Cakes Regional and Traditional [Hardcover]

‘Julie's wonderful Simnel Cake is a glorious treat, better even than
chocolate.’

‘I’d take her Plum Cake on any countryside march.’

‘One of Britain’s most interesting cake makers.’

Julie Duff blames her passion for cakes wholeheartedly on her grandmother and in this volume she compiles recipes for cakes of all sorts. They encompass all the traditional, historical and regional cakes from the British Isles, offering a comprehensive collection.

Julie Duff runs an award-winning cake business, which supplies wonderful rich succulent fruit cakes and other traditional cakes to some of the country’s premier shops, such as Fortnum and Mason, St Paul’s Cathedral and Selfridges and she is a regular exhibitor at Henrietta Green’s famous Food Lovers’ Fairs. Her cakes have won Gold and Bronze Awards for the Best Fruit Cakes in Britain and have been in the finals of The Times and Waitrose Small Food Producer of the Year Award.

Started almost a decade ago Church Farmhouse Cakes is a farmhouse business in the true sense of the word; all the cakes are actually made in her own kitchen. Julie says that no matter how busy they are all her cakes are still, ‘stirred with a wooden spoon.’

Once the chef to the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, she has been making cakes since she was a child and uses the same recipes that her grandmother gave her. Only the best quality ingredients go into her cakes such as free-range eggs, plump vine fruits, butter and organic stone ground flour from a local mill. Church Farmhouse Cakes is based in the Vale of Belvoir and has now grown to become one of the foremost speciality cake makers in the country but the fundamental way in which the cakes are made has never changed - they are still made in small batches using exactly the same methods taught to Julie Duff as a child.