Great Roath Bake Off 2013!

Well, it’s been a week since the Great Roath Bake Off and we’ve just about recovered from our cake hangovers! Just about ;-)

As ever the quality of entries was fantastic and with 62 cakes in just the general category, it was a tough call! However, Lisa Watts’ Chocolate Salted Caramel Crunch Cake was easily the winner, being in every judges top 4 cakes! It was a delicious blend of light chocolate, a sweet but salty creamy caramel and a superb caramel brittle topping it off! It really was lovely and as you know, here at The Cakehouse we are all about flavour and whilst this also looked lovely, it easily won the taste test for us :-)

The other entries worth mentioning for taste were a lovely fruit cake (which turned the heads of even those judges who are not fruit cake fans!), a chocolate and peanut butter cake and some rather tasty cake pops.

The Savoury category followed the cakes and the breads and pies entered here were of equal standard to that of the cakes. The winner was quite possibly one of the nicest pork pies the judges had ever tasted. Baked by Bill Ward, the pastry was well cooked, light and crispy and the filling beautifully seasoned. The other entry that rated highly in this category was a lovely olive, sundried tomato and harrissa bread.

The two other categories were the professional bake, which Nato & Co Portuguese won with their tasty Portuguese Tarts and the under 16’s which was won by lovely Molly Spivey with her White chocolate, pomegranate and raspberry cake. We hope Molly keeps baking, there may be a job for her in the future with The Cakehouse!

We had another wonderful day at the Bake Off and credit must go to Wayne for organising the whole thing. Here’s to even bigger and better things next year!

We loved working with our fellow judges too and it was great to catch up with the familiar faces of Nikki (Your Last Mouthful) and Matt of Roath.net. It was also great to meet Sue Charles & Owain Wyn Evans, Dave Brookes, Dave Owens and Sharon Mills. We hope to see you again soon.

Next up for us judging wise is ‘Loaf in Roath’ on 5th May....watch this space for details; we can’t wait :-)

The Great Roath Bake Off!

In February 2012 we were invited to judge The Great Roath Bake Off and had the most amazing time. It was wonderful to be part of such a fantastic event and meet such lovely people. It was also an honour to be sit on the judging panel and of course, great to taste some delicious baking!

Since then, we’ve judged at the Canton Bake Off (organised by The Park View Café and Innovate Trust), the Spring Bake off in Roath and the Cardiff Bake Off and have loved every second.

Next weekend we’ll be back where it started and once again, will be part of a great team of judges in Wayne Courtney’s Great Roath Bake Off! This year is promising to be bigger and better than ever and with a change of venue and additional judges (see below for details!), we can’t wait to see what everyone has to enter. There’ll also be live music and lots of local crafts and goods on offer so it’ll be a fabulous afternoon all round.

If we know anything about anything, we know we know about cake :-) So come along on Saturday 6^th April, bring your best baking and see what happens!

http://www.roathcardiff.net/2013/02/18/the-great-roath-bake-off-2013/

 

Other judges!

-          BBC Weather presenter, Sue Charles

-          BBC Weather presenter, Owain Wyn Evans

-          Real Radio Presenter Dave Brookes

-          Food blogger and writer Matt Appleby

-          Your Last Mouthful’s food reviewer and blogger Nikki Vivian

-          Food Industry expert Sharon Mills

-          The Echo’s Dave Owen

An egg-citing time of year

The smell of simnel cake baking in the oven, hot cross buns with lashings of melting butter and of course the familiar cracking sound as you break that first piece of chocolate off your egg.

 

Those are just a few of the reason we at The Cakehouse love Easter, and of course they’re all food related! But the best part for us is sitting down to Sunday lunch and enjoying a glass of wine and great conversation – we never need an excuse to do that, but it’s always nice to have one!

So this Sunday, after we’ve ripped the shiny coloured wrapping from our yummy Easter treats, we’ll be relaxing with family friends. We hope it’s going to be an egg-celent egg-stravagansa.

 

 

                  We're loving this handmade Easter Egg and chocolate chicks lolly-pops!