Lisa Thomas - Primrose Bakery Celebrations

The Primrose Bakery Book was published in October 2012, eight years after we started Primrose Bakery. It was a comprehensive guide to everything we do at the bakeries on a daily basis and also gave people a snapshot of daily life at either one of our shops. Our staff, children, customers, fellow business owners and animals are all as important to our business as we are, and without them all we would not have come as far as we have.

With this, our third book, we wanted to do something slightly different. We decided this time to move away from the things we produce on a daily basis and open the book up to a series of occasions where the cake or cakes remain the centrepiece, but the accompanying food and the setting also become important. With a combination of new recipes and ideas for how to put all the elements together and display them, we hope to provide our readers with inspiration for celebrations of their own.

We are lucky to employ some very talented chefs and other staff who help us to develop and test all our new recipes. All the staff (and some of the customers) give their feedback and opinions before we finalize them. It can be quite a slow process, but we would never want to put our names to recipes we would not happily use ourselves in our shops or at home. We always keep them as easy and simple as possible, using seasonal and natural ingredients wherever we can, and also ingredients that can be found easily online or in the local supermarket.

For locations we have used our two shops, but have also gone out and about to some of the places in London that we love and use on a regular basis and feel are closely affiliated to what we do. Again, they are there both to serve as ideas for your own celebrations and to show some of the amazing places on our doorstep.

Running a small business remains a challenge even after so many years. It is certainly a full-time commitment that is both hugely rewarding and enjoyable but also sometimes exhausting and worrying. The best parts of our job remain our customers and the positive feedback they give us, and the fact that in eight years we have been able to open two shops and write three books and an App.

We are hoping to open our third shop in 2013 and possibly one more after that, although we never want Primrose Bakery to be a chain, as we worry that it might lose the principles we first started with. Opening a new shop is a huge undertaking, both financially and emotionally, but we feel we have a dedicated and hard-working team of staff who can help us do it. Our children are all growing up very fast, which makes it much easier than when we first started and they are now all used to us not being around very much and, on many occasions, to the cakes coming first.

Starting a cake business is considered by many to be a dream job, and of course in very many ways it is. The business we run now is so different in size to the one the two of us started eight years ago. With no formal training in either running a business or catering it was perhaps a foolish venture, although even with the benefit of hindsight we would probably have done it anyway.

We hope that this book gives you plenty of ideas and inspiration for more home baking and for the occasions we have chosen to feature. We have really enjoyed developing new and quite unusual recipes for this book and it has reminded us how rewarding baking and running our business continues to be.

www.primrosebakery.co.uk

For sweet treats on the go download The Primrose Bakery App from iTunes

We have taken our inspiration for our young girls party from the many cakes and cupcakes we make for our youngest customers, for Marthas daughters Daisy and Millie on their birthdays, and from things we both enjoyed in our own childhood. We have chosen quite a pink, pretty theme and used our shop in Primrose Hill as the backdrop.

A very simple but amazingly delicious birthday cake that anyone of any age would find hard to resist. You will need a Big Top Donut silicone baking tin or similar mould for this cake.

Makes one 20cm doughnut-shaped cake, serving approximately 1215

FOR THE CAKE

oil spray

80g unsalted butter

300g marshmallows

225g puffed rice