Wednesday was an exciting day – as well as the start of the Great British Bake Off, it was also the day to use my Bakes Box which I had been sent a few days earlier!
I love getting fun post, and I love baking – so a baking subscription box dropping onto my doorstep was always going to go down very well with me. I had heard about it through Twitter and tried to fund their Kickstarter campaign (unfortunately unsuccessful). However, Amanda wasn’t put off and Bakes was launched regardless in July 2015.
A Bakes box contains everything you need (apart from a few fresh ingredients that can’t be sent through the post) to make a delicious bake. Boxes are sent monthly and you can amend your subscription easily once you have your account set up (which is very quick to do)! You also don’t have to worry about waiting in for the postie as the boxes have been designed to fit through a standard sized letterbox.
All of the dry ingredients are wrapped in secure polythene bags, and labelled. As well as the ingredients, you get the recipe card for your bake and also a piece of kit for baking with! I could only think of one suggestion to improve this box and that would be to laminate the recipe card or provide a plastic sleeve for it (and future recipe cards) to be stored in.
So onto this month’s bake! Each recipe tutorial is uploaded to the Bakes blog with loads of photos.
July’s bake was a Salted Caramel Chocolate Layer Cake. As I didn’t get round to baking my cake straightaway, it was great fun to see other bakers post pictures of their versions with the hashtag #mybakes. Here’s my version below!
My only (rookie) error was that my cakes weren’t absolutely cold before I piped my icing – I was a bit of an eager beaver to get the cake finished! So it didn’t look quite perfect – but the taste was so delicious. The chocolate cake was light and not dense, the mascarpone filling was smooth and rich, and the salted caramel drizzle finished it off perfectly!
I will definitely be buying more Bakes boxes and I have a discount code to share for the first three people to sign up for a Bakes Box. Just enter the code ‘MYBAKESSusan’ at the checkout to get your box for a very bargainous £5!
This is not a sponsored post – I like the concept and product of Bakes so much I thought it was too good not to share!
That is a great idea! So which things did you have to supply yourself? How much do you reckon the ingredients cost? Just wondering what the markup is as it’s a great idea that I’d love to buy into but I’d find it had to justify £10 when I could go and buy a top notch bakery cake for that
It’a fun concept isn’t it? I had to supply 3 eggs, a pack of butter (both of which i would have at home anyway so don’t consider that an extra expense) and 100g of mascarpone. There was also a disposable icing bag and also a wee drizzling spoon for the caramel (you get a piece of equipment in each box). It’s quite a novelty not to have to weigh the ingredients, and i liked the communal aspect of it too, seeing the other bakers cakes on Instagram. Definitely make use of the discount code on the blog, as it’s definitely worth it for a try!