Checking in.....

Hello! I've not posted for a while as I've not had any major news to share about the shop. Things are plodding along slowly and steadily. We're almost there with the building regulations and pen pushing stuff and soon, very soon, the building works and real work can begin. But don't worry we've not been wasting our days, we've been filling them with all kinds of research. This research has mainly involved visiting other coffee shops for inspiration and making some of the lovely things we hope to feature on our own menu.

So last week we took a trip into Manchester and went to a lovely place called Tea Cup recommended to us by Bimble & Rose

They specialise in Tea and even have a separate tea menu. You get a timer on your table telling you how long you need to allow your tea to brew before you pour it from the red pot into the white one ready for drinking! It's wonderful! All the cakes are home made and there is a fresh cake list daily. We left full of tea and cake and some ideas too.
While we were in the centre of town we decided to pop to Patisserie Valerie and bring some treats home to try, be rude not to really!

We also went to visit our potential coffee supplier. They have a room filled with different coffee machines and Jay, whose job it was to demonstrate, made us several different kinds of coffee and chocolate drinks. The company roast their own coffee on site daily and the smell hit us as soon as we stepped out of the car. We left having chosen a machine and sampled lots of coffee, lets just say we were both wired by the time we got back in the car!

In between the fun there have been plenty of less exciting appointments, like the Bank, Business Advisor's and energy suppliers so it's not all tea and cake!

There's been plenty of baking going on too. Today we made a cake inspired by our visit to Tea Cup. It still needs a little tweaking but it's certainly not bad for a first attempt!

I'll leave you with the pictures of our Pistachio and Vanilla Layer cake MK1 (I'm working on getting Mr P to make MK2 tomorrow!)