I'm an award-winning baker - this is how the crazy cost of ingredients has changed our business

Cindy Pickering gave up a career as a solicitor to persue a love of baking while in lockdown, and now runs Cinderbakes in Hawksbury Drive, Kingsfold. The shop is known for miles around it’s array of sweet treats, and even scooped a Great Taste Award in 2023 for Cindy’s signature triple chocolate brownies.

But with the cost of ingredients rocketing and people’s disposable income dwindling, Cindy says it’s not always plain sailing for small businesses, and they have been forced to make changes.

She said: “The price of chocolate has more than doubled in the last year or two, which has meant more diversification. For example, a 10kg bag of Belgian chocolate used to cost us around £61; the same bag now costs around £162!

“We have managed to navigate these crazy cost hikes by creating different bakes such as our fresh cream cake range. We started with coffee renoirs and over the last six months have expanded to different flavoured renoirs, eclairs, Maritozzi buns (sweet italian buns filled with freshly whipped cream) and other bakes such as vanilla slices. We make our own choux pastry and fillings so this takes up a lot of time, but is so worth it to give the best to our customers. We also offer our bakes on Just Eat, and offer nationwide postals through our website.”

The shop has also diversified into milkshakes and has partnered up with Hutton-based ice cream parlour Tootsies to sell their products, as well as a soft-service ice cream machine for sundaes.

Cindy and her team work long hours and although the shop only opens Wednesday to Sunday, they are baking there seven days a week. She said: “We also supply some cafes with our bakes for which the baking is generally done at the beginning of the week. Prep for the day's counter starts at 7am and between 7am and 10.30am when we open, we are topping and cutting brownies, baking and stuffing cookies, whipping cream for our fresh cream cakes and decorating and assembling all the cakes and bakes. If we are making any enriched doughs such as cinnamon buns, maritozzi buns etc, these are made fresh from scratch that morning.”

Their most popular items are brownies and cookies, and Cindy says she has never changed their recipes despite ingredient price hikes, but has developed more flavours and variations as time has gone on. She added: “We do follow the latest trends although we always try to put our own spin on things wherever possible. The latest trend was the Dubai chocolate bar so we did a Dubai chocolate brownie which is always a best seller when we do that.”

Cindy says the bakery industry is “definitely a saturated market”, but has absolute faith that the quality of their goods shines through. She said: “The explosion of viral bakers just spurs us on to be even better to be honest.

“There are some amazing bakeries that have done so well growing their businesses on social media. We completely recognise the power of social media and are constantly working to make sure that we use it to its full potential to get the word out there! It's definitely the way forward in marketing and advertising and its something we can have fun with too.”