From the icing sugar that makes the creamiest buttercream to the key to incredible salted caramel, follow us as we take a sneak peek inside the Primrose Bakery store cupboard to discover the secret to beautifully-presented delicious bakes, the likes of which you can find in the fabulous Primrose Bakery Every Day cookbook.
From the book
Primrose Bakery Everyday
Build your baking repertoire with over 100 fool-proof recipes
Inventive bakes for every season
Ideas for everyday baking and special occasions
1. Vanilla Extract
Vanilla extract is probably one of the ingredients we use the most in the bakery and in our recipes. Buying the best quality vanilla extract you can really does make a difference to the quality of the finished cake – it is expensive but you will only use a small amount so one bottle will go a long way.
2. Dark chocolate
I would always try and use chocolate with at least 70 per cent cocoa solids when baking with dark chocolate. The higher percentage of cocoa will give a better quality cake and also a better flavour. Plus dark chocolate is actually supposed to be quite good for you!
3. Eggs
Our recipes always use large free range or organic eggs! So they are pretty much essential. Bring the eggs to room temperature before using in your recipe as they work better in the batter when they are not too cold.
4. Fleur de sel
Fleur de sel is a type of sea salt that is harvested in a particular way in only a few areas in the world. It has almost a moist texture and is certainly very different from table salt – we use a small amount of Fleur de sel on all our salted caramel cupcakes and cakes and it gives the best and most delicious finish to them.
5. Sprinkles
Sugar sprinkles are a handy and colourful addition to any store cupboard. Nowadays most supermarkets carry a small range of cake decorations or you can find them online. The rainbow hundreds and thousands are probably my favourite and in the bakery we certainly go through a lot of them when decorating cupcakes and cakes.
6. Cake tiers
Some pretty glass, china or plastic cake tiers in different shapes and sizes are always useful to have ready once you have baked your cake or cupcakes. These milk glass cake tiers come in a few different sizes and are available from the Refound website. This website also sells some other beautiful vintage glass cake tiers.
7. Icing sugar
At Primrose Bakery we only use Tate and Lyle icing sugar to make all our buttercream icings – over the last 11 years since I started the business I have never found another icing sugar that works as well and produces a lovely, smooth buttercream. All icing sugars should really be the same but they really are not!
