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It literally feels like 2 weeks since the madness that was last year’s Valentines day. Lasting memory of Valentines 2011 has to be the steady stream of, dare we say it, men, flowing through the doors at 5.30pm (we close at 5pm) requesting that extra special box of cakes, alas we had sold out long before!

To 2012…if you think cake is the way to your loved one’s heart, we’ve a cracking cake line-up:

-          Box of Chocs – our own cupcake take on the classic Valentines gift

-          Spell out your special message across a box of cakes (Clinton Cards eat your heart out!)

-          Afternoon Tea served all weekend and on Tuesday 14^th… reservations required people. Its an extra special one with a little extra
special twist. Cream teas served all weekend too!

-          Cakey, lovey dovey menu served all weekend, including passion cake (it had to be done), red velvet cake, our mini heart victoria sponges, a special chocolatey & pink spongey cake affair (we don’t have a name for it, can you tell?!) and some rather fabulous cupcakes …think champagne and truffles

-          Our own extra special Jammie Dodgers..NOM

-          Lovely gifts including peppermint creams, scented teacup candles and brownie baking kits

You can even win afternoon tea for 2 people courtesy of us and our friends didsbury life www.didsburylife.co.uk  (although we strongly suggest you buy your beau something else as a freebie present probably wouldn’t go down so well)

FRET not those of you who are seriously underwhelmed by Valentines day, we’ve lots of normal non-pink cakes on offer too.

So there you have it….Valentines 2012, men you have been warned

So here we are in 2012! We hope all our lovely customers had a very merry Christmas and enjoyed the New Year celebrations! Team Dish & Spoon are back from a well-deserved rest after a super busy 2011; we’re donned in our aprons, are wielding our wooden spoons and are ready for another delicious cake-filled year! Lots to tell you all about so without further ado…

The January Bake Sale is back with some super dooper offers to suit those post-Christmas budgets! With Valentine’s on its way already and love in the air, we’re very happy to be offering FREE stand hire (worth £30) for all wedding bookings taken and deposits paid for in January! 2012 is already looking like another busy year on the weddings front for us, so don’t hang about; get in touch if you’d like to take advantage of this offer! Plus, we’ve been developing some fab new wedding cake designs for 2012 which we will be sharing with you all very soon!

Plus, starting Tuesday 10^th January, you can enjoy lovely teas and fantastic coffees for half price between Tuesday and Friday throughout January when you enjoy one of our delicious cakes in our tea room!

That’s all for now folks, keep your eyes peeled for further cake related 2012 plans! See you soon!  :-)

Ok, ok, yep we’ve succumbed to the ‘C’ word. We tried our hardest to last out as close to December as possible… honest!

So, unless you have been living on the moon for the last couple of weeks (and haven’t seen the many, many, many xmas ads yet) Christmas is officially coming and the geese are getting fat! Soo, we’re getting in festive mood here at Dish & Spoon HQ!

The baking bods have been busy whipping up some very exciting Christmassy creations, from apple and amaretto cake to bourbon and pecan brownies and candy cane cookies! There’s something festive for every kind of sweet tooth here! Our crimbo cake range is available to pre-order now and will be making appearances in our tearoom very soon! (Keep your eyes on our Facebook and Twitter pages for pics and more info!)

And of course, Christmas isn’t Christmas without pressies! We’ve some fab gift ideas for your loved ones:

• ‘And the Dish Ran Away With the Spoon At Home’ brownie baking kits and cupcake decorating kits
• Vintage teacup & sugar bowl candles
• Hand-made vintage cake tiers
• Original vintage glass cake stands
• Bespoke tea towels and Christmas cards made by very talented local designers
• And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon gift vouchers

Plus, we’ve still got the last few spaces left for our cupcake decorating classes which make a brilliant gift, or a treat to your good-self!

So after all that, we hope you can forgive us for mentioning the ‘C’ word, tis not so bad after all eh!

So, we’ve reached the ripe old age of 1! Strictly speaking we are actually 3.5 but we don’t wish to split hairs about this and we’ll always think of our opening on Burton Road on Oct 15^th 2010 as our ‘real’ birthday so what better excuse for a partaay.

What’s in store you may well ask. Well, no decent party is complete without cake so we’re off to a head start straight away. We’ve got an awful lot up our sleeves for October 15^th, basically 1 is the magic number for the day ..you’ll get the jist as we go along:

- First 10 people through the door on October 15^th will receive 1 slice ofcake/cupcake of their choice for 1 penny .. yep that’s right folks, 1 English penny (max 1 per person)

- All cupcakes purchased before 1pm are only £1 (max 2 cakes per person)

- We’ll be serving up butterfly cakes all day (like you had at birthday parties back in the day)

- Super yummy cake menu served all day

- Every cake purchased and eaten on the premises comes with free complimentary candle (we can’t light them I’m afraid due to those pesky Health & Safety people- dam them!)

- Every person who sits in and enjoys cake in our tea-room that day receives a retro party bag containing goodies and cakey-related offers

- Competitions running all week (which is incidentally National Cake Week – anyone would think we’d planned it!) via our facebook page www.facebook.com/dishandspoonfood

- Balloons and lots of em’ – it’s has to be done!

So, your invitation will be in the post soon and we’ll hopefully see you there!

Team Dish & Spoon

P.S. Any presents would be gratefully received

Wowser – what a ‘tea-rific’ weekend westfest 2011 was! We’ve just about recovered..!

Our all round tea fest went down an absolute treat with the lovely folk of Manchester – we baked almost 1000 cakes over the weekend! (And this doesn’t even include the cakes we baked for 3 weddings that same weekend!) … and they all got snapped up! To those that missed out, we are very sorry, we couldn’t have baked anymore! Those of you that were lucky enough to get your hands on some cakes, we hope you enjoyed the special westfest treats, which included teapot shaped custard creams, chocolate chai cupcakes, and our ‘chocolate teapot’ cupcake!

Plenty of customers (that were lucky enough to get a table!) enjoyed washing their yummy westfest cakes down with a pot of tea from our newly expanded range of fab loose leaf teas, courtesy of our lovely new supplier, The Brew Tea Company. We are very proud to be championing these wonderful loose leaf teas, come and see us soon and give them a go! Honestly, once you’ve tried loose leaf you’ll never go back!

We celebrated the glory of tea alongside a wonderful tea dance soundtrack and also by adorning our tea room with snippets of tea trivia, posters of retro tea adverts and also teapot bunting! (In fact we love our westfest decorations so much that a lot of it is yet to be taken down..!) We also invited Sarah to be our resident tea leaf reader for the weekend, which was massively popular amongst the westfest go-ers!

All in all, we had a cracking weekend, thank you to all that came to see us and celebrated all things TEA!

So, the 3^rd westfest has rolled around (where has summer gone?) and we’re very excited to be up and running and a fully-paid up trading member of Burton Road this time round!

Did you know that 130 tonnes of tea are drunk in Britain each day?? No, neither did we until a couple of weeks ago and it was whilst musing over a brew on how to mark our Westfest2011 that we accidentally happened upon such facts and hence our theme for the weekend…TEA! After all, we do claim to be ‘purveyors of tea and cake’ and it’s hands-down the most drunk drink in our tea room so it would be rude not to! (We were also playing with our new teapot cookie cutter and if we’re brutally honest trying to think of a way we could shoe-horn it into the celebration )

So on September 3^rd & 4^th we will be paying homage to the mighty tipple that is TEA.  From that weekend, we will be serving up a new, extended loose-leaf tea range in the cafe, which we will be sampling on the day (look out for tea-based events later in the year too!).

Other highlights of the weekend will be the chance to have your tea leaves read from our lovely tea-leaf reader Sarah (all for fun but very tempting!). Naturally, tea and cake are the perfect pairing so expect the lovely teapot to feature heavily on our menu, and tea to find its way into our special festival weekend cake range too (including our ever popular cream tea of course!).

We’ll be serving all this up (indoors and outside the shop too) to a fantastic 50’s teadance soundtrack and more tea-trivia and factoids (akin to afore-mentioned tea fact) than you can shake a stick at! You’ll leave a lot wiser on the nation’s favourite drink if nothing else!

See you there!

P.S. The pic is of the cookie cutter – seemed only right to show him/her off?

We are very pleased to be announcing that, after the great success of afternoon tea in our Burton Road shop, we are now able to bring this tasty treat right to your door! We are teaming up with vintage crockery specialist www.fortheloveofvintage.co.uk and boutique flower shop www.northernflower.com to provide the whole package. We will deliver and set up afternoon tea at Weddings, Christenings, Hen Parties, Baby Showers… afternoon tea makes a great alternative for any special event! You can expect a tasty selection of finger sandwiches, cakes, fluffy scones, and choose from one of our 14 refreshing teas to wash it all down with, all served with beautiful vintage crockery. Making this treat all the more special is the fact that all of our produce comes from local suppliers. If this is something you’d be interested in, give us a tinkle and we’ll have a chat about your requirements!

One of the great things about owning your own business is collaborating with other small indy businesses…everyone loves a good collab and ‘collab-ing’ we will be doing lots over the course of July and beyond. We’ve teamed up with some lovely talented Didsbury-based businesses, Silver Sixpence in Her Shoe and Laura Coleman Flowers to hold a schedule of fab classes in our tea room over the coming months.

Take a little looksy below at what we’ve got in store and then get booking (we suggest you don’t hang around as these things tend to sell out sharpish!)

Vintage Fascinator Classes – 5^th & 12^th July 2011

A fantastic course run by Nicola Wellard of Silver Sixpence in Her Shoe, bespoke bridal accessories designer

You will craft your own beautiful headpieces just in time for all those summer events over the joys of tea and cake. The double session workshop takes place on Tuesday 5^th July and Tuesday 12^th July from 9.30-11.30am. and costs £40.00 – this includes all tea, cake and materials .

For more info, or to book, please:
email nicolawellard@hotmail.co.uk
visit www.silver-sixpence-in-her-shoe.co.uk

Classes for the Florally Curious

We have teamed up with Laura of Laura Coleman flowers fame to hold a series of classes for the florally curious – perfect for flower lovers across the land.

The first class entitled ‘Vintage blooms inspired by baking’ takes place on 14^th July 2011 at 6.30pm (although there will be many more classes taking place for the rest of the year)

The class costs £35 for two hours starting at 6.30pm including tea or coffee, cakes and blooms.

We provide:

• Tea and cake on arrival, naturally
• All the things you’ll need
• Blooms, right posh ones, like the ones you see at nice weddings
• Pinnies and scissors for you to borrow so you look the part

You leave with:

• Your floral creation
• Secrets from the floral world (and you can’t put a price on that quite frankly!)
• Newly found skills and knowledge
• A little surprise from the Flower Lady and The Baker

To book the class which satisfies your floral curiosity: you can book below call Laura on 07941 888654

email on laura@lauracolemanflowers.co.uk

online at http://www.lauracolemanflowers.co.uk/courses

Some of you may remember we had our first foray into Afternoon Tea earlier in the year when we marked Wills & Kate’s nuptials with a Royal version of this quintessentially English treat.

Well, it went down a storm with the good people of Didsbury, with lots of our lovely customers asking us when it would
become a permanent feature on our menu. So we listened and we’re pleased to announce that from Saturday 18^th June we will be serving afternoon tea every weekend from 1pm.

The menu speaks for itself and all our little delicacies will be served on hand-made china cake tiers which are lovingly assembled by Helen Mather a local craftsperson.

You can also indulge in our fab tea range to wash down all those sweet treats. From our trusty fair-trade tea everyday brew to beautiful loose leaf black tea scented with rose, from the Leaf Company.

There aren’t that many options for afternoon tea in Manchester outside of the large hotels so we’re hoping we can provide a top-notch serving of cakey delights but in a slightly more relaxed and fun environment! Come down and sample for yourself!

You may remember back in February, Topshop opened their arms to us cake-baking folk and invited us to do a pop-up stall inside their Arndale store. Well, turns out they love cake so much that they’ve invited us back again, and how could we not jump at the chance to join Britain’s leading retailer?! Dedicating some of their precious floor space to us little’uns is a real compliment, and we’re so pleased that Topshop share our passion for encouraging local businesses. Our special Dish and Spoon counter can be found there until 28^th May, serving up all our usual delectations from cupcakes to brownies, with something for every kind of sweet tooth! So, as if you needed any more reason to get to Topshop – now you can support your local, independent cakery too!

Besides our Topshop goings-on, we’ve still got plenty on offer over in West Didsbury. If our even wider selection of cake doesn’t do it for you (if this is the case, then we might have been spoiling you for too long!), then hopefully our ever-expanding tea collection will. Newly arrived in the shop are our loose leaf teas, in three delicious flavours, Chamomile, Rose-Scented Black Tea, and Chamomile Flower Infusion – all served up in rather snazzy glass teapots (oooh!). All are available to buy, beautifully packaged, in the shop, snuggled in next to our range of vintage cake stands. Afternoon tea at home anyone?

Hope all you cake-loving-bods are well!

Lots of Love, Dish & Spoon HQ xx