Speciality Food - May/June 03

CAKES FOR ALL SEASONS

With a newly converted bakery and nine employees, Honeybuns has gone from a small cottage industry to a bakery with a growing reputation.

Honeybuns started life in 1998 as a busy sandwich and cake delivery enterprise. At that time ciabatta sandwiches laden with speciality cheeses and home made chutneys were piled up on the kitchen table alongside buttery shortbreads and wedges of lemon drizzle cakes.

At that time the business was a one man show and often after a hard night's baking, Emma Goss-Custard, founder of the company would rise early to collect the fresh bread in time to start the mornings orders. Remembers Emma, 'I used to get some very funny looks, especially when I used to fill up the basket on my delivery bike with tonnes of fresh salad whilst balancing a colossal backpack on the way home to my kitchen!'

'The cakes were always the most popular things, with customers rushing to buy treats for lunch as well as taking them home for tea,' said Emma.

Award winning

In September 2001, Honeybuns received an extra boost when it was awarded the Supreme Champion accolade at the Great Taste Awards. Now, five years since it began the company provides wholesale cakes to delis, distributors and department store cafes as far away as Scotland. However, sandwiches are no longer on the menu, instead the company concentrates purely on cakes and slices.

More recently, after two years in a unit in Bramley, Surrey, Emma and her husband Matt moved business and home to an old dairy farm in a remote hamlet in Dorset.

After starting work to convert the old cow stalls and milking parlour in October 2002, Honeybuns began baking cakes in its new home on the 2nd January 2003.

Matt reflects, 'The past year has been a lot of hard graft, with Emma staying in Bramley to ensure the Christmas orders were met, whilst I supervised the building work and tried to make the house comfortable in time for the winter.'

The beamed barn come bakery looks and feels like a large, airy domestic kitchen rather than a factory production line. Although the premises are new the product remains the same, using only the best ingredients, sourced both locally and from abroad.

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