Connect with Kate Saunders of Blackberry Cottage for small business support on Enterprise Nation

Connect with Kate Saunders to grow your entrepreneurial network of start-ups and small business owners on Enterprise Nation.

Kate Saunders, Blackberry Cottage | Enterprise Nation

&lt;p&gt;Blackberry Cottage creates cakes with secret ingredients, vegetables, as one of the largest ingredients, Kate owns Blackberry Cottage Cookery School, which teaches people how to create cakes with vegetables as the largest ingredient, from using regular ingredients through to no added fats or refined sugars.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Kate is often found in cookery theatres around the country demonstrating&amp;nbsp;cakes with secret ingredients, in 2018 Kate wrote and published her first book, Cakes with Secret Ingredients, From Aubergine to Zucchini.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Everyone loves cakes, Kates aim is to create a cake with a nutritional value and take this fun into schools healthy eating education, and often gives talks around the country to groups.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As well as all this Blackberry Cottage sell their cakes and puddings to cafes and farm shops and online, they also have tea time selection boxes and fantastic seasonal sections which includes Christmas Puddings and Easter Simnel Cakes.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We also supply corporate cake gifts and Christmas puddings.&lt;/p&gt;

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Kate Saunders

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&lt;p&gt;I am a creative baker, set in the heart of the Berkshire countryside, my husband, Tim, and I have a small holding with rare breed sheep,&amp;nbsp;horses, chicken and turkeys.&amp;nbsp; We grow as many vegetables as we can for our business and use the eggs from our chickens.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;My kitchen and cookery school is a beautiful purpose built shepherds hut.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I’ve always used vegetables in my cakes, right from when I was a young girl, making up recipes from whatever I could find. I remember sitting on the counter as a small child eating the raw swede my mum had just chopped – I’ve always found raw vegetables sweeter than cooked. Years later, while I was working as a Sport Massage Therapist with Olympic and Paralympic athletes, a client confided that she just couldn’t get her child to eat vegetables, or even much fruit.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I love a challenge, and knowing how nutritionally-dense spinach is, set to work creating delicious brownies that hid a secret ingredient – a healthy vegetable.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I didn’t just want a sprinkle of spinach though, it had to be the biggest ingredient, yet still taste like a traditional cake, this ethos is still at the forefront of my business.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After much trial and error, I had a cake that was loved, by the child and the parents. Word spread, and soon more parents and children were asking to try my ‘cakes with secret ingredients’&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The next twist is thanks to my husband Tim, who convinced me to try selling my cakes at a local market. Humouring him I baked some cakes and we set up a stall. I brought a book and settled down for a nice, uninterrupted read. But people kept stopping, trying and buying. Soon we’d sold out and my book didn’t get read.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I ran the cakes business side by side with my Sports Massage business until it could stand on its own, when it could I gave up being a therapist and became a full-time baker.&lt;/p&gt;

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