All go at Dish & Spoon HQ in March ….we’ve had a particularly exciting start to the month. When the lovely Katy Lunsford (www.katylunsford.com) suggested we worked together on a ‘day in the life of a wedding cupcake baker’ shoot for  Your Manchester Wedding magazine and our thoughts in this order were:

1)     yey we would love to work with such a cracking photographer on such a fab project

2)     woop, woop we get to feature our work in a lovely mag

3)     yikes … we’re no oil paintings – lets hope the camera does lie`

4)     best get some nice biscuits in for a days work

Anyway, we had a fab day, Katy captured every aspect of pulling together a wedding tier from filling 100 cases with mix to sprinkling 100 times over J. We absolutely love the shots (take a look at www.facebook.com/dishandspoonfood for the album – more photos to follow later) and we’re really rather chuffed that we will see ourselves in print very soon.

P.S. we scrubbed up quite well in the shots (so evidently the camera does lie!) and the biscuits we got in were chocolate hobnobs (in case you were wondering?)

 Phew, what a weekend! Feels like we have been baking all things red and heart shaped non-stop since Thursday, but we can now safely say it was more than worth it. Our little tea room has never seen so much lovin’ – and we have never received so many orders for special cakes that made all of us cry ‘Awwww!’ in unison. A particular fave included four cupcakes each iced with a significant date – whoever said romance was dead has clearly never tried saying it with cake.

A bit further away over at the Arndale in Manchester City Centre, our special pop-up cake stall made its debut in Topshop and was almost as equally busy! Clearly everyone was of the same opinion as us that cakes and shopping are the best pairing since Fred and Ginger, as it was a huuuge success – selling out of everything both days. Massive thank you to all the staff at Topshop who made us feel so welcome in their store.

One last thank you going to everyone who took the time to come see us in Topshop and at Dish & Spoon HQ over the weekend, you are all amazing! Can you all be our Valentine’s?!

J xxx

If you’ll excuse our (pretty damn terrible) pun for a moment, we have some extremely exciting news for you guys. Anyone who has been keeping a keen eye on our Twitter page will know that we recently announced, after weeks of having to keep it quiet – which was hard work believe us – that this weekend we have been asked to open up a pop up cake stall at Manchester Arndale’s Topshop store.

We will be providing hard working shoppers with all our usual cupcake favourites, as well as our special Valentine’s guest cupcake, ‘Easy Lover’, all served from our vintage themed stall, made up of hand painted apple crates and baking paraphernalia. We’re hoping we’ll fit in perfectly and that our sweet treats will go down a storm!

We will be in store all day on both Friday 11^th and Saturday 12^th February, and are looking forward to it very much. Come and say hello, cupcakes and shopping – now that really is a case of having your cake and eating it too J

Much love from (a very excited) Dish & Spoon HQ x

Show just how much you love your nearest & dearest through the medium
of cake this year . We’ve been toiling away hard at a special Valentine
menu here at Dish & Spoon central and before we reveal it, we have to excuse in advance our liberal use of innuendo (you’ll see why later!). It goes without saying that we’ve got bespoke cupcakes available to order but in our quest to be about all lovely things baking-related we’ve also got lots of other fabulous treats from splendid red velvet cake to passion cake, honey buns & cream teas just for 2!

Sooo, why not pop into our shop or even ‘like’ our facebook page and have a looksy at what you can treat the lover in your life to this year!

Yeesh where did 2010 go?! As you may be aware it was a busy old year for the Dish & Spoon gang and whilst we admit we were a little pooped by the end of it, we are now rested and refreshed and raring to go in 2011 (excuse liberal use of alliteration!)

Tons going on here this January so in no particular order here goes …

1. The January bake sale is well & truly on. From Monday to Friday, you can enjoy half-price teas, coffees & hot chocolates when you sit-in our lovely café and enjoy one of our yummy cakes!

1. Love cake, hate gluten?? We’ve been toiling away at some gluten-free recipes recently and we figured that January would be the perfect month to release them on you all after all those bloated stomachs from Christmas over-indulgence! Expect layer cakes, cupcakes and brownies – the Nutella cake went down a storm at the weekend so come have a looksy and get in on the gf action!

1. Love is most certainly in the air this month and we are spreading some of this love around by offering FREE stand hire (worth £30) for all wedding cake bookings made (and deposits paid) in January. Our prices start the same as those in our shop (we don’t believe in charging you more for weddings) and 2011 is booking up fast so give us a tinkle if you want to take advantage of this offer. We will also be exhibiting at The Castlefield Rooms wedding fayre on Sunday 23^rd January as their preferred wedding cupcake supplier – if West Didsbury is a trek for you, come and see us there and try some free samples.

That’s it from us for now – sorry for being so lame on getting the blog post up…will do better in future promise J

 With only three days left until the big day, the end of 2010 is just around the corner. Although none of us over here can quite believe we’re on the verge of 2011 (bye bye noughties!), we can certainly look back on this year and feel extremely pleased with all the cakey goodness we’ve delivered over the past twelve months. J

Tomorrow, Wednesday 23^rd December, marks the last day of opening this year – and it’s a late one, closing at 8pm! Then our kitchen elves are off for a well deserved rest, returning on Wednesday 5^th January with lots of exciting offers and sweet surprises to kick those post-Christmas blues into touch!

All that’s left for us to say is a massive THANKYOU to all our customers, that’s you guys… for all your love and support in making our little shop such a success these past few months, we couldn’t have done it without you all. We’re certainly looking forward to getting the ball rolling on another delicious year, see you all there! xxx

Festivities are well under way here at 230 Burton Road! Our little kitchen elves are whipping up lots of Christmas treats for all you hungry shoppers, so escape the mayhem out there are join us for a nice relaxing cup of tea, some fantastic cakes, and a range of brilliant christmas gifts…

Xmas cakes and other sweet treats

Our xmas menu is available now, and you can pre-order by phone or email and pick up from the shop right up to 8pm on the 23^rd December…

Plus all our cakes can be beautifully gift wrapped to make the perfect little pressie!

Click here to download our full xmas menu. Here’s a small selection of what we have on offer:

• Home-made mince pies, with home-made mincemeat & orange zest pastry
• Loads of christmas cupcake flavours, including orange cointreau, baileys dream and rum & raisin, plus beautifully decorated xmas-themed cupcakes
• Festive Cakes, like our apple + amaretto cake, a spiced chocolate bundt cake and chocolate amaretti torte
• Slices, biscuits + boozy brownies

Gifts

We’re well stocked with a fab little range of great gifts for your loved ones, including

• Cupcake decorating kits
• Hand knitted tea cosies
• Vintage cake stands an mixing bowls
• Gift vouchers

Classes

And if all that wasn’t enough, we’ve still got a few spaces left for our cupcake decorating classes and baking classes! They make a brilliant gift, or a nice little treat to your good self. See our classes blog entry for more details…

Bob along to the shop to see our full range in all its christmas glory!

A festive cupcake wrapped up so prettily!

The Christmas countdown has officially begun over here at 230 Burton Road, and our little teashop is serving as a cosy sweet treat filled haven away from the white stuff. To start the festive season in style we will be hosting a special late opening tomorrow night, Thursday 2^nd December, serving cakes and delicious hot drinks, such as our homemade mulled spiced apple juice, until 8pm.

Alongside our usual sweet stuff, tomorrow night marks the launch of our Christmas gift range, so come along and have a nosy at the cupcake kits, tea cosies and mug warmer sets, bespoke Christmas cupcakes, gift vouchers, and much, much more. We may be a little biased but we reckon any of these would beat those naff socks with Rudolph’s face on that you got last year any day!

Cupcake decorating classes for the New Year are also selling like hot cakes (pardon the pun), with the January 12^th date having already sold out! Have no fear however, there are still places available for January 19^th, and newly announced date of February 2^nd.  More information available over on November’s blogpost (http://tinyurl.com/2fmepwf) - or by popping in and having a chat with one of our lovely staff.

If all this wasn’t reason enough to pop in and say hello, our new ’12 Days of Christmas’ themed window was unveiled yesterday, complete with handmade gingerbread house taking centre stage. If that isn’t enough to get you in the mood for decking the halls, we don’t know what will.

Hope to see you soon! Much love and festive sprinkles from The Dish & Spoon HQ xx

Bewildered by icing? Perplexed by piping? Mystified by weighing and folding? Then we may just have the answer here soon at Dish & Spoon HQ. We are very pleased to announce dates for our Cupcake Decorating classes, all taking place in our lovely litte tea-room…

Cupcake Decorating Classes, £35

A two hour session which will include:

* tea,coffee or hot choc and some of our scrumptious cake on arrival

* making and colouring the perfect icing

* flavouring the icing

* piping icing in 2 different techniques

* working with sugarpaste to create your own hand-made sugar decorations

* pulling everything together to create your own beautiful cupcakes!

All of the above is done in small classes of 6-8 people so that you get the right level of attention from your tutor (the master baker). And you’ll get to take all of your fantastic creations home to eat (or look at lovingly and adoringly!). We can even hold private sessions for you and your friends if you would like to!

If this sounds like something that tickles your fancy, or perhaps it might be the perfect present for mum this Mother’s Day then book your place now!

Current Dates
6th & 27th July – limited spaces left

3rd & 17th August

7th & 28th September

To book your place, please phone us on 0161 637 5517, email us on thebaker@dishandspoonfood.co.uk, or if you fancy, you can buy from our staff at the tea room on Burton Road, West Didsbury.

Looking forward to seeing you all!x

We know, we know, it seems to be sneaking up sooner every year, but here at The Dish and Spoon HQ we can’t help but start to feel a little bit festive as some delicious smells are wafting through from the kitchen… Today it’s the Spicy Apple & Date Crumble slice getting us in the mood for the season to be jolly.

If you’re still feeling the cry of your inner Scrooge (Bah Humbug!) we promise we will be easing you in gently over the coming weeks, rather than overdosing too early on the tinsel and sparkles. Our kitchen elves will be whipping up some home made mincemeat to go in our delicious mince pies, as well as sprinkling a bit of their magic over some special winter warmer drinks.

Hoping to see you all soon, come see us and warm up with some cake and maybe a hazelnut latte..? ‘Tis the season to be indulgent after all. Ho ho ho!xx