Crail Harbour Gallery and Tearoom

I love the East Neuk of Fife. It's such a wonderfully scenic place. Both my daughters went to St Andrews University and it is, of course, the home of Taran Guitars where Rory Dowling makes some beautiful acoustic musical instruments (mostly guitars)

A shortish walk down the hill from the free car park near the tourist information office is Crail Harbour gallery and Tea Rooms. Selling art/crafty type things - perfect if you're one of those with a seaside themed bathroom - it also has seating inside and out.

On a nice day, sitting at one of the 5 tables outside in the small rear courtyard, overlooking the chicken run with a view to the Isle of May, there is nowhere better to have a cup of tea and a cake (main meals are also provided - with dressed crab a specialty).

What is decidedly NOT a specialty is the coffee and walnut cake I was served on my last visit. Now, fair's fair - it's homebaked (I assume) and the view makes up for a lot, and it was quite tasty... but whoever iced the cake clearly needs to go to Specsavers - they very nearly missed. That can be the only excuse for the parsimonious portion of coffee fondant icing both on top and in the filling. The Creme Fraiche, slice of lemon and (baby) strawberry simply weren't compensation enough.

Other cakes I have had there have been grand. This offering was a real disappointment.

Price: £3.95

Walnut Garnish: yes

Walnut in sponge: no

Sponge: 6/10

Icing: 1/10

Filling: hardly any - more of a scrape.

Shona's Home Baking, Hamilton, Scotland.

My friend Shona will never know how very close she came to toppling my Mum's cake as the gold standard...

There are a number of reasons for this:

She made it  for me despite the fact that:
1. She doesn't like coffee cake
2. She is allergic to walnuts

And it was magnificent! Added to the fact that I only had one slice, her husband only had one slice and she (for the reasons stated above) had none - so I got to bring the rest home with me :)

The sponge was perfectly moist and just solid enough to support the abundant icing. If the icing had been just a little bit more 'dense' then I'm afraid my Mum's efforts would be history. Shona's sponge allied to mum's icing would be the PERFECT CAKE.

That is not a claim I make lightly. But it is true.

Price: FREE (and produced at personal risk to the health of the baker!)

Walnut Garnish: yes
Walnut in sponge: yes
Sponge: 10/10
Icing: 9/10
Filling: yes - and plenty of it. Only just managed to fit the cake in the tin.

BB's Cafe, Boundary Mill

A trip out to Boundary Mill should never be undertaken lightly. It almost always involved buying stuff that you don't want, doesn't suit you and you only bought because, at the time, it seemed ridiculously good value for money.

The same cannot be said for the saddest offering of coffee cake available at BB's Cafe.

There is nothing I can say in its favour. I shall let the photograph tell its own story and allow you to reach your own conclusions (which, if they are in any way favourable towards this cake, are entirely wrong and you should be ashamed of yourself).

Price: £2.95

Walnut Garnish: no
Walnut in sponge: no
Sponge: 5/10
Icing: 1/10
Filling: hardly any - more of a scrape.

Manchester Central Library

My eldest daughter (like the other two) is a bit of a star. She is the archivist for the Royal Northern College of Music on Oxford Road, Manchester.

This only takes up 3 of her days though so,  a year or so ago, she set herself up as an independent archive and heritage consultant - offering professional archivist advice to organisations and companies who maybe didn't know where to start with their own archives or didn't have enough material to justify employing a full-time archivist.

Her 'spare' two days have proved to rarely be spare as she has worked with a number of organisations in Manchester including the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre, Contact  Theatre and the Manchester Refugee Support Network.

This latter consultancy involved her working with the archives in Manchester central Library - very handy as it's just next to the tram stop at St Peter's Square.

She sent me a message last week of a coffee cake that is sold in the library cafe and commented that it was "lush".

Such a description needed to be investigated for veracity so, as I was in Manchester for a meeting, I took the opportunity to have elevenses with @herarchivist. She had texted me earlier in the day to say that she couldn't actually SEE any coffee cake but, gladly, by the time I arrived it had been put on the menu.

It was, to my shame, my first time at the library - a magnificent building in the centre (appropriately) of the city.

Recently re-opened after an extensive refurbishment, the library offers all sorts of services (including free wifi). Of course, my interest was in the cafe and, specifically, the coffee cake therein.

First impressions were favourable. It looked nice and dark (lots of coffee, hopefully) and the icing was nice and thick. In a number of places I've been to recently if you wanted decaf coffee you had to make do with instant. But not here - ethically sourced as well. Big thumbs up.

So, did the experience match the first impressions? Mostly, yes.

The sponge was delicious - moist and beautifully chewy. Not in a 'claggy' way but dense enough that it didn't disintegrate when I put my fork in. And definitely coffee flavoured.

The icing was a little bit of a let down. The 'filling' icing was more fondant than icing and the icing on the top, whilst nice and plentiful, was only a little bit more solid. But the taste? Oh the taste was sublime. And the icing contained the occasional shard of walnut, too - always a bonus.

and so to the scores:

Price: £2.95

Walnut Garnish: no
Walnut in sponge: yes
Sponge: 10/10
Icing: 8/10
Filling: yes - and plenty of it - but not really icing.

Birthday Cake

I made it to 55 last week. A venerable age and one which was recognised by my wife with a present of a banana milkshake. (She says I'm difficult to buy for but I can't remember how many subtle, and unsubtle, hints I have dropped over the years about wanting a Gibson SJ200 - natural finish, obviously, not sunburst).

I might have been disappointed were it not for the fact that my mum (obviously even a more venerable age than myself!) had made me a coffee cake.

It needs to be known that a coffee cake by Pauline Roberts is the baseline by which all other coffee cakes are judged. So, how would this stack up against the other entries in this blog?

Here we go...

The icing was perfect. And, by perfect, I mean slightly stale and crusty. A common mistake is for cakes to have fluffy fondant icing. This is wrong. The icing needs to be stiff and substantial. Almost chewy. The only point lost on the icing is for the fact that it didn't go right down the sides of the cake. A schoolgirl error but one which, as she is in her dotage, I am willing to forgive. Even though it was my birthday cake. The filling needs to be obvious, not just an afterthought. It is an integral part of the experience - check the photo for how the filling ought to be done.

The sponge was exactly as it ought to be. Slightly claggy, nice and moist, with no chance of it falling to bits on the plate or on the fork (or in your hands, for that matter, I'm not always patient enough to use a cake fork).

There were no walnuts. This does not matter. Mum has never put walnuts on, or in, the cake. It has never been described as a 'Coffee and Walnut Cake' therefore their absence is immaterial.

The crux of the matter is, of course, that there ought to be so much coffee in the cake that it needs to be eaten before lunch if you are intending to sleep at night. The coffee needs to be in the icing and the sponge, giving both a dark texture and a genuine coffee flavour. At this, as with everything else, my mother excels.

And so to the scores on the doors...

Price: Free of charge

Walnut Garnish: no
Walnut in sponge: no
Sponge: 10/10
Icing: 9/10
Filling: yes - and plenty of it.

Banburgh Castle

We'd been to Banburgh Castle a few years ago and, despite it not being a National Trust property (and would, therefore, cost us actual money to go in) we had enjoyed it enough to decide to go again.

Set in a spectacular position right on the North East coast, the castle has a long history of varied inhabitants seeing combat on a number of occasions and also being used as a school, a hospital - and a private dwelling.

The castle boasts a small cafe, with not a great number of tables and even though the day was grey, overcast, cold and with fairly frequent showers, it was a struggle to get a table. Being a gentleman, I sat down to claim territory while Sara went and got the grub. The age of chivalry is not dead...

And 'grub' included a coffee cake.

It was only a small piece - but the icing looked nice and thick, the sponge was moist and tightly packed and there were big chunks of walnut visible, although none on the top. It should have been delicious. In fairness, it wasn't that bad. It just lacked 'something' and I've no idea what that was. The icing wasn't as sturdy as it had looked - much more 'fondant' than good, chewy icing. Maybe that was what left me feeling slightly underwhelmed?

I'm also writing this having just had a piece of my Mum's coffee cake so have to accept that all memories of previous offerings are somewhat tarnished (more of that in another post).

Price: £2.75
Walnut Garnish: no
Walnut in sponge: yes - lots and lots of nice thick pieces
Sponge: 8/10
Icing: 8/10
Filling: yes - a decent amount.

Kielder Castle

A holiday was called for. We'd been working hard and fancied a few days away. So, not having spent a great deal of time in Northumberland, we thought we'd venture that way and just relax, making the best use we could of our National Trust memberships.

We stayed in a lovely farmhouse B+B (Tosson Tower Farm) just a couple of miles out of Rothbury.

Setting off early in the morning, we knew that we'd be too early to book into our accommodation so decided to check out Kielder Water and Forest Park en route to take up a couple of hours.

Walks, mountain bike hire - all the things you'd expect of a good country park - with a castle in the centre. Now, it's not really a castle - more of a hunting lodge with a few displays of old gamekeeping implements and some stuff about recycling and the stars (all to do with the world famous Kielder Observatory). And there was a cafe, and free wifi - what's not to like?

The coffee cake, that's what's not to like. The staff member who served us clearly would have rather been somewhere else and, as the cake crumbled as she put it on my plate she just picked up the bit that had fell off and sort of jammed it up against the bit that was left. Maybe she thought it would prove that it was rustic, artisinal and home made?

The sponge was dry and loose, the icing hardly there and looked as though it had been added as an afterthought. Maybe it had been. Mind you, it was only £2.20 so I suppose I should make allowances.

Still, the wifi was handy and, after our snack we headed out to navigate the longest forest drive in the UK (£4.50 toll).

Price: £2.20
Walnut Garnish: no
Walnut in sponge: yes
Sponge: 4/10
Icing: 3/10
Filling: yes - but only just.