Julian Day - Artisan Home Baking: Wholesome and delicious recipes for cakes and other bakes

Artisan Home Baking Artisan Home Baking Wholesome and delicious recipes for cakes and other bakes photography by Steve Painter recipes from meg rivers BAKERS OF HAPPINESS About the author Julian Day ran his own food wholesaling business based in rural Warwickshire for many years. In 2001 he was approached by Megs family to take over the mail-order bakery business of Meg Rivers Cakes. Establishing a new bakery in a converted barn near Shipston-on-Stour, he began production again, using the original Meg Rivers recipes. He lives in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, and continues to run the business with the help of three of his four daughters. About the photographer Steve Painter worked for Ryland Peters & Small for ten years, designing, art directing photography and prop styling many of their cookery books, including the number 1 bestselling The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. Now freelance, he lives in the seaside town of Hastings where he designed and photographed this book.

For Ryland Peters and Small he has also photographed Whoopie Pies, How to Make Bread and Gelato. DESIGN, PHOTOGRAPHY AND PROP STYLING Steve Painter COMMISSIONING EDITOR Cline Hughes HEAD OF PRODUCTION Patricia Harrington ART DIRECTOR Leslie Harrington EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Julia Charles FOOD STYLIST Lucy Mckelvie INDEXER Hilary Bird First published in 2012 This revised edition published in 2020 by Ryland Peters & Small 2021 Jockeys Fields London WC1R 4BW and 341 E 116th St New York, NY 10029 www.rylandpeters.com 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Text Julian Day 2012, 2020 Design and photographs Ryland Peters & Small 2012, 2020 Printed in China The authors moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. eISBN: 978-1-78879-263-9 ISBN: 978-1-78879-202-8 A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library. A CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

NOTES All spoon measurements are level, unless otherwise specified. Uncooked or partially cooked eggs should not be served to the very young, the very old, those with compromised immune systems, or to pregnant women. When a recipe calls for the grated zest of citrus fruit, buy unwaxed fruit and wash well before using. If you can only find treated fruit, scrub well in warm soapy water and rinse before using. Ovens should be preheated to the specified temperature. Recipes in this book were tested using a regular oven.

If using a fan/convection oven, follow the manufacturers instructions for adjusting temperatures. Small panettone cases (approximately 70 x 50 mm/3 x 2 inches), as used for the Mini-Meg recipes, can be bought from these online suppliers: www.bakerybits.co.uk www.beryls.com www.amazon.co.uk www.amazon.com GET A DISCOUNT at megrivers.co.uk Use the code BOOK25 at checkout to get 25% off cakes, traybakes, biscuits, hampers & more at www.megrivers.co.uk (To place an order for a delivery outside of the UK call +44 (0)1608 682858 for a quotation of P&P charges.) contents Most of us at one time or another have held a fantasy about turning our hobby into our living. While most of us only dream, Meg Rivers was someone who actually achieved this. I first met Meg when we were both living and working in the Warwickshire village of Upper Tysoe. Our children were of an age and they went to the local school together. We were each running our own small businesses, and wed often chat about the problems and benefits of working for ourselves.

Meg was already something of a celebrity, often appearing in the food pages of magazines, but more impressive to me was that she had the only fax machine in the village, which she let me use! Chatting in her tiny office with the fantastic scents of fruit cakes from the bakery beyond was always a pleasure. I had no idea then that one day, I would be running the Meg Rivers bakery. Always a keen cook, Meg had learned to bake helping in her mothers tearooms in Bowral, in the Southern Tablelands of Australia. In the 1980s, she moved to the UK, married and set up home in rural Warwickshire. When she started a family, like many mums she became aware of her childrens desire for sweet things but didnt want them to eat the kind of commercial cakes and baked goods available at the time. Having always been interested in healthy eating, Meg was particularly reluctant for her family to eat products made with artificial flavourings, colourings or preservatives.

Knowing that it was possible for treats to be both tasty and wholesome, she began baking at home, making the kind of things shed enjoyed herself as a child. Family and friends raved about her baking and asked her to bake for them too. Gradually, her reputation grew, and when someone asked her to post a fruit cake to Africa, the idea of a mail-order bakery business was born. In 1986, Meg found herself needing to provide an income for her family, something that she could fit around the demands of three young children. Starting small and working from her home kitchen, she began baking cakes and selling them mail-order. Her background in PR helped her gain publicity; in those pre-internet days, selling food mail-order was something of a rarity and a young woman juggling the difficulties of being a lone parent with running her own business was also rather unusual.

The enterprise prospered and in 1991 she won the Businesswoman of the Year Award. This provided additional welcome publicity and a small cash prize, which Meg used to open a small bakery in Tysoe, Warwickshire. Meg always insisted on using the best available ingredients and tried whenever possible to source things locally. More than 25 years later, though sadly Meg is no longer with us, were still sticking to the same principles. At our bakery in the Cotswolds we often feel we have the best job in the world we live and work in a beautiful part of the country, making lovely things for lovely people. Im pretty sure this rural environment impacts on our working philosophy too.

Maybe its something to do with the slower pace of life in the countryside but we like to take the time required to do things properly. Yes, we live in the internet age when we all expect everything to be available 24/7 and its true that our cakes are often made and despatched one day, to be with our customers at the other end of the country the next day. But we strongly believe in retaining an artisan approach. For us, the integrity of the recipe is vital and we wont ever compromise quality for the convenience. Were a small team and we bake our cakes on a small scale, using the same low-tech, traditional methods that will be familiar to any home baker. In this book weve deliberately tried to keep the amount of equipment needed to a minimum pretty much everything needed will be the type that most home kitchens will have.