A Proper Ladies Afternoon - Mojito Genoise Cake & Carrot Cake Whoopie Pies

A couple of weeks ago I hosted a ladies afternoon at the Villas with about 12 lovely ladies, which also worked out well as our friend Dee was visiting from Australia. If you can remember she was a fantastic host when I went home in December and hosted a whole afternoon in her amazing 50's decor home.

I had recently bought a copy of Lorraine Pascale's - Baking Made Easy and eagerly flipped through straight to the cake section. The recipe for this cake caught my eye very quickly as my favourite cocktail is a mojito, so I was instantly wanting to give this one a go. When I've hosted an afternoon before, I've generally made a plethora of sweets, but thankfully I asked LK and Dee to help out and prepare other sweets which enabled me to focus my mojito... which actually took most of my day.

The cake turned out even better than I could have imagined, however I really need to learn to read through recipes as it was like I had gone in blind folded. There were a few things I'd never done before for example the sugar syrup which was infused with the mint leaves which was then pasted onto each half of the sponge. I then made the cake, and wow if only i had read through would I have been slightly more prepared, but my arm got a good work out, I basically ended up hand whisking for 20 minutes non-stop! No joke... I'm an idiot.. I have a very expensive Kitchen Aid which would have done it perfectly, but I have some great arms now because of it, no bingo wings for me! After the cake was done which I did had a bit of a disaster with as it didn't quite cook through the middle which was my laziness of not checking the oven temperature with my thermometer, another lesson learnt. The icing was done no problems and then last but not least the topping which itself alone was to die for. It was pecan nuts covered in sugar syrup which was then left to go hard and then blitzed in the food processor. It made about 4 times as much as we needed for the cake, but the leftovers didn't go astray making a great topping for vanilla ice cream. Miss Pascale had only covered the sides of the cake, but I'm not very neat so I just covered the whole cake, but the the pecan nut toffee topping was was worth covering the cake in. I would love to know how the get it so perfectly around the cake, maybe they roll it? Maybe not, but if anyone has tips let me know.

On the other side of the afternoon tea table was LK and Dee's Carrot Cake Whoopie Pies (from the new Hummingbird Cookbook) and these did not last long. They were filled with cream cheese icing and were to die for. After the last attempt at Whoppie Pies they decided to use the Yorkshire pudding trays which made them all uniform and look super cute.

Ladywives baking together...
what more could you need in life...

good palette knife skills LK!

For some savoury food, I used Miss Pascale's sausage roll recipe. I have made sausage rolls before, however I can only remember the basics from a distant memory of helping my Nana Peg. I always get asked for more and there are never leftovers when I make them, but this recipe helped me make this recipe just that extra bit special... no secret, just a bit of thyme!

Miss Meg being strapped by her Ladywife Kate... we didn't ask!

LK at her happiest... surrounded by instruments
I think she is going to play next time

serving up cake... I think I was the keenest to get into it!

It just looks at you...

I had a such a great afternoon entertaining all my lady friends and I think they got a kick out of the whole afternoon ;)

Also thank you to Helena for the lovely photographs...

Miss Helena on the left and Miss Dee on the right.. or was it Nicola???

Happy Baking x