~A Cup of Tea with Lynn Hill~

At the end of January I had the opportunity of a quick chat
over a virtual cup of tea (Yorkshire of course) with Lynn Hill, creator of the Clandestine Cake Club and author of it's new Cookbook.I wanted to find out what had inspired Lynn's love of baking...

What was your background; how did you come to love baking? 
The last job I had before I retired in 2007 was in the customer service sector of a bank. I worked there for about 12 years. I came to love baking through cookery classes at school and my mother always cooked and baked at home, even when my sister and I were very young. At a very young age I seem to remember my father used to come home with a rabbit or 2 and mum would cook them. Rabbit is a delicious sweet meat, I remember it well. She used to bake bread, pies and cakes, all the traditional home baking that I'm glad to say is still done in many homes today.

Did you have an inspirational family member who taught you?
 I think we often used to watch our mums baking, and I'm no exception, but most of my baking and cooking skills are self taught with the odd cookery school attendance here and there. And of course I have a great selection of cookery books to fall back on.

How did you come to have a secret tearoom and where did the idea for CCC come from? 
The Secret Tea Room came about in June 2010 when I had my first afternoon tea in my own home, although the original idea came in 2009. It was part of the supperclub movement at that time and Clandestine Cake Club, which I created in December 2010, is essentially a spin off from that where I wanted to bring people together with Tea and Cake but without me doing all the baking, so what better way than to start a cake club. Sadly I don't have time for The Secret Tea Room anymore because I'm putting all my energy into CCC.

Did you enjoy the book creation process - which are the best bits of writing a cookbook?
I thoroughly enjoyed creating the book, from the moment members started to send in their recipes, including all the writing, seeing the photographs coming in and gradually page by page, seeing the book take shape. It  was quite an emotional moment when I received my copy of the book.  The photo shoots were great fun. Some of which I attended were London, Bath and Leeds and some CCC members were invited to join in the fun as well.

Available here