Welcome...
Not everyone is able to come and test our claim that we make our cakes by hand. So here's a glimpse in pictures of what we do at the bakery.
All our cakes are made in small batches - about 20 different cakes each day.
Goods In
This is where it all starts. It's a vital part of what we do - receiving all our ingredients and checking they are as they should be.
No cake mixes. Just traditional ingredients for cakes albeit in large quantities - 25kg bags of flour and sugar instead of 1kg in your larder at home...
Prep
The cake tins get greased or lined and everything is made ready for the batches the bakers are going to make each day.
Carrots are grated; bananas peeled; lemons zested; nuts sorted and checked; jams poured out; raisins and sultanas checked for stalks.
Baking
Ingredients for each batch are weighed, sieved and gently blended together in a mixer. Shortbread bases are pressed out by hand and the toppings are added to the trays. Cake batter is taken out of the mixer and measured into cake tins.Then onto the trolley and into the oven.
In the pictures you can see coconut going onto the raspberry jam and a trolley of scones coming out of the oven.
Decorating
Icings are prepared in advance and, once the round cakes have cooled, the sponges are turned out onto tables and iced, glazed and decorated by hand.
With the traybakes, chocolate, caramel, lemon syrup, honey and other very nice things are added once they are cool enough.
That's an orange & cranberry cake on the table being glazed.
Freezing
Everything we bake is frozen very quickly to preserve its quality.
Otherwise the cakes will only stay fresh for a few days - just like at home. It also makes it a lot easier to cut sponges if they are frozen.
Packing
The packing team cut and pack all our cakes. Critically, they are the last people to see the cakes before our customers receive them and they know they must only pack cakes that are absolutely right.
Wash Up
Too often the unsung heroes. They wash and dry large quantities of tins, trolleys and equipment so that everything can be rapidly recycled back to the bakers to make the next batches.
