A few of you have asked for the recipes for our birthday cakes – if you’re a keen baker, treat yourself and your friends with this one – everyone said it was delicious!

This year’s birthday cake (above) was a Honey Chocolate Cake.  I decided to make this cake with Fairtrade ingredients as it’s Fairtrade fortnight at the moment.  If you’d like more information about the Fairtrade Foundation, have a look at their website.  Sainsbury’s and the Co-op are the best supermarkets if you want to buy Fairtrade goods without the inflated price tag! They both stock an excellent range of teas, coffees, chocolates, spices and of course, bananas!  There’s also a Fairtrade shop in Eastleigh and our members recommend Rice Up Wholefoods in Southampton city centre.

The recipe is from Nigella Lawson’s recipe book Feast but it’s also online at Nigella’s site.  I’m known to tinker with recipes a little – the only change I made this time was to make the glaze with 100g of milk chocolate and 75g of dark chocolate – the recipe suggests it all to be dark chocolate but I find that can make it a little bitter tasting (for me anyway)! I used Sainsbury’s Taste The Difference Fairtrade Belgian Milk and Dark Chocolate, Cadbury’s Bournville Fairtrade cocoa and Sainsbury’s Fairtrade light brown soft sugar.

The cake should be adorned with very cute little bumble bees made of marzipan and flaked almonds but unfortunately time got the better of me this week!

The WI are very keen on campaigning about our dwindling bee population, so maybe this cake and its decorations may be seen at another Sotonettes meeting soon!

If you’re a keen baker too, I’d love to hear from you and share ideas!

Jen x
(Sotonettes Committee)