Why am I SO passionate about the ingredients I use in your wedding cake?

A wedding cake.. eggs, flour, sugar and butter, right? Yes that’s correct but if you go to a supermarket you will see that there are so many variations of ingredients available. Take flour for example, there’s the budget self raising flour, sponge flour, plain flour, pasta flour, strong flour, extra fine flour, wholemeal flour, rice flour and many more. Not all ingredients were created equally.

As a food expert I have learnt and experimented with ingredients over the years to guarantee that the cake for your special occasion will get comments like “that’s the best cake I have ever tasted” I pride myself and consider it a non-negotiable that the ingredients that go into my cakes are the best.

I buy local free range ‘wonky’ eggs from a local poultry farm 5 miles from my house. I love that I can help the farmer out by using eggs that are random shapes and sizes that may otherwise go to waste, they are just as delicious but cannot be sold in supermarkets. I use real British butter (salted only) if the recipe calls for oil then I use quality cold pressed oil. I always use self raising sponge flour by McDougalls, a tip I learned from Tracy from Cotton & Crumbs, it makes so much difference to the rise on a cake and creates a different rise to using baking powder and regular self raising flour in my opinion. I source my chocolate from HB Ingredients in the local town of Lewes and use a quality high cocoa butter chocolate which doesn’t have a list of ingredients as long as your arm, why does chocolate need to contain milk powder? (to make it cheaper that’s not a good reason to buy it for your wedding cake in my opinion) I also source my cocoa powder here and I buy single origin fair trade cocoa powder. I use real double cream to make the ganache and salted caramels.

All my fillings such as curds, caramels, and drizzles are made in house, it makes a huge difference to the flavour of a cake to use a homemade passionfruit curd as opposed to a jar bought, the zing is like nothing else and it tastes so fresh.

I buy tate and lyle or billingtons caster sugar, I have experimented with the unrefined versions which make the sponge a brown colour, which isn’t as desirable so I tend to stick to the British grown white caster sugar from sugar beet. When I make my sticky toffee or carrot cakes which contain brown sugar, then I do use Billingtons unrefined.

One fact about me is that myself and my husband have been keeping honeybees for the last 15 years, if I make a recipe with honey, it’s always our own! We also have quite a large kitchen garden here at our home in Herstmonceux and one of our passions is growing fruit and vegetables, plus edible flowers for cakes in our poly tunnel. I use as much of the fruit as I can to make jams and preserves/conserves for my cakes. The taste of fresh home grown fruit is like nothing else.

So there you have it.. sometimes flour, eggs, butter and sugar aren’t quite as straightforward as you might think and it’s my passion to ensure that your cake tastes incredible and leaves a your guests talking about it.