Cardigan Bay Bakers - Valentine's Breakfast

The Cardigan Bay Bakers met earlier this week. Sometimes we meet as the Cardigan Clandestine Cake Club but strange as it may seem, we decided some time ago that we didn't always want to bake cake within the remit provided by the Clandestine Cake Club, so sometimes we meet as the Cardigan Bay Bakers. This week was one of those times.

You might have thought that a theme of Valentine's Breakfast would be tricky seeing as how we meet in the evening, but as I'm sure you'll agree, everyone rose to the challenge. We had a great mixture of savoury and sweet from a bacon platter - candied bacon, chocolate coated bacon (yes really) and bacon jam, served with a side of chocolate coated strawberries, individual smoke salmon 'crustless quiches' and some delicious savoury scones packed with sundried tomatoes, maple syrup and rosemary - to cappucino muffins, heart shaped flapjack, oat and raspberry muffins and lemon and marzipan buns.

We were hosted by a new venue for the club - the recently re-opened Penrallt Country House Hotel which perches above the coastal village of Aberporth. We were warmly welcomed, and very much enjoyed hanging out in their conservatory/terrace while we shared our stories and our bakes for the evening. Hopefully they will have us back on another occasion - we were too busy talking and eating to snoop around the refurbished rooms this time!

My contribution was the Lemon & Marzipan Buns. A Dan Lepard recipe from Short & Sweet. Delicious. There recipe's here. No need to thank me...

On being a stem cell donor

I'll try and explain succinctly, but I have been oddly reluctant to post this, but here it is - it's now or never: I'm going to be a stem cell donor.

Not just sign up on the register. Actually do it. I'm a match - for a person - someone in the States as it happens - who needs stem cells. Incredible. I'm a 1 in 33,000 chance for someone. Another human. Incredible that after everything we went through with Blue (who didn't need stem cells, but I can tell you I would have sold my body to the highest bidder to get them should he have done so), that I can do this. Incredible that medicine has advanced so much that this is possible, that I can help someone like this.

Of course it's not at all about me. Sure, I feel elated, emotional and just a little bit proud that it's me, but this is really all about the many people (and their families) struggling with vile, insidious diseases, desperate for a glimmer of hope. After everything that happened with my boy, even though he didn't need a transplant of stem cells, bone marrow or otherwise, I think I am qualified to say that I know a little bit what this person and his or her family are going through. Not perhaps the specifics, but I have been in the situation where you know you would do absolutely anything, give anything, to make the person you love better, and have felt the desperation that comes with being essentially powerless, unable to do anything except rage and pray and hope that it will all come good. So yes, jolly good of me for putting my name forward, and for going ahead, yes, well done. But the reason I'm writing this is because if it means one more person signs up to the British Bone Marrow Registry as a result, that's potentially another family who will have that hope.

And of course, it's also about that one person who I match - who may still not be well enough, in the end, to go through with the transplant. But it's getting closer, and I'm hopeful that the chance can be seized, that the donation and subsequent transplant can go ahead, that there's a future for this person.

I live my life based on the fact that if I worry about something enough, it just won't happen. It doesn't always work in reverse - I've never, ever worried about winning the lottery, and, you guessed it - no jackpot rollover for me (although the fact that I never buy a ticket might have something to do with that). But the Husband has never been killed in a terrible motorway pile up, for example. I have never been raped and murdered in my bed. I have never, EVER been attacked by the monster of unspecified nature that lives in the wardrobe (although I am careful to always close the wardrobe door before I go to bed...)

On the flip side, donating my stem cells? Never gave it a moment's thought. As I've said before, I'm relatively embarrassed that I didn't make more of an effort to give blood before Blue was diagnosed with leukaemia 9 years ago. Once I was able to donate, after Pink was born, I have donated whenever I can. During one of those donations, I must have signed up to the bone marrow registry, but it's never been something I've thought much about. All the publicity makes it clear that they really, REALLY need donors from other ethnic backgrounds to my bog standard White British, and really, it never crossed my mind that I might actually be called upon. But called upon I have been, and given that I have a voice, albeit quiet a small, quiet one, I thought I'd use it to try and spread the word a bit. 

So what's happened? Well since the initial "You're a possible match" contact, over the last 8 weeks, I have had a whole series of blood tests from the initial tests that confirmed I was the best match for this patient, through to tests and a medical to making sure I am fit and healthy enough to donate (I am - whoop! - I was even described as YOUNG and healthy. How good was that?!), and more blood tests - a whole 15 vials which made the nurse at the doctors' surgery here in Cardigan blanch slightly first thing on a Monday morning a couple of weeks ago, to be sent off in 3 different courier kits... 

And now I am waiting. The final arrangements in place, and assuming the patient has started his or her 'conditioning therapy' to prepare to receive the stem cells, I will be visited by a nurse starting on Thursday for a series of daily injections to persuade my stem cells to poke their little powerhouses from above the parapet of my hip bone and start circulating round my blood stream.  Then on Sunday I head to Bristol for an 8.15 am appointment on Monday morning where I will be hooked up to a machine for the donation process. My blood will be taken from my left arm, fed into a machine which separates off the stem cells and then returned to my right arm. I've been told it will take around 4-5 hours - so I've got my kindle loaded up... And my stem cells, well they'll be loaded up and packed off with a courier on a plane to somewhere in the USA. That's all I know - and all I will know for a couple of years at least. But I'm really hopeful that in a couple of years time, I'll find out that it worked. That someone got to live because I'd signed up to the Bone Marrow Register.

I've been brilliantly supported by the lovely ladies and the Bone Marrow Registry in Bristol - who have answered all my questions, sorted me out train tickets and made sure everything runs smoothly. if you're worried about how this might impact on your financially, the procedure is fully expensed, even including expenses for a partner who has to accompany you, and - in my case, when I went for my medical, a day of 'dogsitting' for Fred the dog. 

So what more can I say? Don't leave a comment saying 'wow how brilliant', or 'good for you' - leave a comment telling me you've signed up - and I know not everyone can donate blood, but if you can, please do. Please make room in your life once every 3 months to donate a pint; and sign up to the bone marrow registry. You may never be called. But you just might. You just might be able to save someone else's life, to give another family some hope - and all for just a little inconvenience in your own life.

You can find out more about the British Bone Marrow Registry here. If you register you become part of an international community of possible donors - my stem cells will be going to the States, which is unusual but as there was presumably no one on the US registers, the search was widened internationally, which is reassuring because if you or one of your family needed a transplant, there's a potentially wide pool available. 

So go on - if you can - and do it. Sign up and tell me you've done it. Make the pool even bigger. You never know who might need it.

Elderflower cordial

The children have introduced a new game to our in-car entertainment repertoire. Not one to be dragged out by us parents at the first "are we nearly there yet" to a chorus of groans. Oh no.

This game has captured their imaginations and taken over even our shortest journey. And the name of this game? "Yellow Car". 

Heard of it? I'm sure you will do.

Now, you might think a game that is so absorbing would be a winner, but let me tell you, if you're not already familiar, it absolutely is not. The premise is that every time you see a yellow car you punch/pinch the other passengers and shout "Yellow Car!". Not exactly rocket science. The problem is that we've become completely obsessed.  And there are more yellow cars on the road than you might think, leading not only to yellow cars, but also to a preponderance of purple upper arms where the bruises are...

We have ridiculous arguments about orange and gold cars. Do diggers count? (Cue "We're not playing yellow VEHICLES..." in an outraged tone). I understand that there is a variation called 'Yellow Everything', but, reflecting that every car journey would turn into some kind of out of control slap-fest due to there being yellow dandelions, buttercups and celandines adorning the roadsides, yellowing fields, yellow painted houses (Cardigan is a town of brightly coloured dwellings), I have banned it.

Yellow Car remains, though, and I find myself mentally playing the game when I'm in the car on my own, clocking where yellow cars are parked, retaining the intelligence for later in the hope of gaining the upper hand.  

Not that I'm competitive or anything. 

Last week, not only was I frantically on the look out for yellow cars, I was also keeping my eye out for elderflowers, and feeling increasingly frustrated as I either managed to miss the bushes (too pre-occupied with the cars) or didn't have anything to harvest the frothy, intoxicating flowers. Ridiculous, as it turns out we have 3 elderflower bushes in the garden.

There are many, many recipes for elderflower cordial around. I started with Sarah Raven's version in her Garden Cookbook, but made free given that I didn't have any limes (an unusual addition that I haven't seen in many other recipes) and Cardigan was all out of citric acid...

Elderflower Cordial

20-25 heads of elderflower
3 oranges
3 lemons 
1.5 kg sugar

Gently wash the elderflowers to remove any little bugs that have come home with you.

Dissolve the sugar in a large pan with 1.5 litres of water, then bring to the boil. Add the flowers to the pan, then when the water has come back up to the boil, remove the pan from the heat.

Thinly slice the oranges and lemons and put them in a large bowl, then tip the hot syrup and the elderflowers on top of the fruit, stir then cover with a tea  towel or somesuch. Leave to steep for 24 hours.

At the end of the 24 hours, strain the cordial into sterilised bottles or suitable freezing containers (it freezes very well), then enjoy. Oh, and don't discard the oranges and lemons - I've got something you can make with them...

There are many uses for elderflower cordial besides just diluting it with cold water (which is wonderfully refreshing). It tastes fabulous with gin, and is a great addition to any gooseberry dish you might be thinking of - and you should given that gooseberries are also in season.

The London Gin Club at The Star at Night

We went to the fair on Monday. 

Despite the rain that persisted, we gamely surveyed the stall upon stall of utter tat that lined Cardigan's main street - and some of the side roads too, before heading to the main attraction - the rides.

Now, somewhere along the line, in the last few years, I have clearly become significantly more risk averse and middle aged than I thought. I was, until Monday evening, labouring under the clearly false impression that I was still, essentially, about 23 at least in my outlook in life if not in the stomach muscle department. But clearly this is not the case.

I used to utterly love fairs. I'm not talking 'theme parks' here - tame beyond belief, however thrill inducing the ride - but travelling fairs. Here for a week, on to the next town the following week.

And what did I love? Well, where to start?

The noise: banging dance music, generators roaring, the exortations of the ride 'masters' to "scream if you want to go faster", (incidentally, I don't know if 'ridemaster' is the correct term, but it seems appropriate) - and, of course, the screams... 

The smells: of chips, of doughnuts, of diesel... 

The total visual overload - lights, people, the cool emanating from the lads operating the rides, spinning the Waltzer carriages whilst smoking fags and eyeing up the talent (not me - I hasten to add - I was never in the 'talent' bracket - my mum would never let me wear that much make up...), the hormones whirring round the teenage gaggles... 

And last but not least, the rides themselves. My goodness, but I loved those rides. The faster, the more spinning, the more screaming, the more adrenaline and risk of whiplash the better. 

But, apparently, no longer.

As I walked into the swimming pool car park in Cardigan on Monday night, transformed into a seething mass of humanity, I could only wonder in horror at the health & safety regime that means Councils ban games of conkers, and yet allow travelling fairs to cart rides like this around in pieces on the back of a lorry, to be reassembled in various small towns around the country.

Seriously, this thing was scary - a long arm with the seating on the end which rotated at the same time as the arm swung backwards and forwards high over the crowds. Despite a turn on the Waltzer, being spun by some nonchalant youth, screaming like a good 'un, despite the hook a ducks, the chips, the doughnuts, I spent the whole time we were there terrified that this construction would somehow collapse in the manner of some dreadful B movie causing tragedy.

It didn't help that the Husband started to tell me how his H&S colleague at work refuses to allow her kids to attend these kinds of fairs because the number of accidents are so high.   

So given that I am clearly now so blimmin' middle aged, a far more appropriate outing perhaps was my trip to London at the weekend to the London Gin Club. 

Quite a mission for me, involving a drive to Carmarthen, a train to Swansea packed with Welsh rugby fans and more cans of lager at 10.30 in the morning than you may ever have seen... (there I go again - so middle aged... could I purse those lips any more?), then another train from Swansea all the way to London, but which became like a different train once the lager and rugby fans were disgorged upon Cardiff... 

But one Gillian Flynn novel (Sharp Objects - very, very good), and a stop in Earlsfield for a few cuddles with my (unutterably cute) nephew and a reapplication of mascara  later, and I was in central London for a date with some of my lovely Hampshire friends, and GIN!

The London Gin Club occupies the Star at Night pub on Great Chapel Street just off Oxford Street.- "dedicated to tracking down the finest gins for your drinking enjoyment" I can certainly agree with that.

We'd booked a table to which we were duly escorted, provided with menus and given a brief introduction. It's a small, intimate bar and we were downstairs in a cellar like alcove. Very convivial for catching up and raucous cackling.

They have an impressive range of gins, served with your tonic of choice (Fever Tree in all its delicious forms, Fentimans and of course good old Scchhhhhhhhweppes, plus 1724 which I 'd never come across before) - and with tailored garnishes depending on the gin.

We all chose tasting menus to start with - I went for the blind tasting which entailed 4 different gins, 4 ice filled 'Copa' balloon glasses, 2 bottles of Fever Tree and a delicate dish of possible garnishes. As instructed, those of us taking this option tasted the gin neat on ice before adding the tonic, tasting again and then deciding on an appropriate garnish. All a bit of fun, you may say, but tasting the gin neat on ice and then with the tonic and actually taking time to think about what the gin tasted of instead of simply seeking a slightly fuzzy feeling on a Friday night, was a genuinely interesting experience. I also loved that the 4 gins on the blind tasting were very very different, and tasting them next to each other really demonstrates that gin isn't just  - well, gin. It was also a revelation how different garnishes can really bring out the different flavours of the gins. I'll admit that having the tray of potential garnishes made me feel a little like I was back in play school, mixing up 'potions' - but in a good way you understand.

As you might imagine, there was much chat, and sharing of glasses - I was a little disappointed that none of the gins on the blind tasting menu were pared with the herbs that I saw on the menu - you might not think that gin goes with mint or with coriander, but you'd be wrong. Pared with the right gin (in this case, Pickerings with lime peel and coriander, Becketts with mint) - totally, mouthwateringly, delicious. Forget travelling fairs, this is the kind of living on the edge I can handle.

Tasting menus done, we had time for one last drink before sedately (ahem) venturing out for dinner. The London Gin Club offers an array of gin cocktails which I'm pleased to say proved to be as delicious as they sound - as did my glass of Botanist & tonic garnished with lemon and thyme...

Now this was all very delightful - luscious gin served in great and convivial surroundings, with helpful advice and discussion with Sarah our waitress - but what about the cost. Well, it's a long time since I've done any drinking in London and I was prepared for it to all be quite shockingly expensive. May be I'd over-estimated but the blind tasting menu was £26 - that's £26 for 4 G&Ts made with premium gins and Fever Tree tonic, plus a tray of garnishes to play with in a great venue. It felt OK to me.

So the sights, sounds and thrills of the fair or the chat of good friends, the sound of tonic on ice and the tastes of premium gin. That along with the very tasteful and pretty visual spectacle of the Oxford Street lights and it's clear that what counts as a cracking night out has changed for me. 

But that's not necessarily a bad thing!

Fodder for Foodies - the Llwynhelyg Farm Shop

Such an unassuming entrance but don't be fooled - the Llwynhelyg Farm Shop is a veritable treasure trove of fresh meat and veg, local produce - cheeses, fish, home made 'ready meals and desserts, and 'storecupboard' staples. In the summer months, the car park is also home to the wonderful El Salsa Mexican takeaway (sadly now closed till next year)

The shop absolutely lives up to its Twitter moniker '@FooderforFoodys'.

What I love most is that this is a shop that caters for your every need. I use it mainly for veg and eggs - being as it is on the way to the children's school (indeed, it supplies their school with fruit for break) so very convenient to drop in. However, if you didn't want to cook, they also sell home made 'ready meals' and desserts - which I have on good authority are brilliant. And I know it won't be long before I succumb to the temptation of the pie fridge...

Not only can you get everything you might need to cook dinner - from sausage and mash to something far more sophisticated, it's a fantastically friendly shop too which makes it a joy to go in to, even with fractious post-school children (who welcome the days we drop in as it offers them an opportunity to plead with me to buy them olives there!). Not only are the people happy to help and chat, but the shop is full of great touches - such as pronunciation notes:

and what fantastic 'caws' it is...

No wonder then that its won loads of awards

If you're in the area - on holiday or because you happen to live round here - it's definitely worth a visit - indeed, I'd say it's a destination in itself, but then I am probably biased.

You'll find the Llwynhelyg Farm Shop on the A487 at Sarnau, north of Cardigan. You can also follow them on Twitter and find them on Facebook. They didn't ask me to write this post, and all views expressed are my own. It's a great shop. You should go there! 

Cardigan Pizza Tipi

Despite what I thought, I've been reluctant to write about any of the foodie delights that I've been fortunate enough to come across since we've moved here. Not consciously - consciously, every time I find another farm shop, market, cafe, I start mentally making notes, and yet it never makes it here.

May be I'm feeling like I have no right to comment: 

"Who does she think she is anyway, swanning in here, talking about our food?"

Perhaps I just don't want to share...

But no longer.

There is just too much fantastic food round here, and not enough people knowing about it, and that has to stop.

So first up is the Cardigan Pizza Tipi, 'hidden in plain sight' - as it were, at one end of the main street through Cardigan, on the bank of the River Teifi. Run by the Fforest team (much feted family friendly 'eco camping'), think woodfired pizza in a semi-al fresco, riverside venue, garden flowers in enamel pitchers on rustic tables, turn up and find a space, have a drink, cloud bread or gorgeous substantial 'pittas' and dips, a pizza or quiche, ice cream or cake for dessert - there's a carefully contrived simplicity about the place, very much 'of the moment', but who am I to quibble with that? If you want great pizza in Cardigan, this is the place to come.


Even on a slightly drizzly Saturday evening, it was a great place to meet up with some friends who had just arrived for a weeks' holiday in Newport a few miles down the road - space for the kids to run around (perhaps a little too much?), and the food is really fabulous. 

 Rather than an extensive list of pizzas, there were about 6 or 7 (I forgot to take a photo of the blackboard with them written on) and one special. Between us, we mostly favoured the 'Summertime' (which had been recommended to me) - chorizo, roasted red peppers, tomatoes, with Blue choosing the 'Maritime' (anchovies, capers and olives) and my lovely friend the Moroccan (roast lamb, mint, feta - I wasn't sure about it, reading the ingredients on the board, but on the plate - or rather, the wooden board - it was very good).

 

We also ordered some pittas and dips - oil & balsamic and hummus. The 'cloud bread' was still baking, but the pittas, warm, substantial, were no disappointing substitute.

For dessert, there's a small selection of cakes, baked in house, and ice cream & sorbet. the kids all went for ice cream, us grown ups had brownies and a jam, coconut sponge. The sponge was good, but not as good as the fig chocolate brownie. A piece of squidgy, chocolately heaven. I can't tell you how divine - the photos just don't do it justice...

All this for a very reasonable price, plus views of the river - even without the sunshine, it's a special place.

Clandestine Cake

I've been fascinated by the idea of the Clandestine Cake Club for a few years now. Pretty much ever since I started blogging and doing the whole social media thing. I joined up and found a club near where I used to live, but never went along to a meeting.

As part of my rather disorganised 'plan to make sure I meet some new people once we move' I had investigated whether there was a Clandestine Cake Club here in the Cardigan area, and discovered that there wasn't. Initially, I was disappointed, then I was encouraged.


Perhaps I could START a Clandestine Cake Club...

Another of my 'plan to make sure I meet some new people once we move' involved a little bit of Twitter stalking networking, which resulted in me getting to know a couple of lovely people, all be it virtually, before we'd even crossed the Severn, and I was having coffee with one of them once we'd landed, and mentioned this idea. Well, what do you know? She had been talking to another friend of hers who had been wondering about the same thing.  A coffee date was hatched and the next thing you know, well here we are, and the first meeting of the Cardigan Cake Club took place on Monday 7th April, not 3 weeks later.

If you don't know about the Clandestine Cake Club (where have you been??) the idea is that a meeting is arranged, and knowing the date and time and roughly the area where it will take  place, you book a place. The exact location is then revealed to those who have booked a place a couple of days before the event. Well, we need some excitement in our lives, don't we.

Each event is themed, and you take along your cake, share it with the others and generally have a good old natter.

That's pretty much exactly what happened on Monday. My co-organiser, the fabulous Vicky North, micro-baker, workshop provider and bread club owner, had already found a venue for us, and when the time came, a select but not insignificant group arrived, with cake. You can read our write up of the event if you're interested, thinking of setting your own CCC up etc, but the purpose of this post is to share the cake that I made for the evening.

The theme was 'My Cake, My Story' which we hoped would get people talking about themselves, their baking stories, and just act as a bit of an ice breaker. It was interesting how people approached the theme. Some people baked a cake that included ingredients representing parts of their lives, for others, the cake itself represented something. For me, it was an easy choice.

As you will know, my life was thrown upside down when my 2 year old son was diagnosed with leukaemia. No more high flying legal career. No more structure to my life other than that imposed by his hospital regime. Chaos reigned, and when, 3 months later my daughter arrived by emergency caesarean, chaos doubled. It wasn't a happy time, although there were plenty of happy moments, and much of it has merged into a kind of fug. One thing that did come out of it, indirectly, was this blog. I wasn't writing at that point, but I seized on a self-imposed challenge to cook everything in How to Be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson in an attempt to gain control over something in my life. And from there, eventually, came this blog.

I still haven't cooked everything from Domestic Goddess - I reckon I've cracked about 1/3 of it, but the easy almond cake represented everything I love about Nigella Lawson and about baking, and the escape that it gave me during that period of my life when everything else was so difficult. The alchemy of throwing together some simple ingredients and creating something of utter loveliness will never leave me.

In honour of the Cake Club, I added my own lemon and poppy seed drizzle icing, and very pleased I was with the result, too.

Easy Almond Cake with Lemon Drizzle Icing & Poppy Seeds

250g unsalted butter, cubed, at room temperature
250g mazipan, cubed, at room temperature, 150g caster sugar
1/4 tsp each almond essence and vanilla bean paste
6 large eggs
150g self raising flour
75g sifted icing sugar
juice of about 3/4 lemon
1-2 tbsp poppy seeds

You'll also need a 23-25cm loose bottomed/springform 'ring' cake tin, well greased and floured.

Heat the oven to 170C

Use a food processor and process the butter, marzipan and sugar together.

Add in the almond and vanilla, and process again, then break in the eggs one at a time while the food processor is running.

A top tip is to break the eggs into a little bowl first. I once made this and accidentally dropped a whole egg into the whizzing mixture. The cake was very crunchy...

Once the eggs are all incorporated, add the flour, process, then scrape the batter into the tin and bake for around 50 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

Leave to cool in the tin.

Turn the cake out, and mix up the icing - you may not need all the lemon juice - to quite a runny consistency. I used a clever trick I learned to put the cake on 4 strips of greaseproof paper so you can ice then whip the paper away easily. Get me.

Drizzle over the cake from a height (helps get more even drizzles) then sprinkle over the poppy seeds.

This is delicious with a cup of tea. In fact, at the CCC, we discussed that this was almost a contender for a 'cake for breakfast' type of cake...