Meet Me at the Cupcake Café Read online

  Praise for Jenny Colgan

  ‘She is very, very funny’

  Express

  ‘A delicious comedy’

  Red

  ‘A Jenny Colgan novel is as essential for a week in the sun as Alka Seltzer, aftersun and far too many pairs of sandals’

  Heat

  ‘Fast-paced, funny, poignant and well observed’

  Daily Mail

  ‘Hugely entertaining and very funny’

  Cosmopolitan

  ‘A funny, clever page-turner’

  Closer

  ‘Chick-lit with an ethical kick’

  Mirror

  ‘A quirky tale of love, work and the meaning of life’

  Company

  ‘A smart, witty love story’

  Observer

  ‘Full of laugh-out-loud observations … utterly unputdownable’

  Woman

  ‘A chick-lit writer with a difference … never scared to try something different, Colgan always pulls it off’

  Image

  ‘A Colgan novel is like listening to your best pal, souped up on vino, spilling the latest gossip – entertaining, dramatic and frequently hilarious’

  Daily Record

  ‘An entertaining read’

  Sunday Express

  ‘The perfect summer sunbather, easy to read,

  packed with gags and truths’

  Irish News

  Also by Jenny Colgan

  Amanda’s Wedding

  Talking to Addison

  Looking for Andrew McCarthy

  Working Wonders

  Do You Remember the First Time?

  Where Have All the Boys Gone?

  West End Girls

  Operation Sunshine

  Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend

  The Good, the Bad and the Dumped

  Copyright

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 978-0-748-12195-3

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Jenny Colgan 2011

  ‘Baking your first cupcake’ piece,

  copyright © The Caked Crusader 2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk.

  Contents

  Praise for Jenny Colgan

  Also by Jenny Colgan

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  A Word From Jenny

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Baking your first cupcake by The Caked Crusader

  Me and the 1981 Royal Wedding

  Royal Wedding Street Party Red, White and Blue Cupcakes

  West End Girls

  Operation Sunshine

  Diamonds are A Girl’s Best Friend

  The Good, The Bad And The Dumped

  To anyone who’s ever licked the spoon.

  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to Ali Gunn and Jo Dickinson. Also to Ursula Mackenzie, David Shelley, Manpreet Grewal, Tamsin Kitson, Kate Webster, Rob Manser, Frances Doyle, Adrian Foxman, Andy Coles, Fabia Ma, Sara Talbot, Robert Mackenzie, Gill Midgley, Alan Scollan, Nick Hammick, Andrew Hally, Alison Emery, Richard Barker, Nigel Andrews, and all the amazing team at Little, Brown, ‘2010 publisher of the year’. Thanks to Deborah Adams for the copy-edit.

  Also: the very wonderful Caked Crusader, whose true identity must NEVER be uncovered, at www.thecakedcrusader.blogspot.com; Patisserie Zambetti, whose entire repertoire I have repeatedly worked through with unashamed gusto and who are never short of a friendly smile, a cup of coffee and a vanilla slice (sorry, millefeuille) on a rainy morning. Geri and Marina, Mads for that lunch, Lise, world’s best workmate; the board, as ever, and assorted Warings, Dingles, Lee-Elliotts and McCarthys for your kindnesses and friendship. And to Mr B and my three wee Bs: I love you to pieces and think you are all totally tremendous in every way. But no, you can’t have another cake; you’ll spoil your dinner. Not even you, big yin.

  A Word From Jenny

  I left home just before my seventeenth birthday and the idea of learning to cook or bake before I left would have been greeted with a typically teenage shrug. I had been a miserably fussy eater as a child – I wouldn’t even eat cheesecake – and I spent my student years living off the traditional diet of crisps, beans, chilli and snakebite.

  When I was twenty-one, I had a boyfriend who was aghast that I couldn’t actually cook at all, and who taught me how to make my first white sauce out of sheer exasperation. After that, it was one step forward, two steps back: the onion soup where I didn’t realize you had to do anything to the onions before you stuck them in some boiling water; the lemon cake where too much bicarbonate of soda reacted with the acid of the lemons to make something akin to the chemical composition of chalk; and – an ongoing problem – I now have about nine thousand discarded recipes for scones because no matter whether I use tonic water, or whisked milk, or room temperature this and that, some round, hard, tasteless discs always end up sitting at the bottom of the tray. My mum, a fantastic baker and scone-maker who used to plonk me on the kitchen cabinets and let me lick the mixer arms whilst she made fairy cakes, says I should give up on the scones and just use the shop-bought mix, even she does these days. But I refuse to let it go.

  Anyway. Then I had children, and in a desperate desire to make sure they didn’t have to suffer the miserable indignities of being the child who doesn’t eat anything, I wanted to give them the broadest repertoire of tastes possible. Which also, of course, meant learning to cook.

  To some people, cooking is an innate gift. My sister-in-law is an extraordinary cook. Give her ten minutes in a kitchen and she will conjure up something heavenly out of thin air, tasting and testing and altering as she goes along. I will never be like that. I still get upset when my husband serves beetroot.*

  But I can, finally, just about make good, wholesome food for my family (we’ll just ignore that whole fish guts incident for now), and seeing as I was in the kitchen anyway, I found that if you’ve got a mixer, it actually doesn’t take terribly long to rustle up a chocolate sponge or some peanut-butter cookies. I’m a staunch believer in Jamie Oliver’s mantra of ‘it doesn’t matter what you eat; just make sure it has as few ingredients as possible’, and I realise that even when I think my life is hectic, half an hour is enough to grab some flour, sugar, butter and an egg, and to make up a batch of the most flexible recipe of all – the cupcake – and look like a proper Nigella (without, alas, the lustrous locks or the resplendent bosom) whilst I’m at it. Of course, the children take it totally for granted and loudly ask what they are having today, and argue over whose turn it is to use the mixer, just like we did, but that’s all right. I’m doing it because I enjoy it.r />
  And suddenly it seemed like I wasn’t alone. Suddenly, cupcake cafés started springing up everywhere, and I was absolutely gripped by The Great British Bake-Off on telly. There’s even an annual cupcake festival: www.cupcakecamplondon.co.uk. And Issy’s story here was inspired by all of that and, in the end, by the simple desire to make something sweet for the people you love.

  I hope you like it too – whether you bake already, or if you think one day that you’d like to (see the Caked Crusader’s fantastic beginner’s guide at the back of the book), or if you think, ‘totally, no way, would I ever get sucked into that’, as I did, once upon a time, or are just a contented consumer. Come, pull up a chair …

  Very warmest wishes,

  Jenny

  Author’s Note

  I have successfully tested all the recipes in this book (NB, for cooking times please be aware that I don’t use a fan oven) and they’re all yummy. Except for Caroline’s Bran and Carrot Cupcake Surprise. There, you’re on your own. Also, please note that Grampa Joe’s recipes are imperial and Issy’s are metric. Caroline works in ‘cups’. She’s like that.

  JC x x

  Chapter One

  Drop Scones

  8 oz self-raising flour

  1 oz caster sugar. Can be licked off spoon.

  1 egg. Budget for four eggs if working with under-sevens.

  ½ pint full cream milk. 10 oz for recipe, plus one glass to be taken with results.

  Pinch of salt. This is a small amount of salt, Issy. Tinier than your little finger. Not too much! Not! Oh. That’s too much. Never mind.

  Put the dry ingredients into a bowl and stir well.

  Make a well in the centre – a well, that’s like a place you get water. Like Jack and Jill. Yes. Drop in the egg. Wheee! Yes, and milk.

  Whisk everything together thoroughly. The batter should have a creamy consistency. Add a little more milk if necessary.

  Preheat and butter a heavy-based pan. Grampa will pick up the pan. Do not try to lift the pan. Good. Now let the mix drip off a spoon. Don’t rush it. A few splatters on the side of the pan is fine. Now let Grampa flip them, but you can hold the handle … yup, that’s it. Hurrah!

  Serve with the remainder of the milk, butter, jam, cream and whatever else is in the fridge, and a large kiss on the top of the head for being a clever girl.

  Issy Randall refolded the piece of paper and smiled.

  ‘Are you absolutely sure about this?’ she said to the figure in the easy chair. ‘This is the recipe?’ The old man nodded vehemently. He held up one finger, which Issy recognized immediately as his cue for a lecture.

  ‘Well, the thing is,’ Grampa Joe began, ‘baking is …’

  ‘Life,’ filled in Issy patiently. She’d heard the speech many times before. Her grandfather had started sweeping up in the family bakery at the age of twelve; eventually he had taken over the business and run three large bakeries in Manchester. Baking was all he knew.

  ‘It is life. Bread is the staff of life, our most basic food.’

  ‘And very un-Atkins,’ said Issy, smoothing her cord skirt down over her hips and sighing. It was one thing for her grandfather to say that. He had spent his whole life skinny as a rake, thanks to a full-time diet of extremely hard physical work that started with lighting the furnace at 5am. It was quite another when baking was your hobby, your passion – but to pay the bills you were sitting down in an office all day. It was hard to show restraint when trying out … She drifted off, thinking about the new pineapple cream recipe she’d tried that morning. The trick was to leave enough of the pith in to give the flavour bite, but not so much that it turned into a smoothie. She needed to give it another shot. Issy ran her hands over her cloudy black hair. It went well with her green eyes but created absolute bloody havoc if it rained.

  ‘So when you describe what you’re making, you must describe life. Do you see? It’s not just recipes … next thing you’ll tell me you’re measuring in metric.’

  Issy bit her lip and made a mental note to hide her metric scales the next time Grampa visited the flat. He’d only get himself worked up.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’

  ‘Yes, Gramps!’

  They both turned to look out of the window of the assisted living facility in north London. Issy had installed Joe there when it became clear he was getting too absent-minded to live on his own. Issy had hated moving him down south after he’d spent his life in the north, but she needed him close enough to visit. Joe had grumbled of course but he was going to grumble anyway, moving out of his home to anywhere that wouldn’t let him rise at 5am and start pounding bread dough. So he might as well be grumpy close by, where she could keep an eye on him. After all, it wasn’t as if anyone else was around to do it. And the three bakeries, with their proud, shiny brass handles and old signs proclaiming them to be ‘electric bakers’, were gone now; fallen prey to the supermarkets and chains that favoured cheap white pulp over hand-crafted but slightly more expensive loaves.

  As he so often did, Grampa Joe watched the January raindrops fall across the window and read her mind.

  ‘Have you heard from … your mother recently?’ he said. Issy nodded, noting as ever how hard he found it to say his own daughter’s name. Marian had never felt at home as a baker’s daughter. And Issy’s grandmother had died so young, she hadn’t had long enough to provide a steadying influence. With Gramps working all the time, Marian had rebelled before she could even spell the word; hanging out with older boys and bad crowds from her teens, getting pregnant early to a travelling man who had given Issy her black hair and strong eyebrows and absolutely nothing else. Too much of a questing spirit to be tied down, Marian had often left her only child behind while she went off in search of herself.

  Issy had spent most of her childhood in the bakery, watching Gramps as he manfully beat the dough, or delicately shaped the lightest, most mouth-melting filigree cakes and pies. Although he trained bakers for each of his shops, he still liked to get his own hands white with flour, one of the reasons Randall’s were once the most popular bakers in Manchester. Issy had spent countless hours doing her homework under the great Cable Street ovens, absorbing through her pores the time and skill and care of a great baker; much more conventional than her mother, she adored her gramps, and felt safe and cosy in the kitchens, even though she knew, of course, that she was different from her classmates, who went home to little houses with mums, and dads who worked for the council, and dogs and siblings, and ate potato waffles with ketchup in front of Neighbours and didn’t wake up before the sun, the smell of warm bread already rising from far below.

  Now, at thirty-one, Issy had just about forgiven her troubled, untethered mother, even though she of all people should have known what it was like growing up without your mum. She didn’t care about the sports days and school outings – everyone knew her grandfather, who never missed one – and she was popular enough, rarely without a cast-off box of scones or French cakes to bring to school occasions, while her birthday-party spreads were the stuff of local legend. She did wish someone in her life had cared a little more for fashion – her grandfather bought her two cotton and one woollen dress every Christmas, regardless of age, style or size, even when everyone else she knew was in legwarmers and Pineapple T-shirts, and her mother would swoop back at regular intervals with strange hippy-style garments that she was selling at festivals, made of hemp or itchy llama wool or something else equally impractical. But Issy never felt short of love, in the cosy flat above the bakery where she and Gramps would eat apple pie and watch Dad’s Army. Even Marian, who on her flying visits would strictly admonish Issy not to trust men, to stay off the cider and always follow her rainbow, was a loving parent. Nevertheless, sometimes, when she saw happy families larking in the park, or parents cradling their newborns, Issy felt a desire at the pit of her stomach so strong it felt like a physical gnawing for the traditional, the safe.

  It was no surprise to anyone who knew the family that Issy Ra
ndall grew up to be the straightest, most conventional girl imaginable. Good A-levels, good college and now a good job with a thrusting commercial property company in the City. By the time she was ready to start work, Gramps’s bakeries were all sold: victims of his getting older and the changing times. And she had an education, he had pointed out (sadly, she sometimes thought); she didn’t want to be getting up at sparrow’s fart and doing hard manual labour for the rest of her life. She was set for better things.

  But deep down she had a passion for kitchen comforts – for cream horns, balanced with the perfect weight of caterer’s cream and light, flaky pastry, set off by the crunchiest diamond crystals of clear sugar; for hot cross buns, baked at Randall’s strictly during Lent and Lent only, their cinnamon and raisins and orange peel spreading an exciting, sticky smell to half the road; for a perfectly piped butter icing on top of the highest, lightest, floatiest lemon cupcake. Issy loved all of those things. Hence her project with Gramps: to get as many of his recipes down on paper as possible, before, although neither of them ever referred to it, but before, or in case, he started to forget them.

  ‘I got an email from Mum,’ said Issy. ‘She’s in Florida. She’s met a man called Brick. Really. Brick. That’s his name.’

  ‘At least it’s a man this time,’ sniffed her grandfather.

  Issy gave him a look. ‘Ssh. She said she might be home for my birthday. In the summer. Of course she said she’d be home for Christmas but she wasn’t.’

  Issy had spent Christmas in the home with Gramps. The staff did their best, but it wasn’t all that great.

  ‘Anyway.’ Issy attempted a smile. ‘She sounds happy. Says she loves it over there. Said I should send you over for some sun.’