July meeting pictures

As the London 2012 games approach our July meeting featured a talk from professional athlete David Hill. As a swimmer he has won bronze medals in both the world and European championships as well as representing Britain at the 2004 Athens Paralympics.



Credit: Team Bath

The talk was really interesting and amongst other things we learned about life as a professional athlete (hard), how much he has to eat to fuel such activities (lots) and what he plans to do in the future (epic). David was an inspirational speaker who left us all feeling slightly in awe of the dedication required to achieve at such a high level.

If you would like to find out more information about David please visit his Team Bath page, or we can pass on your details if you would like to get in touch.

After David's talk we had a break allowing everyone to try the amazing cheese based baked goodies brought in by our members. There have been lots of requests for recipes so we will post these up as soon as we can.



We also had a table where members could suggest alternative names for our branch. There were lots of ideas and we will collate and share them with you ASAP.

Lastly, Storm and Laura did a demonstration on how to make cake pops.



They are delicious and very easy to make. The recipe has been put on the blog if you would like to have a bash.

Once the demo was over everyone had a go at the final steps of cake pop making - taking the rolled cake balls...



Dipping them in melted chocolate, decorating them and eating them!



Thanks
A huge thank you to David Hill for a brilliant talk - good luck for the future!

Thanks to everyone who brought cheese bakes, drinks or donations. The cake and drinks tables are maintaining a super high.

And thank you to everyone that came on Thursday - it's a pleasure to spend an evening with you!

Next month
In our August meeting we will be hosting a talk from Bramble and Wild on Catherine Hill and they will teach us how to make beautiful jam jar posies.

The meeting is free to members or £3 for visitors.

Please bring your own jam jar and flowers if you are able. If you would like these supplied then there will be a £2 charge.

Please could you let us know - either by email WI.frome@gmail.com or on the Facebook event if you plan on attending and whether you would like us to supply flowers/jam jars?

Cake pops recipe

Cake pops are the new macaroons which were the new cupcakes, or something. Anyway they are super easy to make and very delicious to eat.



Credit: BBC

Here is the recipe for cake pops from our July meeting.

Ingredients:
Cake: this recipe uses 1 chocolate sponge made in a loaf tin, but this could be replaced with any sponge or fruit cake. You can either make a cake or buy a ready made sponge (shh no one will ever know).

Icing: this recipe uses chocolate fudge butter icing but you could use any thick, spreadable icing or frosting. Again you could make your own or buy ready made.

Chocolate, melted: we used white chocolate.

Sticks: we used white chocolate Mikados but you could use lollipop sticks or candy sticks. In fact Mikados turned out to be a bit unsuccessful with warm hands as they snapped so don't use them!

Decoration: sprinkles, sparkles, whatever takes your fancy

Method

1. Bake cake and leave to cool completely. Or take cake out of packaging!

2. Cut crusts off of cake. This will ensure there are no lumps in your finished cake pops.

3. Crumble the sponge into a bowl. The finer the sponge the better. You could use a food processor to do this, your hands or a knife.

4. Add a tablespoon of icing to the sponge crumbs and mix with your hands. Keep adding one spoonful of icing at a time until the mixture comes together in a dough like consistency and forms one large ball. Too little icing and the mixture won't hold together, too much and it will be sloppy. This is a crucial stage!

5. Refrigerate for at least half an hour.

6. Now roll ping pong sized balls of cake mixture and place onto a lined baking sheet.

7. Refrigerate for at least half an hour.

8. Break the white chocolate into an oven proof bowl and put into the microwave on 20 second blasts until melted. Be careful not to over cook or the chocolate will separate.

9. Put a blob of melted chocolate on the end of a stick and push into a cake ball. Do this for each cake ball and leave the chocolate to dry. This will only take a minute or so and the chocolate will act like glue to hold the stick in place.

10. Now dip each cake ball into the melted chocolate ensuring an even coverage. Stand the cake pop upright to dry - you could use a cup, jam jar, floristry oasis, whatever you have to hand.

11. Before the chocolate dries add your decorations. For inspiration google 'cake pops' there are hundreds of pages of inspiration. If in doubt hundreds and thousands look quite nice.

12. Sit back, feel smug at your baking wonder and eat cake pops.