Delia's Cakes in a Year...

It may seem like a strange way to spend your spare time when you run a cake business, but the three of us here at Chitty's Cakes decided it would be fun to bake our way through all the recipes in 'Delia's Cakes' over the course of a year. Aside from the obvious reason of always having something new and tasty to offer to friends and family (and enjoy at our team meetings!), we are hoping to get some ideas for our own products, maybe learn some new tricks and techniques and experiment with things we have never tried before.

We're not all professional bakers. I, Rebecca, run Chitty's Cakes and have been making bespoke cakes and cupcakes to order for nearly 5 years. This doesn't mean every recipe I try will go swimmingly (I will be baking at home in my tiny kitchen, and many of the recipes involve things I have never tried!). I didn't even own a set of scales or a wire rack until this weekend when I realised in a panic my kitchen at home was ill-equipped to cater for Delia's requirements!

Julie, our bakery assistant, bakes cakes & cupcakes and makes decorations for the business and has been baking at home for years. Every week she tries out new recipes and trusted old ones for her and her teenage son, so setting this challenge caused a lot of excitement.

Laura, our admin assistant, is relatively new to baking having attended a cupcake class with us at the start of the year soon before she began to work for Chitty's. Her desire to bake at home is often hindered by the presence of small children, which I'm sure many of you can relate to!

We decided to embark on this year-long challenge a few weeks ago, inspired by the Julie/Julia project in which Julie Powell, in her tiny New York apartment, wrote a blog about her challenge to cook every recipe in Julia Child's iconic 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' in a year back in 2002. The book which followed 'Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously' is a great read for anyone who likes cooking, and the movie based on the book stars Meryl Streep and Amy Adams and was screened at one of our Cupcake Cinema nights at the Custard Factory a couple of years ago.

When trying to think of a suitable start and end date, we thought we'd take a cue from Delia herself, so we are starting the project on Delia's birthday, 18th June, and by the same date next year we aim to have baked all of the recipes in 'Delia's Cakes'. Wish us luck!