Clandestine Cake Club: The Nare Hotel, Veryan
Cake Club is the highlight of my social and foodie calendar. Accompanied by Boutique Retreats’ SM, we ditched the dogs (dogs don’t eat cake Molly) and ventured over to Veryan on the Roseland to The Nare Hotel.
The Nare Hotel is right on the beach, and despite the stormy January weather the views from the Quarter deck were nothing less than fabulous. We laid out our cakes with much trepidation, because though it isn’t in any way a competition; it is a competition! And then supped coffees gossiping until someone broke the taboo and cut the first slice: from there on in commenced a cake eating free-for-all frenzy.
Of course I had had cake dramas the night before – my twitter feed (that’s right I am uber socialite and up-to-date) showed the casualties of war. The war between one Melodie Manners and one very rebellious white chocolate mousse. Our point of difference was: I wanted the mousse to be sandwiched between the sponge and the mousse wanted out. In a big way. The dark choc and passion fruit ganache on top became ‘glue’ rather than a decorative, delicious topping. I may have shouted at JT, and I may have stomped out of the kitchen dramatically uttering “just don’t talk to me. Shut up, don’t talk to me”.
SM delivered a super scrummy Guinness and chocolate cake with cream cheese topping – embodying some sort of Dawn French sketch when everyone left I licked out the cake tub… Others to note were Daphne Skinnard’s (BBC Radio Cornwall) red velvet cake and David McWilliams (Bin Two Padstow) knock out tasting superlight amaretto sponge with cream and jam in the middle. Too much cake was indeed eaten again, but after all what is cake club for?!
A huge thank you again to Ellie Michell chief CCC organiser, David Griffen – who enticed by cake came to photograph, and The Nare Hotel for having SM & I. We LOVED it.
Lovely write-up, MM – and super pics. I think we should all initial our cakes next time.