Martha Swift - The Primrose Bakery Book

Martha and Lisa both live in Primrose Hill, North London. Martha has two daughters and Lisa has two sons. They met when their children went to nursery school together fourteen years ago. Lisa is originally from New Zealand but settled in London twenty-one years ago. They set up Primrose Bakery seven years ago in Lisas home kitchen. Lisa previously worked as a costume designer for films, and Martha worked in publishing.

www.primrosebakery.org.uk

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Primrose Bakery is a way of life. From home-made croissants at breakfast, through fruity loaves at coffee time, to a slice of layer cake with afternoon tea, it has the whole day covered. And thats not forgetting their signature cupcakes with buttercream icing in every flavour, a delicious treat whatever the time of day.

Since Martha and Lisa opened their first cake shop in Primrose Hill and then another one in Covent Garden, they have quickly become institutions for cake lovers. All their concoctions are deliciously unique, such as their seasonal raspberry and coconut cupcakes, their homemade granola and white chocolate cookies, and their show-stopping caramel triple layer cake. And their loyal customers make very eager recipe testers.

The Primrose Bakery Book is pack-full of quirky charm. With more than 80 gorgeously illustrated recipes from simple iced biscuits to party cakes, its the perfect baking handbook. Because Martha and Lisa first began their baking business in Lisas home kitchen, they know the value of simple recipes that give great results. From staff-favourite recipes and hand-me-down cakes from their mums, to the secret of perfect icing and sugar decorations, this book is a mouth-watering window onto the year-round world of Primrose Bakery.

Its now seven years since we started Primrose Bakery in Lisas home kitchen in Primrose Hill, North London. In October 2004 we decided that as we were not able to find the cakes and cupcakes that seemed to be so readily available elsewhere in the world, we would set up our own business. We had no five-year business plan, no professional background in cooking and no outside investment. We did, however, have a passion for baking and a huge desire to start a business of our own. We wanted to create a proper old-fashioned cake shop, based on the principles of home baking and excellent customer service.

We now have two shops in London one in Primrose Hill and the other in Covent Garden and our first book, Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery, was published in 2009. At times we cant believe that something we started at home with just the two of us has grown so much. It gives us a huge sense of satisfaction to see people queuing out into the street on a Saturday afternoon waiting to buy our cakes there is no better feeling than this, to see that people really do want to buy and eat what we have made, and it makes all the long hours worthwhile.

Our first book was very much based on cupcakes quite rightly, as these were what we started with and they still form such an important part of what we do today. People often ask us, What happens after cupcakes? but cupcakes, in one form or another, have been around for many years before we began making them and we truly believe that they will be around for many years to come. Their versatility and adaptability, combined with their huge visual appeal, means there is a place for cupcakes at every conceivable occasion, from a simple family tea to a big wedding.

However, Primrose Bakery has always been about more than cupcakes. We make our own croissants by hand and have a huge range of layer cakes, biscuits, cake slices, and so on. We wanted to build a business that would be known for the high quality of the baked goods it produced and its excellent customer service, to create a place where everybody felt welcome and that would appeal to all. To do this, we wanted to take inspiration from the best we had seen and tasted in the US, Australia, Italy and France and create our own cake shop. Both our shops are painted in colours of yellow, mint green and pink, to tie in with the colours of many of our cakes and also to provide a warm, welcoming environment in which to enjoy eating them while escaping the often grey English light.

Therefore, we hope this book will represent our baking and our business as a whole. We still work to the same principles we started out with to keep as close as possible to how we bake in a home kitchen while actually cooking on a professional level. We use equipment found in many domestic kitchens electric hand mixers, food processors, spatulas, mixing bowls and make everything in small batches, using very simple, high-quality, carefully sourced seasonal ingredients, with no artificial additives or preservatives. We ice all our cupcakes, cakes and biscuits by hand and bake every day seven days a week, almost 365 days a year so that everything we sell in our shops is freshly baked and to ensure as little wastage as possible.

Its hard work, though. Even in our kitchens, where we bake the same sort of things every day, stuff goes wrong. Baking can be very temperamental: oven temperatures vary, cakes dont rise, they rise too much, tins are overfilled, cakes fall apart, cupcakes come out of their wrappers. Then, of course, there are the many other disasters the first year we were open in Primrose Hill we lost our electricity supply for 24 hours in the run-up to Christmas; the cupcake cases we liked to use are no longer made by the manufacturer; we have run out of icing sugar, butter and, at one time or another, every ingredient we use; cakes have been dropped just as they are to be handed to a customer; the volcanic ash cloud in April 2010 meant we couldnt receive our supplies of decorations from abroad. The list is endless...

We hope that you find these recipes straightforward and easy to use. Of course we have added more cupcakes, as we are always developing new flavours, and this is the great thing about cupcakes there really is no end to the possibilities of what you could do with them. Weve also included many of our layer cakes, loaves, biscuits and croissants and hope that this book gives a picture of what life is like in our shops on a daily basis and to encourage people to give it a go. We want to show how much pleasure can be gained from baking, both for the baker and the recipient.