The cakes of Midland Railex

There are two things I know for certain about the readers of this blog. First, most of you are here because you are bored at work and I'm more interesting than an Excel spreadsheet. Second, you like cake. The views on my Flickr account show this, so today, here is a special post just for you.

We ate lots of cake last weekend at Midland Railex. Well, not lots perhaps but an elegant sufficiency with a wider selection than normal. Here are the highlights:

First we have a mini lemon meringue pie. This came from Luke Evans Bakery found between the show and our hotel. Driving to the digs on the Friday night, we were alerted by the delicious smell. Returning in the morning, time was found to drop in and pick up supplies.

The pie was excellent, if a little explosive. That meringue has quite a stiff exterior around the soft centre. Were I to comment, perhaps the lemon could have been a little more tart but that is being picky. One to eat sitting down with a plate though as the state of the floor around the back of the layout testified.

As is usual with model railway exhibitions, tea facilities were provided to refresh the exhibitors who were dehydrated from all the chatting going on.

Less common is to find a huge selection of cakes available, most in handy bite sizes. To help you work out how bite sized, the cake is displayed in the back of a 7mm scale GWR wagon. Obviously this was just for the photo and we didn't run the train around like this. That would have been unprofessional and anyway, some scroate could have nicked it.

The cakes were lovely. No payment was required but donation buckets were provided for Breast Cancer care and money was collected from anyone with a hint of decency as well as many of the exhibitors.


There is one cake that deserves a special mention. On the Sunday, a challenge appeared:

Regular readers will know that I like chocolate cake. They will also know that I am not afraid to try new cakes so the idea of mixing the devils own beetroot in with chocolate presented an interesting opportunity.

You will notice that the cake has to be cut, leaving it to the individual to decide how brave they are feeling. I was modestly brave. There's no point in trying a sliver, take a normal slice so you can properly assess the taste.

Well, the cake was fantastic. Moist and with excellent texture. The only trouble was the taste. Chocolate: Good. Beetroot: Not so.

I get the idea. It was certainly well realised, but half a slice went in the bin. After three bites, I admitted defeat. Asking around, opinions varied. Matt on the Hornby Mag stand agreed with me, his colleague thought it delicious.

Still, it was an adventure.

Tomorrow, we'll look at the rest of the show.