New darlings and old favourites
Posted by the Cake Shop
People have been asking for our recipes for years. It’s not like they’re classified information — they’re stuck up on the wall of the cafe, shoved in binders in the office downstairs, piled in flurries on Terry’s carpet at home. But this past year gave us the chance to take a thoughtful look through everything we’ve cooked over the last decade, and we’re now very proud to share our first ever recipe pamphlet with you.
It’s a collection of eight recipes for late summer — some old favourites and some new darlings — illustrated by Frankie Thompson. Recipes were developed by Terry, and tried and tested not only by the Cake Shop team but also by neighbours, booksellers, and all of our friends and regulars.
Terry says:
Going back through all the old recipes has been a journey. Opening the folders to find those hand-written pages, filled with little doodles and cryptic phrases — here a flower, there an instruction in capital letters: “THROW IT ALL”.
It’s brought back memories of collaborations and moments of connection. There’s a chocolate cake recipe in there that’s special because I developed it with Jess. She’s an hardcore Italian carnivore and die-hard chocolate lover, and when she went crazy for this vegan cake we knew we’d got the formula spot on.
There’s the illustrations, which fit so beautifully to what we do — the first time I met Frankie there was a natural click. She loves our flavours, and I love the hands she draws and the organic look of what she’s produced for us.
Indirectly, this pamphlet is full of all kinds of things that have inspired me. Books (big props to The Flavour Thesaurus, always good to have to hand when you’re recipe-developing); cafes (Persepolis in Peckham, home of the transcendental salad; Elliot’s in Borough, where I drank my first ever shrub); and of course, people — all the people I’ve fed and have fed me, one way or another, over this time.
Order your copy here.
