozen raspberries stirred in, with a yoghurt and white chocolate topping, oh, plus popping candy just because! I love these little cakes. They are so delicious and moist. I believe them to be perfect as the are, without any icing but felt I should make an effort.

Everyone else I know has said the topping makes it go from really good to amazing, so I will share the complete recipe despite my own opinion! Even my Mum and Andy who really don't like sweet icing ate it all up while I scraped mine off. One friend even took my discarded icing to add to hers! 


Then, although I really had enough cakes by now I felt like doing something a bit different to use up some defrosted bags of mixed berries that I had. The day before Andy and I had volunteered to help at our church's stall at a school fete. We hold our church meetings in a primary school and set up a special Smoothie Station serving a selection of freshly made smoothies. There were quite a few bags of ingredients left over so we were encouraged to bring a load home. 



I mixed up a batch of standard cake batter (6oz each of s.r flour, caster sugar and butter, plus 3 eggs, creaming method.) But I left out nearly 2oz of the flour to allow for adding a lot of cocoa, (it was 1 and 3/4 oz of cocoa.) It made quite a sloppy mixture which I then added the mixed fruit to. It was one bag of mixed fruit, defrosted and minus the juice and the strawberries. I don't really like strawberries in cakes unless they are fresh. I folded the berries in gently then divided the mixture evenly between two greased square sandwich tins (cm) and baked them at 180C for about 15-20 mins until the skewer came out clean. When cooled, I spread a layer of raspberry jam in the middle and it was served on the day with squirty cream. It's a deep, cocoaey cake with the added sharpness of the berries, and although it's yummy as it is, a little cream lifts it. It's not actually very rich, and it's delectably soft and moist. 

I've posted separately about the exact recipe for the Raspberry Swirl Fairy Cakes here. 

My wonderful Andy accompanied me on the day, and the extra pair of hands was much appreciated in keeping teapots and cafetieres all topped up, especially as the hot water urn wasn't in the same room as the serving hatch. 



Everyone seemed really chuffed to be given mountains of treats and proper nice cuppas and it was a real delight to serve them all. 

Love Susie