Sunday sit-down with… Hannah Evans, Cake Stories

What gave you the push to turn your passion for baking into a business? 

Confession… cake isn’t my passion! I know that might sound like an awful thing to say! But working with people is my passion. Creating something people can take joy from and can share with each other, that’s my passion. So, actually, making cakes wasn’t a passion until it became Cake Stories, and it became about building a community of people who love working together and creating great things for our communities.

How do you make sure you pack the biggest flavour punch into every one of your bakes?

We make sure our ingredients are quality-tested, ethically sourced and from reputable suppliers. We also take our time designing new flavours and developing our recipes, to make sure those ingredients are going to work well together.  We always go for natural flavours too, that’s important to us.

However, I think the most important thing in our approach to baking is that, when we recruit, we don’t actually look for the best bakers around. We look for the people who care the most. Who care about doing a great job, who care about joining a team that works hard and who hold the values that we hold. Because we can always teach people to bake, and the people making the cakes are the biggest influence on the quality of our cakes.

A huge part of your offering is your online cake delivery. How do you ensure your culinary creations stay fresh throughout their postal journey? 

We crafted the recipes for our online postal bakes especially to survive the notorious postal system! They are super gooey and tasty and robust – so they can take a battering and a squishing and still look great.

Also, our bespoke packaging is designed to be super strong, so the bakes don’t get damaged. The packaging keeps the bakes fresh and tasting great for up to 14 days… so they can survive any Royal Mail delays! (Which, thankfully, are rare). Something we love is that all of our packaging is completely recyclable and the main brownie box is made from recycled coffee cups, which is pretty cool!

Why should our readers also pop into Cake Stories in person?

Our bricks-and-mortar shops are our spiritual home – that’s where you can meet with real people in a real space. Even if you’re by yourself, you’ll find a welcoming atmosphere which will make you feel better simply for being there.

In baking terms, the cakes we sell in the shops are quite varied. They’re all handmade – as is everything we do – but the ones that we sell in the shop can be quite delicately hand-decorated, which means some of our favourites are actually exclusive to the shops. Like some of our Brownios, for example – there’s always a stash at the Hoults Yard store, including exclusive limited edition flavour-runs.

You’re one of the amazing women featured on our new billboard. What do you love about HLN?

I love how High Life North represents such a wide range of women from the North East. I love how it connects me to things that I’ve never heard of before. I love how positive and empowering it is. And how real it is – it’s high quality, it’s authentic, but it feels really honest, too. I absolutely love it!

And why do you think it’s important to have a magazine that spotlights women and celebrates their achievements?

We’re in a really interesting time as a society, where women are starting to be recognised for the things they’ve achieved and the things they’re working on, and the things that are important to women are starting to be talked about more openly. I think organisations like High Life North are key to bringing that change about; creating opportunities to hear from those women, to be inspired by them and have them as role models.

What element of High Life North is your favourite?

The interviews. I’m all about people and I love finding out about the people behind the brands, activities, art and businesses that we have here in the North East. And another thing I really love about High Life North is that you get to find out about the real people behind the magazine itself, too. You feel really connected to the people who are working to create the magazine every day. It’s so cool!

If you could only eat 3 Cake Stories bakes forever, which would you choose? 

That is the hardest question! Honestly, we can only stock roughly 20 flavours at any one point in our coffee shops, and I find choosing those hard enough!

I think one would have to be the Snickers In A Twist brownie, because it has everything amazing in it – peanut butter, salted caramel, salted pretzels and the gooiest, most chocolatey brownie, so that’s a winner for sure. Something with coffee in is always good, so I’d say our Salted Caramel Latte cake. Or maybe our Gingerbread Latte cake. And then I’d need something fruity to go with that, so let’s go for our Orange, Almond and Passionfruit cake which comes out each summer.