Went to a brilliant ‘Art Happening’ tonight. Hate to sound pretentious but not sure how else to describe it. Dear friends Emma and Chin were exhibiting their insanely brilliant work ‘Ghost Jumps  and Worm holes . The event was a collective of East London artists who have taken over the old Innocent smoothie building. It was part indoor festival part warehouse party but with a lot of other elements thrown into the mix; vintage clothes, dolls, victorian images with their heads replaced by balls of real hair (weird and erie).

The event got off to a great start as far as I was concerned when we walked in o the lovely site of a cake stall. You know how much I like that sort of thing, it immediately lifts my mood. It was set up like the one in the Old Buckenham Fete so I felt immediately at ease. I bought a few Russian Teacakes, which I am going to have to make very soon (I will share the recipe on the blog), a slice of chocolate cake and the last bit of lemon polenta cake, which I insisted include all the crumbs and scraps from the plate (well it was rather a small slice!). I spent £5 which I thought was good value, not much more than the Norfolk fetes and a damn site cheaper than in most London eateries! I spent so much that they even gave me a free cup of tea, Earl Grey no less!

It was such a fantastic location for the event, it felt like an old fashioned department store with different artists displaying on walls and tables in different spaces, it was like an arty magical mystery tour where you never new quite what you were going to stumble upon. I was drawn to this beautiful pattern which up close you realize is full of earth worms and the other which is clearly cats.

Chin and Emmas work was a mixture of the beautiful and the macabre, subverting images with shocking flourishes (most to shocking for this page). But they are always executed with a wit that makes them endearing and many of them have a strange beauty and retro air that makes them covetable to grace your living space.

The ones that I covet are; ‘Monkey Woman’ and ‘It Takes Two to Tango’.

The event is on until Sunday and then moves East

Chick out http://keelertornero.com to see more of their work.

I am incredible lucky to do what I do for a living, there is nothing quite as much fun as piping candy coloured swirls of icing on a cupcake before drenching them in delicate sprinkles and glitter. The thing about cupcake decorating classes is that they appeal to everyone which means you get a great cross section of people coming along. Take last Saturdays lesson. We had a couple of elegant ladies from Japan who had come over especially to do the class. One of them didn’t speak a word of English so the other had to translate for her but what she lacked in understanding she made up in pure creativity. It is very rare that someone comes to a cupcake decorating class for the first time and is immediately able to execute such perfect swirls and blooming marvelous roses. Had there not been the language barrier I would have been tempted to offer her a job although come to think of it Japan to London would be one hell of a commute. Although if she thought nothing of coming all that way for a cake decorating class then perhaps she would be interested.

A fete worse than….

Last week I did a mini tour of village fetes. Call me old fashioned but I can honestly say that there are few things that give me more pleasure than a village fete. Or to be more honest (with myself) there are few things that give me more pleasure than the cake stall of a village fete.

On Sunday we went to Gissing which is a tiny village, very near my mother in laws, so I wasn’t expecting much. There was a definite clown theme at this event and I was glad that my friend Fi who is both clown and doll phobic, wasn’t there although we did bump into her step dad, brother, wife and kids. There was a very limited amount of jumble although my daughter found a lovely and ‘directional’ colour block dress and I found some  cute Uggs for a two year old but which, with Cosy Mae’s exceptionally long feet will probably serve her well for her first winter.

The café was situated in the school building where we sat on teeny, tiny chairs in the miniature hall and tucked into a generous slice of Victoria sponge, a great wodge of lemon layer cake and a sticky square of ginger cake. This was my least favourite, all spicyness drowned out by an over powering flavour of dark brown sugar. The lemon was lovely and light with a good zingy flavour but the true star was the Victoria sponge which was fluffy and flavourful with just the right amount of jam and butter cream in the middle, although I prefer fresh cream in the centre ideally. My mother in law who does not have the sweetest of tooths opted for a cheese scone. Having been categorically been told no by both my husband and teenage daughter at my suggestion to have more cake or a cream tea (these looked terrific with a generous portion of hand whipped cream) I settled on taking home a bag of cheese scones (all cakes and scones were £1, reasonable considering the size of the portions). These were later warmed and slathered with butter before being munched companionable by the fire over a game of scrabble.

The following day was New Buckenham Fete of which I have fond childhood memories. Unfortunately it did not live up to these, the culprit was the cake stall. We arrived at 3pm and it had almost run out! Luckily I thought to go straight in to have a look, had I not we would have missed out altogether and what a joyless outing a fete with no cake would have been.  Everything was priced 70p, which seemed a lot considering the size of the portions. There was one weeny piece of lemon layer cake, it was literally a mouthfu,l so I popped it in my mouth as it was too small to share. I then tried to make a choice out of what was frankly an unappealing selection. There was so little choice that people were actually paying 70p for a slice of buttered malt bread! Shocking that so few people had got involved with the baking as the cake stall is usually the biggest earner at a fete. I ended up with a generous slice of carrot and coconut cake. Something I would not normally go for especially as it looked like one of those ‘helathy’ vegan, sugar free cakes that I go out of my way to avoid. I was pleasantly surprised it had a light moist texture and rather a delicious if unusual flavour. No sooner had husband and I finished it than I went back to get another slice and discovered that it had sold out. Not just that cake but the whole stall! To say it was very disappointing doesn’t really go far enough.

We popped round to some dear old friends where my sweet tooth was sated by ginger spiked biscuits that had been blanketed in bitter chocolate. When my mum arrived I took her for a look at the fete. It was well worth the revisit as we cleaned up on the book-stall – best of all were books for Cosy Mae; a wonderful old fashioned fairy tale anthology filled with evocative paintings and another full of lullabies. I was thrilled to find a selection of Amelia Jane books including the school one which I had as a child, even more excitingly we got one about her visit to the fete. My teenage daughter Carmen also bought an elegant red shirt-dress and a pair of stripy leggings for £1.50 (they were the only things on the stall that weren’t in a size 18!). So all in all the day wasn’t a complete wash out, although the weather was.

On the Saturday however came the event that I had been waiting for. As a child my memories for the Old Buckenham primary school fete were joyful. Whether it was Christmas or summer they were always an event to remember. Over the years I have tried to find out if they still happen and if so when. You can imagine how delighted I was to discover that one would be taking place during our visit. It was not that easy to get to as we didn’t have a car and we were relying on my mother in law who had already made plans to go to the coast. Having accepted that we would have to miss it I then come up with an ingenious plan that meant everyone got to do what they wanted.

When we arrived at the fete it couldn’t have been more worth it. It was everything I remembered it to be and although it was not in the actual school but in the village hall next to it, this also was a venue tied up in my youth. It was in fact the place I had (although not really) enjoyed my first slow dance to the dreadful Hello (now known to me to be the worse song Lionel Ritchie ever wrote, why couldn’t it have been All Night Long, although that would have been more arms thrust in the air than tongue thrust in mouth, which could only have been a good thing).

So, firstly the sun was shining, not that intermittent way that we convince ourselves means we are having a decent summer, but that full on blazing, blimey I should have worn sun block (or at least factor 8, if they even sell it now days or can you only get 12+?). The cake stall, which was sublime had a steady stream of tea flowing and a wonderful array of cakes and slices, flapjacks and biscuits with a reassuring back up of large uncut cakes behind the counter. We started with a wedge of Victoria sponge and a square of lemon drizzle both generous proportions for 50p a piece. The sponge was lovely and light with a good balance of flavours but the lemon blew it out of the water. Though moist it had a light, fluffy texture and the tenderest of crumb. It was so good that I had to go back for more. After the second slice we did a recce of the site, mum bought some brand new (label still on) pale dusty pink Hanro PJ’s and I got my niece a Cath Kidson apron for when she helps me in the kitchen. We bought lovely Penny who has been feeding the cat a jar of damson and blackberry jam. We all got glitzed up on the jewelry stall, I bought dangly, diamante earrings that took me back to my days as a Can Can girl. The only minor disappointment was buying a 20p fairy cake from a stall that turned out to be dry and way to eggy, it was a calculated risk, but I took it anyway. By the end of the day I was ravenous but on discovering that the barbecue did not have Heinze ketchup but instead some vinegary thin substitute  (they must have thought me a terrible snob) I realized my only option was to go back to the cake stand where they had just started cutting a coffee cake. My appetite was satisfied by a slice of this which was soft and tasty and due to it’s lack of icing not overly sweet.

The winner of the vegetable monster competition:

Looking across the site, sun drenched and swathed in bunting the stalls looked fabulous, perhaps it was nostalgia or maybe just a sugar high but I could not wipe the smile off my face.