Secluded Blogfest 2013: Introducing Lynn Hill of The Clandestine Cake Club

The Secluded Blogfest is coming... And oh my giddy aunt, are we excited! 

In the build up to my next event over the coming weeks, I thought I would have some fun getting to know what my guest speakers have planned to talk to our lovely guests about on Saturday 11th May at our secret bloggers hide out.

Next up, I am THRILLED to introduce Lynn Hill of The Clandestine Cake Club. 

I would like to explain Lynn's huge success and my love of her passions from the very beginning. You may not know that she has a blog titled "The Secret Tea Room", of where she started her love of her baking with her own secret tea room in early 2010, even helping me at the very start of "The Secluded Tea Party" days thanks to her extreme kindness and knowledge, her passions were a huge support and have helped us to remain friends to this day. 

Due to the Clandestine Cake Club really taking off and keeping this lovely lady so busy, she doesn't host pop up afternoon tea events any more, as they are so time consuming, however, she does still blog about her fun and games, sharing her exciting new adventures as she goes. 

Lynn's most recent posts have been titled "Just Do it" as a series of things she's always wanted to do and has decided to go ahead and do them, including various baking classes at Betty's of Harrogate... I simply love living one of my dream cookery schools through her posts, I must get up there one day soon to learn from the very best of the best - it looks fab! 

When I first met Lynn in person at a London-based event in February 2010, we got chatting about our own events and ideas and she ran this crazy sounding idea, or so she thought, to run a free cake swapping club... not a competition, no money changing hands, no judging, simply for people in Leeds who loved cake & tea as much as she did and to meet up with her over a cuppa to make & eat cake, talk about cake & take cake home afterwards.... it was all about the cake. At that time in 2010, everybody was cupcake crazy... even I had tinkered with a similar idea, but with cupcakes not only 6 months earlier... so I knew it would work and I offered to run a Cambridge meet if she decided to franchise and roll out the idea....

And boy did that idea spread, like wild fire in fact, with over 150 Clandestine Cake Clubs world wide (and now rising rapidly!), Lynn has made quite the name for herself and I'm so proud of her and being just a small part of it myself, it's boosted my own social life ten fold co-hosting the Cambridge CCC and I never get tired of seeing the wealth of baking talent and geekery out there, it's just fantastic! I'm even helping to judge a local "Bake Off" competition as a result of my own cakey exploits, so you never know where it might take you!

And with the success of the CCC, not only has Lynn received a superb book deal and recently launched her first cookbook with tried & tested recipes added by Clandestine Cake members (see Page 210 for my own recipe ahem ; ) , but she has recently secured an amazing sponsorship for the club with Yorkshire Tea - she was even lucky enough to nab herself two seats on a very special Orient Express Afternoon Tea Train event last week, of which I had been invited to join her, but could not make it - to say I was gutted is an understatement, however her lovely hubby got to go in my place and I couldn't think of a cake-widower more suitable for it, he is a star and so supportive of Lynn's endeavors, what a lovely man he is too! 

Lynn will be sharing her exciting stories, as well as blogging & social media advice on all aspects of networking and media, as well as talking about her journey from blogging to writing a book with The Clandestine Cake Club and she has agreed to share just some of the topics she will be sharing with you here as a teaser:

# Clandestine Cake Club Journey 

# How it all started 

# The impact that social media has on the success of the club

# Some Do's & Don'ts when it comes to media attention

# Stop giving all your valuable knowledge away for free 

# The importance of networking 

And that's just for starters...  Lynn is a lady you will want to listen to for days I can assure you, so do use the networking time throughout this event to talk to her and ask any burning questions within the Q&A session as part of her session. 

Move over Mary Berry, Lynn is the queen of cakes, so we have an exciting proposition for our afternoon tea stop throughout the day at the Secluded Blogfest... we will actually be having our very own Clandestine Cake Club at the end of our set of talks on the day! 

So if you are a keen baker and are booked to come along, please do bake a cake (bring along a tin to take some home!) and we will provide the tea & coffee to go with it!... We plan to show you how the CCC works and you will also have a chance to get your cake sampled by the lovely Lynn herself - very exciting! 

For more info on how the Clandestine Cake Club actually works, pop the kettle on & enjoy a brew whilst you watch this fantastic video on how it all works, it's great fun! 

Miss Sue Flay

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To read more about this event, including info on all speakers, please click here. 

To book your ticket for The Secluded Blogfest 2013, please click here.

For more info on Lynn Hill at The Clandestine Cake Club, please click here.