My afternoon at the Glasgow Bake Off.

I had an e-mail a while back, inviting me to a Glasgow Bake Off event being held at The Cookery School in Glasgow in Conjunction with #Currysinthekitchen. As my regular followers will know I like baking, be that just dairy free for me to eat or dairy/egg/gluten/wheat free for Bob to eat. So I thought the day would be fun, so having cleared it at work I could get the day off I readily said yes please. 

I had to take a small diversion on the way up to pick up a cache at Mitchell Street, how amazing is the art work on the wall? Anyway I digress. 

the art work at the cache on Mitchell Street

We arrived and were met by Shaun from @joesbloggers who had organised the event in conjunction with Currys who have written up a summary post of the day along with some pictures that they took, feel free and pop over for a look at their take on the event. 

The group of us outside the Cook School (taken by Currys) 

After a seat, coffee and an introduction done by Gemma we all toddled off through to the kitchen which was set up ready for our first baking - which was scones

We were introduced to our chef for the day Danny McArdle

Danny would take us through the cooking of the day, doing some explaining on items like flours and baking powder as well as the different qualities of chocolate. He took us back to basic levels and had a great sense of humour so it was quite light hearted. He would show us what was expected from us and then we would off into our groups and make our own.  The day must have seemed a bit strange as everybody had cameras and phones and we were all tweeting and sharing on instagram whilst we watched and listened. 

Danny making his scones 

I have never been to a cook school before, and was impressed at the set up, from there being more than enough tools for us all to work with, to the fact all our workstations had a sign on the desk showing which spot our goodies went into in the oven so we got the right ones back. The staff were attentive and on hand if we needed anything. 
I teamed up with  Anne from Frock Trade and Tatyana from Secret Little Stars and this is them 

adding the raisins to the scones. 

While our scones were cooking we were shown how to make Victoria sponges. We then had a break in which we could eat our scones 

our scones rose amazingly well. 

here is Lis enjoying her scone 

 We used the recipe to make both a large sponge and a dozen small ones.  These were cooked and cooling ready to decorate while we ate lunch . 

making the sponge

Some of the work stations had Kenwood food mixers on, and two of these were given away at the end of the day.

Amy and Irene tweeting and baking

Here is Lis showing me her cakes.

We filled the sponge with cream and jam and dusted the top with icing sugar before slicing it. 

Here are the cakes I decorated, this has never been a skill of mine. My baking tastes good but doesn't look overly pretty. 

Whenever I fill a sponge I use "butter" icing, well dairy free margarine to be truthful, but one of the things we were shown today was how to make ganache, something I have never heard of. This involved double cream, which I cannot eat at all so I googled it when I got home and have since made it dairy free - recipe to follow.

All to soon it was time to pack up our wares and head home. We all got to pick up a goody bag to take home with us. 

listening at the end of the day. 

OH was over the moon as all the goods were made with butter which I cannot eat and never use in the house and he enjoyed how rich and creamy everything tasted. 

I had a fab day, some great laughs and met some new blogger friends. Have to say it was nice that they had not invited what I would consider to be foodie bloggers, there was a spread of fashion, beauty and parent bloggers like myself.  I want to say a huge thank you to everybody involved in making this a brilliant day. Its nice to get events up here north of the border.