Cake and Bake show!

Hey peeps, I hope you all had a lovely Sunday.

I was off early this morning (well, early for a Sunday) to go to the Cake and Bake show in London, as I had been sent some tickets from Sainsbury’s.

We arrived as it opened so had time to wander around and marvel at the beautiful cakes on offer before it got too busy.

I could have bought piles of cakes!

I also loved this Toy Story themed cake on the Disney stand- loved how all the aliens were a little bit different.

There was a Clandestine Cake Club stand, and I had found out the night before that one of my friends was submitting a cake so I had to pop by and see the cakes (and managed to see her too). Now I am tempted to sign up as there is one local to me, although I need to look through the website a bit first I think.

One of the first stands we visited was for Devilishly Good Brownies– and the samples we tried (a vanilla/sea-salt one) were amazing so we revisited it later to buy lunch. I bought a chocolate orange one which was amazing (we had a brownie each for lunch and enjoyed a little sit down), and I bought a pb and coconut one (the offer was to buy 3 you see….) for another day.

My friends pointed out a tea stand to me- that was a mistake! The Alison Appleton stand had some little glass bottles filled with loose leaf tea to smell (as samples) and the lady was even boiling her fancy kettle to make up some Earl Grey, which I sampled. I couldn’t resist the black tea with caramel, and again there was an offer if you bought three so I ended up with Earl Grey (smells amazing), Gentleman’s Toffee (black tea with caramel drops) and Marie Antoinette’s tea (black tea with ginger, rose, cardamom and ginger).

I fell in love with those cups on sale too, so have added them to my collection. They did have a beautiful teapot but it was £55 which is a bit out of my teapot budget! I also bought a vegan nanaimo slice from Ms Cupcake– I have seen these on Oh She Glows and they look lovely so I have saved it for another day.

They had goody bags for sale, so we each ended up buying one. I wanted one mainly for the booklet and the bag (I am a sucker for a bag) but I wasn’t that impressed with the contents.

It contained the guide (which has recipes and things as well as the map), a lime drink, a few money off vouchers and some cake mix. I think cake mixes are OK if you are in a hurry, but it seemed a strange thing to have in the bag seeing as most people going to the show would be making their own cakes, so something like cake ingredients, decorating tools or even some interesting flour/ sugar would have been better in my opinion!

I also bought a copy of the Sainsbury’s magazine (as it was only £1), some cherry flavouring (have been looking for some for ages), some ready coloured icing in Christmas colours, and a gorgeous cake stand. The stall (they have a facebook page if you fancy a look) had loads of plates of various sizes with holes drilled in them, and then you could select 2 or 3 plates and make your own stand. A really pretty blue and white stand caught my eye, and I was trying to find plates that matched it when the lady told me I could buy any of the display ones too, so I was sold! I have not put it together yet but you can see the three plates I chose- so pretty!

We ended up walking around for over 4 hours! It was so busy by the time we left so I was glad we had turned up early.

By the time I got home the brownie for lunch had worn off, so I made some toast with avocado and tomato- I needed something quick!

I have spent the rest of the afternoon/ evening watching the GNR (the end was so exciting!) and reminiscing about last year. (For newish readers- at the end of 2011 I was quite poorly and admitted to hospital, and it turned out I had a massive cyst on one of my ovaries that had to be removed, so I was not allowed to do any exercise before the op in case it twisted/ ruptured, and then was only allowed to start running again in May 2012) I ran the GNR last year for charity, and it was my “comeback” race. I was so nervous and even had some tears in the starter pen as I was so worried that I would not be able to finish it, and it sort of put the operation and hospital visits behind me as I proved to myself that I could do these things again. Anyway, watching it this afternoon has brought back those memories and it is nice to think that those times are well and truly behind me now.

I love watching things like this though. I love seeing all the charity runners, and the end of the men’s race was so exciting! I was trying not to find out what happened, and had accidentally seen it on facebook, but then in the last minute I thought I must have read it wrong because it was such a close finish!

Anyone joined the Clandestine Cake Club? Did you enjoy watching the GNR today? 

I was sent tickets to the show as I am part of the Sainsbury’s blogger network, but I was not asked to review it or anything- I just wanted to blog about it.