Fiddlewick · baking since 1964
Cakeswithabitofawobble
Nan Peg has been icing them slightly crooked for sixty-two years, and nobody in this village has ever asked her to stop. Twelve cakes and buns, all baked on Pennygate, all collected or driven out in the little blue van.
Collection free from the shop · delivery £4 within five miles · order by Thursday for a Saturday cake
“Mind the bottom step, duck. It has been like that since the jubilee and it is not getting fixed now.”
Nan Peg, at the door, most mornings
Everythingismadehere,badlyonpurpose
There is one oven, one mixer that shouts, and three of us. Nothing is levelled with a palette knife and nothing is sprayed. If a cake leans, it leans, and we will tell you so before you pay for it.
- Baked
- Tuesday to Saturday, from 5am
- Butter
- Churned eight miles away at Harrow Fold
- Notice
- Two days for a big cake, none for buns
Three to start you off
Ifyouonlyeverbuythreethings
The Big Wobble is the birthday one and the reason people drive here. Chocolate Sunday is Dot's, and she will tell you so. The jammy cream buns are nine pounds for four and they do not survive the walk home.
“If you are buying for somebody you do not know well, get the buns. Nobody has ever been offended by a bun.”
Dot, behind the counter on Saturdays
Howacakegetstoyou
One morning, drawn from the counter to the kerb. No account to make and no app — Dot writes it in the book and the book has never lost one.
Pick the cake
Point at one in the case, choose one off the Cakes page, or describe the one you remember from somebody's wedding.
Say the day
The date and how many people, in pencil, in the book. Two days for a big cake. Dot rings you back the same afternoon.
Nan Peg bakes it
On the morning of your day, never before. Iced by hand, so no two have ever come out the same shape twice.
Boxed or driven
Collect it free from Pennygate, or the van takes it out for £4 inside five miles with a two-hour window.
Threethingswewillnotbudgeon
Butter, and nothing standing in for it
Real butter, free-range eggs from the Marlock farm, and plum jam Nan Peg boils in August in her mother's pan. It costs more than the alternative, and that is already in the price on the card.
Baked on the morning you asked for
The sponge goes in at twenty past five. Nothing is frozen, nothing sits over to the next day, and whatever is left at four o'clock goes in the half-price basket by the door.
Boxed well enough for the 44 bus
A tall rigid box, a silver board underneath and a ribbon that is genuinely holding the thing together. One casualty in six years, and that one was a dog.
“
I asked for something my mother would recognise from 1961 and I got it, roses and all, slightly leaning to the left. She cried at the table. Three days' notice, forty-four pounds, and Dot carried it in herself because the path is gravel.
Collected 14 September
Tellusthedayandthenumber
That is genuinely all we need to start. No deposit until we have agreed what it is, and you can change your mind up to forty-eight hours before.
Or ring the shop on 01639 55 2041, Tuesday to Saturday.