Meet Catherine

Hello and thank you for visiting my website! Here is a little bit about my career as a pastry chef and how Catherine’s Cake House began.

My pastry chef journey started at Gateshead College where I did my first formal training as a chef. I knew I wanted to specialise in patisserie; and so after college I was very lucky to be offered a job as a pastry chef at The Ritz Hotel in London. Alongside a large team of superb pastry chefs I assisted in producing 400 afternoon teas a day! I also worked in the restaurant creating and plating beautiful desserts. This experience helped open up my eyes to the wonderful world of interesting ingredients and amazing suppliers. And now this is what I use as the basis for creating my own recipes.

After four years in London I decided to head back to more Northern parts and was offered a job at Bettys Cookery School in Harrogate. I had grown up with many trips to Bettys in York, so to work at their cookery school was such a delight. I assisted in teaching cookery and baking classes and learnt a great deal myself too. I also ate a lot of Fat Rascals...

Missing the buzz of a restaurant kitchen I then moved to The Alice Hawthorn hotel nestled in the incredibly pretty village of Nun Monkton just outside York. Working with a fabulous team, using the finest Yorkshire produce, I headed up the pastry section creating their desserts, petit fours and room amenities.

As we all know, the pandemic was a crazy year for hospitality and like many, furlough gave me the headspace to think about my future as a chef and it also rekindled the original plan of why I trained to be a pastry chef in the first place...to be able to one day have my own cake business and cafe (the ultimate goal!). So with a new seize the day attitude I moved back to my home town of Newcastle and started Catherine’s Cake House. 

Thank you so much for visiting my website and please do not hesitate to get in touch or sign up to my newsletter.

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