If you’ve ever spotted a bunch of ladies carrying large cakes and looking furtive in the New Forest then well done. You have accidentally busted the local chapter of the Clandestine Cake Club.

This shadowy organisation started in the New Forest three years ago after its local founder, Gill Hepburn, went to a charity event and found herself chatting to a cheery lady about cakes. As you do.

“She mentioned the Clandestine Cake Club, which I’d never heard of, so I went home and Googled it,” says Gill, whose day job is working in finance for a firm in New Milton.

“I emailed the founder, Lynn Hill, and asked if I could set up one of these in the New Forest as we didn’t appear to have one. She said yes and sent me all the information.”

The ethos of the club, which Lynn Hill started in 2010 is:

Bake cake. Talk cake. Eat cake.

No pies, tarts or cupcakes are allowed – the offerings have to be sliceable because, Lyn Hill says, that makes them better for sharing.

Armed with the secret knowledge, Gill contacted a few of her friends and decided to hold the first meeting at her home in case not enough people showed up. She needn’t have worried. “Eleven people came, all bearing delicious cake.”

Now they meet once a month, all over the New Forest. “My thing is that we don’t pay for venues although some branches do,” she says. Gill contacts venues to ask if they can come and is usually received with open arms.

“The Filly Inn at Brockenhurst were lovely and made us very welcome, and another venue was so sweet, they actually made us a cake.”

Gill admits to being “quite strict” with her group. “I won’t let them know the venue until they tell me what cake they are bringing,” she says.

The information is given out three or four days beforehand although, for fun, she sometimes drops clues.

Once, for an Easter-themed meeting at the Sunny Side Up Cafe in New Milton she sent out the clue: “You can decide whether to put your eggs in sunny-side up”.

There is always a theme, too, from Hallowe’en to Christmas, to Mother’s Day and, in January, the “Diet Month” cake.

Her first cake was a good old Victoria sponge but Gill loves to experiment and after her Bailey’s Cake went down a storm, she tweaked it to be glutenfree (she also runs a clandestine gluten-free cake club as well) and recently baked a elderflower cordial cake with white chocolate ganache.

“It was nice and light but was so hot the ganache couldn’t set properly.”

She also enjoys incorporating secret ingredients, like the one she did for the April Fool’s Day theme. “No one guessed that the secret ingredient of my gluten-free lemon drizzle was mashed potato,” she says.

Her fellow clubbers are just as inventive. She’s seen bakers progress from the standard sponge to Rainbow cakes - where each slice contains seven colours – as well as become more confident at meetings. “People can be shy at first but although we all love Bake Off it’s definitely not a competition,” she says.

Many of the recipes come from the CCC cookbook which is launching a new tome A Year of Cakes in September, with ideas for every occasion you can think of.

Gill is particularly excited about this as she and a fellow NFCCC member have a recipe in it although: “I’m not allowed to reveal what they are.”

She will, however, reveal the favourite confection she’s ever made. “It has to be the parsnip, lime and ginger cake.”

Is this a clue to that book recipe, then?

She won’t say and I don’t blame her. It is, after all, a Clandestine Cake Club...

•Contact Gill at newforestcakeclub.co.uk.