Jenne - Konditor & Cook: Deservedly Legendary Baking

About the Book

Let Konditor & Cook sprinkle some magic over your baking...

Konditor & Cook are famous for their stylish cake creations: the iconic Magic Cakes, Boston Brownie, Curly Whirly Cake... Now you can re-create their legendary celebration cakes, tarts, brownies, slices, mini-bakes, cupcakes, muffins and buns at home with Gerhard Jennes simple recipes.

With bold flavours, brilliant finishes and a brazen flourish, there is everything from Apple Crumble Muffins and Dodgy Jammers to Raspberry Fudge Tarts and even Gingerbread Grannies to tickle your fancy.

About the Author

Konditor & Cook is the brainchild of Gerhard Jenne who made a name for himself in the early 90s as cake creator to the stars, including Tina Turner and The Rolling Stones. In 1993 he opened the first branch of Konditor & Cook in Londons Waterloo. They now have 5 shops across London and a specialist Cake School.

Well, the lid is truly off what was once one of my most loved little secrets, Konditor & Cook, and I couldnt be happier for Gerhard and his team of expert bakers. Their marvellous cakes and pastries deserve to be known the world over because they make it a happier and hungrier place.

Baking might be all the rage at the moment but this marvellous success story began many, many years ago on a charming little street in the Waterloo Conservation area, in a shop that smells deliciously of coffee, chocolate and caramel. I remember my first visit: it was like entering a fairyland imagined by Hans Christian Andersen, filled with the most wondrous cakes and pastries that not only looked magical but tasted divine too. I was hooked from the start and although they may have spread their wings a little further, Konditor & Cook has lost none of its charm.

They also bake cakes to order and my family have commissioned spectacular cakes for two of my birthdays that stole the show and were a talking point for weeks afterwards. The last one was a huge tower overflowing with smaller cakes that represented all my favourite things, such as lobsters, cigars, wines, roses, cars and Monsieur Bibendum, the Michelin man. Gerhards imagination combined brilliantly with his exceptional baking skills takes Konditor & Cooks products to another level entirely.

To my mind, the secret of Konditor & Cooks success is that they are creative and committed to using the highest-quality ingredients in their products, using only free-range eggs and the best flours available. Their dried fruits are first rate and they take great care baking in controllable quantities, which makes them perfectly placed to write a book about baking and sprinkle their magic over kitchens across the land.

Whether it is creating a wonderful show-stopper or making something simple with the kids, baking really is one of lifes great pleasures. So put on your apron, delve into the secrets and recipes of Konditor & Cook and enjoy the delights of baking their magical cakes in your own kitchen.

Sir Terence Conran

This book is a reflection of two decades of baking, from delicious everyday recipes to decadent cake creations fit for a queen. In it, I would like to share with you some of the most popular recipes from Konditor & Cooks early years, as well as those that have stood the test of time and become legendary recipes such as our Raspberry Fudge Tart, Boston Brownies, Kipferl Cookies, Curly Whirly Cake and, of course, the Magic Cakes that we used to create a giant portrait of the Queen, which went on display at Battersea Park for the Diamond Jubilee celebration. I hope you will be able to bring them to life in your own kitchen and make them your recipes, too.

I have often said that at Konditor & Cook every cake has a story behind it whether its the inspiration for a magnificent tiered cake, how a particular recipe came about, or what it is in a recipe that has made it so irresistible over time.

I hope that, in these pages, I have captured some of the Konditor & Cook magic that made Sir Terence Conran include his favourite London cake shop in a list of the top 100 retail stores in the world.

Ever since I trained as a baker and pastry chef in Germany, I dreamed of opening my own Konditorei. A Konditorei can be defined as a cake shop; most often it is a combination of shop and caf. The shop offers a wide range of cakes and confections with seasonal variations, while in the caf you can enjoy the entire spread of baking as well as a menu of small savoury dishes.

In order to fulfil my dream, I needed to save some money and gain more experience. This eventually brought me to London, where, after a stint at the now defunct Swiss Centre in Leicester Square, I ended up working for inspirational food entrepreneur Justin de Blank in Knightsbridge. It was there that I honed my skills in essential British baking and was at the forefront of the British food revolution of the 1980s. As well as introducing some of my own recipes, I developed an interest in one-off cake creations for celebrity customers, including Tina Turner, Ringo Starr and The Rolling Stones.

One of the best things about Justin de Blank was that the cooks were expected to interact with the customers. It made the preparation of food all the more enjoyable, as we would often get immediate feedback. I really enjoyed the exchanges with the customers and was bursting to set up on my own. I just needed a space where I could put my vision into place.

After a combination of failed attempts and nerves, it so happened that in the summer of 1993 my attention was drawn to a small bakery in Waterloo. The Queen of Hearts Bakery on Cornwall Road was about to close down and needed a new owner. At the time, the area was still suffering from the economic plight caused by the closure of the Greater London Council, and was about to be thrown into further turmoil thanks to the excavation works associated with the imminent extension of the Jubilee line.

Despite all this, I saw a perfect little set up: a beautiful small shop front at the end of a terrace of late-Georgian artisan cottages with a production kitchen right behind. Since it was near the station, it enjoyed great footfall to the offices along the river, and, as it turned out much later, the South Bank was to be transformed further with the development of the London Eye and Tate Modern.

All the shop needed was a lick of paint, a new name and, more importantly, a complete set of new recipes and a revised approach to quality, for the previous incumbent had the reputation of producing some rather fusty-looking pies and tarts. When it came to naming the shop, I drew inspiration from my training as a pastry chef, or Konditor, in Germany and from my acquisition of skills in savoury cooking (Cook) at Justin de Blank in London.

In those days people werent used to going into cake shops. The idea was to provide a lure with the provision of a range of daily bread savouries but then to tempt customers, once inside, with plates full of freshly baked pastries, mouth-watering mountains of brownies and enticing layered sponge cakes.