Cake, cake and more cake!

So early on Saturday morning me, mum and a cake set off to Manchester, 3 train journeys and about 2 hours later we arrive at Manchester Central. The train journey was good apart from noisy sexist man on the train who while talking to another man (possibly his friend but it was difficult to tell) described every woman in the conversation by their body shape or beauty level. So we were quite happy to get off the train at Manchester Picadilly and change train to go to Oxford Road. This train went to Liverpool, on Grand National Day, it was rammed!! It was worse than any tube I have been on and all the time trying to protect a delicate cake.

Arriving at Manchester Central with the cake, I decided rather than queueing with everyone else (it was a very big queue) we entered through the competitors entrance waving the cake at the security guard. We are in! It is a lovely venue, and very busy. I spotted the Clandestine Cake Club stand and abandoned my cake. We were told judging was at noon. So off me and mum set into the show. We walked around the stalls and decided to watch a demonstration by Mich Turner who runs the Little Venice Cake Company. She is tiny but very instructive so I learnt a lot.

My cake was entered into the Clandestine Cake Club competition along with 8 other entries. It was judged by Peter Sidwell.

Here is Peter testing my cake with Lynn Hill from the Clandestine Cake Club. 

I didn't win :( but never mind it's the taking part that counts. I then went and bought lots of bread flours, I want to try making some different breads. I also bought some fancy textured mats to make embossed icing for cakes, lots of coloured icing and a rolling mat and 2 new books.We didn't buy light things, we were silly.

At 4pm after watching the Baker Brothers we headed out in to the Manchester sunshine. We stretched our legs and took in the amazing architecture. Then home!

Only one  change heading home and a Chinese takeaway too. So it was a pretty good day.

My next cake session is to bake a cake for Debbie at work for her birthday, I will be using a recipe from one of my new books. My flikr site has more pictures from the show, there are some truly amazing cakes!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30thingstodoinmy30thyear/

So this is 2 more challenges off my list, visiting a new city and going to a show, still many to go! But I don't have any money this month so I wont be doing many this month. 

I have a few other things to update on but I will leave that until the weekend.