first cake-meet

today I have been mostly eating cake.

I have a group of likeminded (cake-inclined) friends, we all have children at school together, and we are in the habit of going for coffee and cake quite often. We do do other things too, last year we celebrated thanksgiving (mustering up all the American-ness we could), with 5 families getting together and each family bringing homemade dishes to share. And as food was plentiful, there was enough for everyone to take some home and not have to cook for at least the next day or two! Before christmas the suggestion was made that we could do it again, but with cake, all bring a homemade cake, spend the day in great company, get some new recipes, and just have a lovely day. Things got too busy before christmas, but it seemed such a good idea that we planned it for today instead.

There was six of us, plus a sprinkling of toddlers for good measure. I made no-nut chocolate brownies from this fantastic book. The other cakes shared were (from the top then left to right in top pic) red velvet cake(recipe found in blogland), pear and cashew nut cake, chocolate orange cake, yogurt cake and lemon cake. lastly I also took soda bread as I thought we might need something not so sweet and sugary (my idea, who'd have thought it!). here are the cakes about 5 miinutes after the first photo!!

Of course it would have been rude not to have at least tried each cake, so we all ate quite a lot. what was left over we divided up and each got a variety to bring home for our families to enjoy. My stomach is still rather full. but what a lovely way to spend a day, we have already made plans to do it again next month (the start of something big??!!).