Experienced, enthusiastic Baker and Kitchen manager wanted for a part-time role (20-30hrs per week) at And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon, a small independent bakery & tea shop based in West Didsbury,Manchester.

Our shop, external catering service and wholesale bakery business is getting busier and busier. As such, we are looking for a passionate, experienced baker and kitchen manager to help us grow our business

If you share our love of cake, have experience of baking beautifully presented and creatively produced cakes, and have a strong belief in independent business then we would like to hear from you.

Ideally you will:

• Have experience of baking and decorating cakes and cupcakes on a medium to large scale
• Have a meticulous eye for detail and quality, and a creative approach to your work
• Have experience of working within a commercial kitchen
• Have experience of managing suppliers and controlling stock (preferably in a food environment but other fields will be considered)
• Be experienced in managing and scheduling your work and that of others
• Have experience managing team members
• Work well under pressure and to a deadline
• Have a passion for baking and good food & drink
• Have an understanding of theUK(specifically the Northwest) food & drink scene
• Follow and have an understanding of baking and sweet trends
• Be passionate about working for and supporting independent business

The type of person we’re looking for:

• Dedicated and loyal
• Hard working and not afraid of physical work
• Outgoing and happy
• Flexible

You will be responsible for:

• Production of cakes and cupcakes for our tea-room, wholesale contracts and external catering service
• Development of our product range and creation of new products and services
• Managing our suppliers and controlling stock levels to ensure an efficiently run kitchen
• Managing and planning production schedules to ensure all our cake commitments are met efficiently
• Managing and motivating a small team of other kitchen staff

In return we will offer:

• A competitive salary (dependent on experience)
• Career progression
• A rather nice place to work (we think so anyway)
• Free cake!

Start Date and Closing Date

This vacancy is not an immediate start. We anticipate the position to start in July/August 2012 but would consider an earlier start for the right person.

Closing date for applications is 15/06/12

Email Anna [hello@dishandspoonfood.co.uk] telling her why you’d be great for the job and attach your CV. References will be required for the successful applicant.

Please note that due to overwhelming numbers of applications received for previous positions advertised, we will be unable to respond to every application.

Visit www.dishandspoonfood.co.uk for more information on who we are and what we do.

Its all because we’ve been getting busier and busier in the kitchen, especially on the external catering front, and we’re working on several exciting and top secret opportunities too.

To allow us to focus on turning out our super cakes over and over again, we’ve taken the quite difficult decision to close our tea room on Tuesdays

If you live or work around Burton Road, you’ll know only too well that it’s a sleepy old place on Mondays and Tuesdays and only really starts to come alive on Wednesday (reaching its true crescendo by Saturday).

Soooo, from Wednesday 21st March, we will be using our time on Tuesday’s to work hard in the kitchen  on lots of exciting projects we have in the pipeline and to develop our product range so it is even yummier and better looking than now. Whilst the tearoom will be closed, the kitchen will still be open for external orders and deliveries on a Tuesday.  Think not of it as losing your possible cake fix on a Tuesday but as gaining (amongst other things) the following:

-          More cupcake decorating classes (we can’t quite keep up with demand at the moment so it seemed like a pretty good idea!)

-          Afternoon Tea served from Thursday to Sunday rather than just the weekend (woop!)

-          A very exciting little development with our brownies (whilst we’re  bursting to, we can’t really say much more yet but we’ll let
you know as soon as we can!)

-          Some exciting event collaborations with some of our local business friends including a fab era-themed hen-do package

-          Our cakes popping up in many more places across Manchester (and beyond) than they do now (they’re even being served up over in York at the moment!)

-          An even better, wider, ever changing cakey-tastic menu

If you’re a regular Tuesday customer, why not make Wednesday the new Tuesday , and pop in and get your cake fix then!

Therefore, we have lots of lovely things planned for the day including an extra special afternoon tea for those of you who want to go the whole hog. Think lavender shortbread, mini meringues and extra special cake bites as well as our signature scones, jams and choc-dipped strawberries plus every mum who books in will receive a free posy of british tulips rom our talented friends at Laura Coleman Flowers…woop! Please give us a tinkle to reserve your spot So as not to be disappointed but please also be quick as we’ve booked up quite quickly already!

If Afternoon tea isn’t your bag and you prefer to skip the savoury course (the sarnies!) then we will be serving up a full cakey menu all day and there will be lots of mum-inspired treats on offer to enjoy in the tea-room or to takeway.

We’ve also got gorgeous gifts on sale too : from brownie baking kits for budding mum bakers and our fab scented candles from For the Love of Vintage (including best candle fragrance ever – ‘cakebake’)

So, there you have it … we look forward to welcoming an army of mums and grandmas on the 18^th J

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!

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!