At long bloody last. Our Bloody Mary BLT.

After being open for two and a half years, we have finally,in the last couple of weeks, served our first BLT.

Why the heck has it taken so long?  I just wanted to be happy with it.  That's all.

I do love a BLT and all variations of a BLT.  It's something that I'll often order if I want to be a bit naughty but it's often one of those things that you can be really disappointed with in life.

Yes,  one man's BLT is anothers BLAH LT.  There are so many elements of this bloody sandwich that can go right or wrong depending on what you like.  

The bread
The BLT usually falls under the 'sandwich' category in a menu.  A sandwich, in this country, often refers to some sort of filling between two slices of bread.  We only have two types of bread 'slices' in the cafe.  Firstly we have our own granary that we make each morning to serve with our soup (made from a gorgeous flour from the Carr's Flour Hutchison's flour merchants in Kirkcaldy).  Depending on the day, we'll make one or two loaves but no matter what tin we use, the size isn't always consistent so we can't use it for a sandwich AND more importantly, we often only just have enough to serve with our soup and don't have any more time to make more. 

Not a 'real' soup and bread serving at T Ann Cake, lunch for me in the store cupboard but if you look hard enough, you can see a little bit of our gorgeous granary bread.

We also serve brown toast for breakfast 'toast'. We don't make this ourselves but buy it from a supplier.  This makes great toast and it's slightly larger than a usual sliced loaf but it's far too soft to even served as any type of sandwich.  We know because we've tested it.  It's quite a bit more expensive than buying a 'normal' sliced loaf too but for the moment, it is what we're serving as our toast.  We've just changed the type of 'toast' we're serving and are very pleased about what we've tested so far.  Still getting it from the same supplier but we think and hope this'll make really good sandwiches too.  It's got a gorgeous crust on it and a good crust often makes a good sandwich!

I've enjoyed BLTs on a croissant, on toasted white bread and on various crusty bread.  There have been many that I've not enjoyed but I won't turn this into a negative post (for now).

We tested lots of bread/rolls for our BLT and we went with the seeded roll that we use for our hot savoury items.  It's a good quality roll and although it's a lot more expensive for me to buy than a lot of similar type rolls I've seen in supermarkets/shops, it's good and it's one I'm sticking with for now.

The BACON.  I adore bacon.  Any type really.  Whilst I can happily eat a gorgeous piece of good-quality smoked (always smoked for me) bacon as part of a big fry up (goodness knows when I last had one of those), I also love the way that the Americans serve their bacon - really crispy.  

Another thing that stopped me doing the BLT for ages was that I just didn't know how our customers would react to the fact that I was determined to serve crispy smoked bacon on our BLT.  I was being selfish in wanting to serve streaky but this is why I needed to do this.

Price.  Back bacon is more expensive and having researched (read, eaten) loads of BLTs over the last 4 years, those who offered back bacon at a reasonable price, didn't tell you what type of bacon it was.  When this happens, I always think the worst (cheap bacon and where the hell is it from).  If I were to serve back bacon, I'd have to charge 2 million pounds/BLT.  Don't think I'll sell many.  Our streaky is local bacon, sourced from a local butcher and is really great quality - no water comes out whilst cooking.  Not cheap either but tastes amazing and we've had great feedback about it.

Cooking.  We're not allowed to fry.  All related to the planning permission we go when we renovated the cafe from a shop into T Ann Cake.  I've eaten far too many badly reheated bits of back bacon in a BLT or bacon roll - usually microwaved which means it then goes hard and cardboard-like a minute or so after serving.  Streaky bacon is a dream when you can't fry it (and there are NO microwaves involved!).

Tomatoes.   We don't live in Spain.  Or any of the other Southern European countries that can grow and sell millions of juicy red tomatoes to poor old cafe owners like me for a reasonable price.  Yes, I currently have around 30 tiny green tomatoes growing on four tomato plants in the room that I'm writing in but that's only because it's finally summer here and I can't really grow enough for the cafe!  So, I have to buy them from our veg supplier.  

I didn't want to serve a bit of sliced tomato like you get on most other BLTs so I put my thinking cap on and decided to roast them as well as making them into bloody mary tomatoes.  I'd been wanting to use this type of tomato in some dish at some point and I'm delighted that these work so well with the bacon.

Green stuff.   Has to be rocket.  Got a good supply of it and if it's a week when it's a good peppery batch, so much the better.

Mayonnaise.  Love it and use ridiculous amounts of it on any sandwich I make in the house.  We add lots of flavours to various mayonnaise accompaniments in the cafe and I though that our smoky chipotle chilli one would work well.  It does.

So, this is it.  Already been sampled by many customers (lots of questions asked too....).

I'm very happy with it.  It's only taken 2 and a half years to get it on the menu but sometimes it's better to do it that way!


  

We're hiring...

Experienced barista required

Must have recent experience of using commercial espresso machine & be confident in pulling all types of espresso drinks*

         *we’ll take a look at your practical skills at interview!

• ·      between 12 & 20 hours per week (tbc but could be more)

• ·      this is not a summer holiday position

• ·      we cannot work around any student timetables – sorry!

• ·      job will also involve other cafe duties such as serving customers, dishwashing &   cleaning

• ·      must be able to work on Saturdays

• ·      must be non-smoker

• ·      immediate start**

• ·      must have good written and spoken English

• ·      18 years and over

• ·      Apply by emailing your CV and telling us why you want the job: 

t-ann-cake@live.co.uk

** T Ann cake will be closing for its summer holiday from Tuesday 9^th July until Saturday 20 July (inclusive).  We hope to interview and have the successful candidate in for trial days before the closure

*** unfortubately, due to the high numbers of applications expected, we are unable to reply to those candidates who are unsuccessful  in this application process or those candidates who have not provided us with an up to date CV listing relevant and recent experience.

Cakes, tarts and all things sweet

The cafe's name, T Ann Cake, implies that we serve tea.  And cake.  This isn't something that I wasn't aware of when I chose the name.

When choosing the business name (just before I did my first farmers' market in August 2009), I had a list of around 20 contenders.  Some better than others.  Here are some of them along with some of the comments fed back to me via friends and family.

The Pantry     
"makes me think of a pair of pants" 

Coffee, Tea or Me?
"Absolutely not (mother)"

Kitchenette
"just don't like it"

More tea Vicar?
"you can't have anything religious"

Let them eat Cake
"so you think your future customers are peasants?"

Sweet Annie/Sweet Annie's
"sounds a bit dodgy"

Piecrustination
"no"

And it went on.  My big sister phoned a friend of hers who told her husband about my name-finding quest.  "Well why doesn't she just call it 'T Ann Cake'?"  Yes indeed.  Why didn't we think of that?  So, thank you once more Michael.  There was one drawback.  Although my market stall would only be serving sweet things, the whole point of starting the business was to one day have a cafe and we would be serving savoury things too.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I think a number of prospective customers may think that we only serve 'tea' and 'cake' but I think and hope that most know we do other things do.

In the meantime, here are some photos of some of the cakes and other sweet things that we've made over the last week or two...

Vanilla pear-poached frangipane tarts, strawberry torte almond cake and chocolate oreo cake

Our sweet pastry filled with our chocolate fondant and local raspberries

Vanilla cupcakes with local strawberries, our sweet pastry for pecan pies

 ;l

 

 

 

Dulce de leche brownies

So there we have it.  The top photo that features the strawberry torte almond cake was on the counter half an hour after opening this morning, still warm having just been tested/tasted by us.  I had some strawberries to use.  I was making muscovado meringues but knew they wouldn't be ready in time so needed a cake in which to use them up.  I found this recipe at around 7 o'clock this morning, made it at around 8am and it was on the counter by 10.30am.  That is the part I love about having the cafe.  I can play. 

Menu for this Friday and Saturday

In a typical week, even 2 and a half years after we opened, I think we're still doing at least one brand new dish on our (very little) menu.  We usually chuck in a new soup too. 

This week, our end of week menu will feature three new specials (ok, one of them, our roasted beet, carrot & goat bruschetta has been done in a slightly different fashion) but the other too, our Middle Eastern shakshuka is very exciting to do (might take a wee bit longer to get out but we think we have it cracked).  We've tested other versions of this before (we tested it as a Turkish menemen just after I got back from Istanbul but it wasn't entirely happy with it) but I'm extremely happy with the shakshuka.

our shakshuka....eggs at the bottom is slightly underdone but perfectly edible....imagine breaking the gorgeous yolks and swirling the yolk into the sauce - yes, that's what we did!

We'll also have our new vegan dip.  It's Thai inspired. I didn't have a recipe but had bought something recently and brought it home.  Loved it.  Looked up recipes.  Couldn't find anything exactly like that so bastardised a sort of similar recipe and added all the bits that I remembered eating in the one I bought.  We made it and kept on adding bits and bobs and it's done.  Very happy.

The menu is, as usual, on the menu section of the blog.

Tuesday or Saturday?

I realise that I'm going to jinx the rest of the week now but jeeeeeez, today was more like a Saturday than a Tuesday.  Hmmmm.

A long weekend?

I don't know about you but I often feel like the weekends go far too quickly.  We all know that this is pretty impossible but it's something that you hear a lot of people saying.  

This weekend, I had my granddaughters to stay from almost pretty much immediately after the cafe closed on Saturday evening until Sunday evening and then had them for a while again today (Monday).  It just feels like we've crammed an awful lot in.  Which is good.  

Back to work tomorrow (Tuesday - our 'Monday' if you like).  Excited about the menu again this week.  I said this to my husband earlier and he told me in his usual deadpan manner that it would be a sad day when I wasn't excited about the cafe's menu.  I have a short attention span and get bored rather too easily.  That's why I don't think I'll ever have a completely set menu.  What's on the menu?  Two new soups (one with sorrel in - from the garden) and the other a North African - Algerian - soup with a million ingredients in but I'm sure my husband won't mind making that on Saturday for lunch service....

We'll also be serving our salt beef sandwich in the first half of the week.  I ate a lot of these in Manhattan whenever I was working there and whilst we can't, with the beef that we're using, afford to serve the same quantity of beef that they do in places such as the Carnegie deli, 

 
An open-faced Reuben sandwich at the Carnegie deli - I could NEVER finish one that I ordered

I think our 'sort of Reuben sandwich' is a fabulous way of serving it.  Our salt beef has been curing for over a week and then really slowly roasted.  I'd love to have served it in the traditional way with sauerkraut, but we won't be.  Why?  Do I hate sauerkraut?  NO.  I love it (now that I'm an adult).  As usual, my mind has wondered elsewhere.... my first taste of real sauerkraut was in Germany (funnily enough) where I lived in the early to mid 70s when I was around 5 years old.  I had been invited to a German friend's house and had been warned by my mother to eat everything that I was given.  I can't remember anything about the meal apart from the fact that it included sauerkraut (my first taste of the stuff) and that I didn't love it.  I also remember trying to feed it to my friend's dog under the table.  

So, when discussing the salt beef with a member of the T Ann Cake team - Franziska (from Germany), I said that we'd be serving it with sauerkraut.  Franziska got very excited about the fact that we would be serving proper sauerkraut, ie, we should be making it weeks in advance using what sounded like a very complicated recipe and keeping it in a dark place until it was ready.  We're not usually ones to shy away from complicated recipes but I'd already ordered my beef brisket and keeping the proposed sauerkraut side in a safe, dark place also worried me given that we have a huge storage issue (ie, none) in the cafe.  

So, I've swapped the sauerkraut for something else and I'm extremely excited about this sandwich.  Take a look at the menu for a peek at what we're doing (for those of you that are looking at this post after I've changed the daily menu on the blog, it involves a long slow cook of lots of onions, butter and GUINNESS!!!  

There are just too many things that I'd like to do whilst still going back to some old favourites whenever customers request the return of something that they'd enjoyed.

Have a good week whatever you're doing (or eating!). 

Dundee is cracking up....

....but in a really good way. 

The continued demolition of Tayside House, Dundee 15.05.13 at noon

We've had quite an exciting commute to work over the last couple of years.  Everything's changing in front of our eyes.  Sometimes daily.  For a while, it seemed we were taken on a different route off the Tay Bridge into Dundee everyday.  

The current bit of excitement over the last few days has been huge machinery knocking down Tayside House (the old council's HQ).  I had a friend's little 2-year old nephew in the cafe today and on leaving he told me that he was going to watch the big crane.  He was excited.  We are too.  It really is fascinating.

Twit Twoo

I've only gone and done it!  After a bit of further research as well as a very helpful email from a very lovely old colleague, I've resurrected a twitter account I set up over 2 years ago. 

I'm now spending far too much time getting the various apps and programmes to stop being awkward and to start speaking to each other; bit like a dysfunctional family! 

I'm hoping that the linking up of everything will eventually save me a bit of time as well as increasing our profile.  Once I have a lot of the linking up done, I may then start using twitter properly, ie, following people (sounds a bit stalkerish) and doing lots of tweeting to the people I'm stalking following.

Here's what I have - 

Blog         http://t-ann-cake.blogspot.com
Facebook     https://www.facebook.com/pages/T-Ann-Cake
Twitter      @t_ann_cake/twitter   

Here's the linking between the three that I've managed so far (time and dumbassability being the factor here).

Blog
I have both a facebook and twitter button fairly visible on the blog's front page.  That said, I now think that both buttons are huge & I think I'd like to change them to the small buttons, ie, just the 'f' for facebook and the little bird button for twitter.

Twitter
The blog's url is very visible in the header of the twitter page.
I think (not tested yet) that I may have managed to ensure that any tweets I write or photos I post will go straight to facebook.  This is now where I'm a bit wary about going overboard.  I'll test it proper in the morning.  Don't know if you can put a 'follow us on facebook' thing on twitter's front profile page but I guess you don't need to if your feed goes straight to fb???

Facebook
Hmm. Major fail.  Spent far too long faffing around with the extended info app.  Tried to add a 'twitter' link to one of the little boxes on the front page.  Thought I'd nearly done it but the final result was a huge blue box on the front page with a cross in it.  If you clicked on it, it took you to another facebook page with a link to the twitter link on there (that incidentally didn't work).  FAIL. FAIL. FAIL.  Surely it must be pretty easy to put clickable visible links for both my blog page AND for the twitter feed onto the front page of facebook?  Frustrating.
Update....I've just managed to put a little twitter bird button on the business fb page but I don't love what it links to - it all looks a bit messy.  I. Am. Walking. Away. From. It. Now!!!
 

Anyway, I am NOT going to spend any more time on this tonight.    

Goodnight.



   
 

Monday - 'sleeping'. Not quite. What does this cafe owner actually do on a Monday?

I'm often asked by customers what I'm doing on my two days off.  These days I'm being pretty good at taking most, if not all, of Sunday off.  

The cafe door at T Ann Cake says that on a Monday we're 'sleeping'.  

I don't set my alarm so I get up when I get up.  Usually early.  This is our main view from the room at the back of the house where I work.

The view this morning looked nothing like this.  Today it's grey.  Grey.  With a bit more grey but we often get views like this.  We're lucky.
 
I then have a cup of tea - Lady Grey is my tea tipple of the moment. I warm my bottom on the Aga as I boil the kettle - don't worry, I won't post a photo of my bottom.   I plonk my bottom on the couch and adore the company I keep at this time of the morning - hope husband isn't reading this because Hamish is NEVER allowed on the furniture!

I then start on my list.  Sometimes it's a list in my head.  Other times it's a hastily scrawled tangible list in the hope that many of the tasks will be crossed off by bedtime tonight.

The running order usually starts like this:

1. Staff rota (trying to do this on a Sunday).

2. Finish off the cafe's menu list for the coming week. 

3. Invoice paying and filing.  Bleurrgh.   

4. Orders.  Some weeks, I only have to order some bread for delivery on Tuesday but today, for example, I have bread, cheeses, soft drinks, change, coffee to order.  I also have to list what fruit & veg I'll need to order early in the morning.
 
5. Shopping.    Not shoes and clothes but things like olive oil and peanut butter.

6. Prep sheet.  This is the cafe's 'bible'.  I didn't do one in the early days.  This is a three page list of what we need to do/know before we can open/serve customers (mostly for the food side of things).  It's a godsend.

7. The rest.  This can be anything from phoning a supplier about an invoice or credit note query, phoning a potential new supplier, researching new dishes & whether it would be feasible for us to serve them (financially viable in both ingredients and time, will it sell, is anyone else doing it etc etc), more accounts filing and paperwork.  

8. Printing - print off window menus, menu lists, prep sheets, rota and signing in sheet, food & hygiene record sheets blah blah blah.

We/I then head over to the cafe for a while.  Just doing stuff.  Lots of stuff.  It's very silent in there on a Monday.  More often than not, we have prospective customers trying to get in to see if we're open.  It always makes me feel guilty about not being open.

By now, it's usually  mid afternoon and I have to get back over the bridge.    I see my granddaughters on a Monday.  I love doing this.  I pick the 6 year old up from school in Cupar at 3pm.  We then do a few chores and usually head to Luvian's for an ice cream.  This is her choice.  She always asks for a double cone but hardly ever gets one. She has a few favourite flavours - lately it's been stracciatella as well as mango sorbet.  She'll chance her luck and ask for a flake too.  She loves sitting on the bench outside.  We then head to Auchtermuchty to pick up the 3 year old from the childminder.  I then feed them lots, cuddle them lots and head back home when mum or dad get home.  Here's a recent pic of them on Luvian's bench.  Sorry but I'm a Granny and I just have to share.... it's what we do.

Once home, I eat, don't drink (trying to abstain at the moment) and do a few more hours of admin.  Tonight's efforts include sending a couple of recipes to a very interesting gentleman for an article he's writing about whisky and food.  I'm also trying to re-open a twitter account I opened back in 2009.  Think it's worked.  I've even written a really interesting first tweet.  Riveting isn't it?  Almost as riveting as this post ;)