An overwhelming amount of icing sugar

I've always been a baker - back to when my mom would give me the scraps of a ball of dough to knead and inevitably coat in endless amounts of flour. I've always baked for fun (I went through a banana bread a week phase in my first year of university, I had to stop when my trousers were struggling to button up...), for friend's birthdays, gatherings, etc... but never more than that. I dabbled in a cake stall last spring to mixed results, but otherwise reserved my baking for pop-ups and personal things, until a few weeks ago. I got a call from a friend saying his housemate was opening up a cafe around the corner and they needed a cake supplier. Within a couple hours, I had a fresh out of the oven lemon drizzle cake for them to sample, and by the next day, it was sorted.


Three weeks later, I've been baking 2-3 cakes a week for them (hopefully more as business grows), with each week bringing a new challenge on what to bake next. Because they are brand new and I didn't exactly have a cake list ready to go, we've been testing different cakes every week, seeing what sells best, what tastes best, and what recipes I can pull together that fit the ethos of the cafe - honest, simple, and of a great quality. It's pushing me to expand my baking knowledge, and the chance to hone my skills a bit - they always say practice makes perfect, so these weekly baking sessions surely can't hurt (especially since I'm no longer the one eating all of the results...). The guys at the cafe are brilliant too, up for anything and make THE BEST coffee I've ever had.

Think orange drizzle, carrot, chocolate cinnamon cakes, a treacle tart popped up last weekend, and the Aussie classic, lamingtons, are in the case this week. Supplying cakes is a different beast to baking them for your own purposes - its more about creating something that suits the place that will sell it, something that is eye-catching and appealing from the name and look, enough that people will want to pay actual money for it. If you want to taste some of my ongoing experiments and drink AMAZING coffee (and they have a smashing breakfast and lunch menu too), head over to Embassy East on Hoxton St and check out the disco cake box to see what's on offer.