Charity and Cake

February 2015 brought a visit by one of our own - Claire Kemp and voting for our 2015 charity. As always we started the night with this month's WI business. We really are busy ladies with more activities than ever - we have nearly every base covered: You can gorge on tasty food with SHWI Eats, then burn off the calories with SHWI Runners and the SHWI Slimming group, whilst keeping busy with SHWI Mad Skills, SHWI Crafts, SHWI Cine-Club, SHWI at Night and SHWI Mummies! And now, with a SHWI night out in the diary, we can even get our groove on. Anyway, back to business … 

Our wonderful Fundraising and Campaigns Officer, Sarah Willoughby, introduced the charity voting process. We had 5 truly deserving charities to choose from this year put forward by  our members. But the winner was The Sheena Amos Youth Trust (SAYiT), an independent young people’s charity based in Sheffield that provide support, information and opportunities for young people aged up to 25 who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) or who are affected by HIV. Now onto the cake… 

Claire kicked off the evening by explaining how she became a cake queen. Originally from an architecture and design background, Claire created her cake empire to combine her passion for baking with her professional design skills and artistic flair. 

She launched Claire Kemp Cake Studio, in 2011, with a 1:100 scale cake of The University of Sheffield's Arts Tower building that was almost 80cm high. Her bakes are extraordinary, not only are they very pretty but they are mini feats of engineering. 
 

Claire gave us a demo of her exquisitely smooth icing skills – divulging a few secrets along the way. So what did we learn? Claires’ top tips included:
· Use icing sugar to roll out icing, but only on the underside. DO NOT flip over the icing (like one would with dough).
· Avoid wooden rolling pins.
· Always roll forward (rolling backwards creates air bubbles).
· Grey icing is surprising gorgeous!

I was really impressed with Claire’s cakes and will definitely be trying out her tips - I hope everyone else found it just as informative as I did! Next month we have jewellery-making with another one of our wonderful members – Lauren from Bobbins & Buttons (extra materials charge of £2 per member, and the start of our fundraising for SAYiT … see you there!


Alice Bullas 
Commitee member 

P.S A big thank you to The Broadfield for donating voucher for a pie & a pint for our raffle. 

Cake and Bake Show and a little bit of modelling...

A sneaky peek of one of our calendar pics...(photo by Laura Bainbridge)

On Saturday 6 April, some of our members had a busy day visiting the Cake and Bake Show in Manchester before hot-footing it back to the seven hills for our second SHWI photo shoot for our 2014 calendar. 

The Cake and Bake Show is one massive event over three days with talks, masterclasses and workshops from some of the biggest names in the baking industry, as well as featuring a whole host of companies giving demonstrations and samples of their baking goods and wares. 

Laura and a Fabulous Baker Brother

SHWI members Laura Bainbridge, Anna Pilson, Di Coupe, Jen Marsden and myself booked some half-price tickets, unsure what to expect. Would we get sufficient samples? Could we meet any Great British Bake Off contestants? Would we get Laura get a cuddle of a Fabulous Baker Brother?

The answer was yes. On entering the venue, we paid £5 for the Cake and Bake Show goody bag with an event programme, free copy of the Telegraph, vouchers, Green and Black's White Cooking Chocolate and some Silver Spoon cake decorations. 

Most stalls had some good tasters, from chunks of focaccia to dip in balsamic vinegar to homemade fudge. Stalls like the Lakeland section sold all the essentials (and more) for the potential baker and companies like Dr Oetker handed out even more goodie bags. Other stalls had some very interesting cake toppers (naked baby iced figure, anyone?).

Di and Edd

But some of us had our eyes on the celebs. The name at the show who drew the biggest crowds was Eric Lanlard but I confess that I'm not that aware of his programme or previous books. 

We'd missed Mr Paul Hollywood who had been there in person on the Friday but there was still plenty of GBBO contestants to spot. I'd spied Ruth Clemens (series one) entering the VIP area, Holly Bell (series two) handing out leaflets for Sainsbury's and Laura and Di spotted series one winner Edd Kimber.

One of the most popular events of the day was the Bake Off featuring previous GBBO contestants. We were there on the front row (well, sat on the floor in front of the front row) to watch John Waite (series three winner) and Natasha (series three) team up with a volunteer from the audience to make tweels. I was first with my hand up and a question for John, asking him what he's been up to since winning the show. As soon as the Bake Off finished, Jen and Anna rushed to meet James Morton (series three hottie) and Catherine Dresser. 

Jen (left) and Anna (right) with
GBBO's Catherine and James

Laura and I watched a soda bread demo by Fabulous Baker Brother, Tom Herbert, who MADE HIS OWN BUTTER. And we got to try it. 

Tom also got a picture with everyone who watched and tweeted it to his followers...and we got in on the pic!

Anna also managed to meet the fabulous Brendan Lynch outside the venue who was happy to pose for a photo and grab her arm. 

After nabbing all our freebies, we enjoyed lunch and a few beverages (ahem) in Manchester before heading back to Sheffield on the train. 

Brendan and Anna

We met more SHWI lovelies at the Showroom cinema before decamping to our first shoot location of the night: The Leadmill. The idea was to have everyone dressed to the nines and in the queue for the club. After a few variations, we got some great shots.

Next up was the 'Cutting Edge' at Sheffield station (random fact: our President Lindsay's Dad installed this sculpture!). 

I won't give the game away but the setup involved sparklers which were a devil to syncronise. After a few gos (and a crazy drunk guy harrassing us for a while) we got the shot before we got pneumonia. 

The results are amazing and I can't wait to see the finished calendar! All that modelling meant that we deserved a few drinks at the Sheffield Tap.

Kirsty Bowen
SHWI Events and Programme Officer