We blinked, and it's been 10 years...TEN YEARS...a DECADE of Anges de Sucre! 

Hah, I'm kidding. We didn't blink. If you've followed our journey from the beginning, when I was baking macarons from our little home kitchen and posting them, you'll have seen our trials, tribulations and triumphs. Whenever I get an interview request I tend to decline. It'll usually be about how we got to where we are, named as one of London's best bakeries making the best cakes, being supplier to one of the world's best department stores (aka Selfridges), and celebrity-fave cake maker (well...other than Steps) etc. While it's a sort of humble brag going, "Hey, look how hard we worked for where we're at", I find it increasingly difficult to rehash the early journey, when we made so many mistakes, bad decisions and investments, and had to learn and graft in the hardest way. It's just not very pleasant to go back over! 

Our first ever website launched in early 2012. 

We went from just me in my little Notting Hill kitchen popping out macarons, which then ballooned to a team of 18 in a production site and a shop. At the time we thought, wow, we're so much bigger. But we weren't bigger...we were bloated. Since then we whittled down (I like the term "right-sized" as opposed to "down-sized"), got to our most efficient, whilst continually working towards improving our product and service. And I am enjoying baking every single cake. Ten years on!

 Website now!

I'd always known our Christmas Cake collection was embarrassing. Truth be told, it was a lazy offering. I was bogged down with the operations and stress of running a bloated business and didn't have the head space for much creativity. I made a few golden chocolate spheres and macarons and popped them on a cake - Christmas Bauble Cake. Cute maybe, but not exactly bangin'.

Clients would send me the brief, I'd read trend reports, and then make the cakes often to a strict budget. They were not my favourite designs. For the longest time our Christmas Cake collection looked sad and meh.

But I've had enough of being cringed out by our Chrimbo cakes! Ten years is too long to get Grinch-ey with my own work, and we've come a long way. With no briefs, trends or Pinterest boards limiting me, I went about baking however I felt. And I'm chuffed to bits with our new Christmas Cakes range starting with these three cuties.

I must apologise for the styling in these photos. I bought the cheapest balding tinsel, and cheap starry lights that I thought looked really cute, except I didn't have batteries for them and in a fit of rage broke the actual battery compartment. So yeah, they're not lit up. Bah humbug.

But the CAKES! Oh the CAKES!

 

This Disco Santa cake, is SO how I like to disco. Lying in a heap, surrounded by cookies. 

Ah the darn unlit lights. Anyway, looking past them, I LOVE this Christmas Tree cupcake cake. The cupcake-cake thing, I don't know how we fell into it but it's become one of our leading cake styles. Giving it a Christmas make-over just seemed to flow so well here.