The Taste of Spring

Last weekend we took some time out of the kitchen to enjoy the warm spring sunshine.

As we lay in the park watching families play rounders and couples walk dogs, our thoughts turned to carefree Sundays when we were small.

Remember how exciting it was to pack a picnic with ham rolls, cucumber sandwiches, Victoria Sponge slices, beautiful biscuits and fizzy pop.

We may be a few decades older now, but those early memories have stayed with us and we still love nothing better than delicious home made treats.

So inspired by the wonderful weather, this week we've been planning our Easter menus.

So how do you fancy a zesty lemon cake sandwiched with our signature lemon curd, flapjacks with juicy sultanas, freshly baked blondies, or, my personal favourite, Easter nests with chocolate eggs?!

With those festive flavours of spring, even if the weather takes a turn for the worse, it will still be sunny at The Cakehouse.

Brilliant Bake Offs

As you know, at The Cakehouse we LOVE cake! So imagine our delight when we were asked to judge not one, but two bake offs!

Fired up with thoughts of moist cakes filled and topped with juicy jams and sweet icing, we headed to the Coffi House on Wellfield Road for the Roath Bake Off. The event was organised by local socialite Wayne Courtney, and what a feast he arranged!

The selection was varied and the standard high - how do you decide between spinach and goats cheese muffins, fruit tarts, pies, red velvet cakes and classic victoria sponge?!

Well, after tasting and deliberating (and tasting some more!) we gave each of the entries a mark for taste, presentation and originality, then finally we found a winner.
　
Kate Lloyd-Hughes's Earl Grey Chocolate Fudge Cake was creative and delicious, with an unusual combination of flavours that complimented each other beautifully in a light and moist sponge. There were also prizes for Lisa Watts with her Sticky Toffee Walnut Tart and Stefanie Lehman who baked a Pineapple Praline Creme Torte as well as a special award for 6 year old Silas - his chocolate covered Weird Cake which was green inside!

And thanks to all the bakers involved the bar has now been set for 1st April.

That's when we'll be judging the Spring Cake Off, and we hope you'll be involved too. All you need to do is pick up an entry form at The Milkwood Gallery or the Coffi House, and decide what to bake. Then at 2pm on 1st April bring your cake creation to The Milkwood Gallery.

We can't guarentee you'll win, but we can guarentee it will be a great afternoon - it may even be the tastiest event you'll visit this Spring!


Thank you to www.roathcardiff.net and @craftycakes on Twitter for providing us with pictures of the Roath Bake Off

That February Feeling...

It has been a funny few months for The Cakehouse.

Throughout November we had a weekly stall, online orders and then we put an offer on a shop at the end of the month.

Sadly, that was rejected in early December and the rest of the month went by in a blur (don't worry; we still had time to bake! Think rich fruit cakes with royal icing, moist chocolate gateaux with white chocolate snow flakes and golden brown waffles drizzled with syrup).

Then we had the January blues - too tired to write beautiful blogs, too sleepy to shop hunt. Thank goodness for apple and cinnamon loaves and slices of banana and chocolate cake to keep us going.

But now it's February and we've got that Friday feeling most days of the week! People have been contacting us to buy our cakes online, an invitation to a blog party resulted in complimentary comments from people in the know, and we've been asked to judge the Roath Bake Off.

So, it's a busy time, but an exciting one. And with March just around the corner, we'll certainly be springing into next month.

Baking, Believing and Bad Refereeing

At The Cakehouse we believe in everything we do – we believe in using natural ingredients, we believe in using local produce where possible and we believe that cakes are little luxuries which everyone should enjoy, which is why we are developing a range of gluten free and diabetic cakes.

And last week we believed Wales would make it through to the Rugby World Cup final. So to celebrate the team’s hard work and drive we baked a range of sporting sweet treats for our weekly cupcake stall at Deli-a-gogo. We had Gatland’s Great Vanilla Cake, Hook’s Nutty Feast and Bennett’s Banana Boom all topped with a little Welsh Flag.

As we watched the game before heading to the stall we were full of anticipation. Then, just 18 minutes in, Warburton was handed that red card and we joined in the Nation’s gasp of disbelief. But as we sat there feeling numb, the team fought on, and when the final whistle blew they had lost by just a point. Feelings of anger turned to pride - despite being a man down for more than an hour they had given the French a run for their money and nearly won.

So on Friday morning we’ll be up again to watch Wales in their 3^rd and 4^th place play offs. We’ll be eating Welsh Waffles and singing Bread of Heaven, hoping they can right the wrongs of last week’s game. But even if they lose they’ve already done the country proud, so there’ll always be a cake with their name on it at The Cakehouse.

The Big Apple Pie

A slice of pumpkin pie, a corner of carrot cake and bite of brownie, followed by cupcakes, more cupcakes and mini cupcakes too!

The list may sound like a cake lover’s dream, but that was the reality for Mariclare, our Marketing Director, last week when she arrived in New York on a fact finding mission for The Cakehouse.

The city is the spiritual home of the cupcake, with stores like Magnolia Bakery and City Bakery receiving world-wide recognition after featuring in episodes of Sex and the City, so it was the obvious place to go for some market research.

And even though Mariclare doesn’t walk in Carrie Bradshaw’s shoes (she wishes she owned a pair of Manolo Blahniks though!) she did follow her footsteps to the hottest cake places around.

At Lulu’s bakery in Chelsea she enjoyed a melt in the mouth dulce de leche cupcake sprinkled with lightly baked flaked almonds. She sampled the 100 calorie cupcakes at Melissa’s, before enjoying the delicious displays of cupcakes at Crumbs. Then, at Cafe M in Midtown, it was time for a steaming cup of earl grey and a chocolate macaroon, the latest craze to the hit Manhatten.    

As you’d expect with so many cupcakeries and bakeries in New York,  the flavours, decorations and quality of ingredients varied, but one thing remained constant wherever she went - people’s enthusiasm for beautifully presented baked goods.

And that’s why we’re so excited about opening The Cakehouse in Cardiff, so that all of us here can enjoy a slice of that Big Apple pie, without travelling half way across the world to get it.

Cakes-a-go-go!

It’s full steam ahead at The Cakehouse at the moment.

We’re getting much closer to finding a property, orders are coming in thick and fast on our website (we are about to cater the cakes at another wedding) and now we’re about to sell cakes at a deli.

Last week our cakewagon took to the roads of Cardiff to mark National Cupcake Week. We made several house calls and sold at organisations around the city. In fact we were so successful that this week Deli-a-go-go in Whitchurch has asked us back.

So between 9am and 12 on Saturday we’ll have a stall at their shop selling delicious cupcakes with free tasters and special offers on our 6 box of cupcakes.

So if you are in the area (or even if you’re not) you really should go-go there!

Jumping On the Cake Wagon

We’re getting ready for our favourite time of the year at The Cakehouse – National Cupcake Week. It starts on the 12^th September, and runs until 18^th, so to mark the occasion we’ll be getting on the cupcake bandwagon (or should that be cakewagon?) and going mobile.

Our cupcake van will be out and about in Cardiff on Saturday 17^th September selling all our regular flavours. The exact details of where we will be are still to be confirmed, but we will be keeping people posted on Facebook, Twitter and our website.

It’s the first time we’ve gone mobile, so it will be a journey of discovery. And who knows, if the road to London is paved with gold, perhaps the roads in Cardiff will soon be paved with cupcakes!

The Icing on Top

There are so many positives to opening The Cakehouse, we’ll have an endless supply of cake for one! We’ll also have the satisfaction of running our own business and hopefully there’ll be financial rewards too. But the best thing will be seeing the delight on people’s faces as they devour our culinary creations.

It will be a few more weeks yet until that can happen in our shop (we’re still finalizing the details before we sign on the dotted line) so we decided to launch a competition on the social network site Twitter to give away half a dozen cupcakes. We thought it would be the perfect way to give people a chance to start enjoying our sweet treats now, and you certainly got excited about it.

Our winner was chosen, and yesterday was the moment of truth as we delivered six raspberry cupcakes to Ceri Knight from Cardiff. We waited with baited to breath to watch her reaction, and we weren’t disappointed, because she absolutely loved them.

And we hope you’ll love them too when The Cakehouse opens in Cardiff, because customer satisfaction really will be the icing on the top of the business we’re cooking up!

Flavour of the Month

People often ask "what is your favourite flavour cake?" and here at The Cakehouse the answer is that it depends on our mood!

If you’re feeling bright and happy then only a zesty lemon drizzle cake will do. For those occasions when you’re feeling down treat yourself to a comforting chocolate cupcake, while a slice of syrup loaf cake is a sweet treat at any time!

So this month, as we’ve been concentrating on budgets and finding the right premise, we’ve been enjoying double chocolate brownies with wholesome peanut butter frosting and muffins made with handpicked blackberries.

But next month we may be choosing fixtures and fittings for the shop, so what will we want then? Coffee and walnut cupcakes? A classic Victoria Sponge? Or maybe even savoury spinach and cheese muffins.

One thing is sure though, no matter how we’re feeling, at The Cakehouse we’ll have a flavour for every month of the year – and more!

A Recipe for Success

Take two friends who have a passion for baking - one with an artistic flair and a real talent for creating amazing edible treats, the other with a head for business and a mind for marketing.

Add the idea to create Cardiff’s first ever sit down cupcakery and bakery specialising in afternoon tea. Leave to simmer.

In a separate bowl mix the skills of the two friends, creating The Cakehouse.

Then add social media, contacts and a gap in the market to create a real buzz around it.

Finally you need the perfect venue to display your delicious creation. This can be tricky to find on the high street, so don’t feel the need to turn it up to full heat, allow the process to cook gently.

You’ll know it’s ready when your senses (like ours are now at The Cakehouse!) start to tingle with the sweet smell of success.

Decisions, Decisions...

Chocolate, vanilla, lemon and poppy seed, coffee and walnut or raspberry ripple, when it comes to cupcakes there are so many flavours to choose from. Then there’s the frosting (do you go for classic vanilla, double chocolate, fudge, or maybe even cream cheese?) and don’t forget the sprinkles, chocolate twirls and delicious fresh fruit to decorate them with.

But today at The Cakehouse the biggest decisions have been about our new blog site! As you can see we had to choose the layout, font, background colours, twitter links etc etc. The list went on and on. We hope you like what we’ve done so far, it would be great to get your feedback, you can tweet us @the_cakehouse or email us thecakehousecardiff@live.co.uk

Our website www.thecakehousecardiff.co.uk is also being constantly updated with our latest news, and more importantly our culinary creations. Today we’ve been baking Lemon Coconut and Fudge Mocha cupcakes – deeeelicious!!!

With all that cooking and online organising it’s been a pretty tiring day. So all that’s left to do is sit down with a cup of a tea and a cake, but which one to go for? Decisions, decisions!