The early days…

For 15 years I owned one of the most popular and longest established cafes in Cromer, in North Norfolk…

During this time I taught myself to bake, although when I was younger my dad and I used to bake together now and then.  At first, I baked just to supply my cafe customers, but then increasingly as word got around for external customers too.

Our 2019 launch

In 2019 I was ready for a new challenge, so I sold the cafe, crossed my fingers, and set up my new baking business.  And what a challenge it turned out to be!

We started off focusing only on creating bespoke celebration cakes (for weddings, anniversaries, big birthdays etc.), but 12 months later came lockdown, and celebrations and large gatherings were banned or discouraged.  To survive we had to quickly reinvent ourselves.

We did this by supplying cakes by the slice to the home market and set up a delivery and postal service. As things began to open up again, we also started to supply wholesale to a small number of local cafes, and it soon became clear that we needed more space in which to operate efficiently.

As a result in early 2022 we converted our garage into a commercial kitchen, renamed it The Bakehouse, and the photo shows me and my husband and business partner, Laurie.

Today all this has resulted in a broader offering and so a more balanced business to the one we originally envisaged, enabling us to offer a wider range of choices and options to our customers.

For The Love Of Baking

I have always been creative and had a love of baking, so to be able to combine the two and build a business out of this is a dream come true.