A baker from Harrogate is turning her life-long passion into a career after years of preparation and planning.
Lizzie Warburton began baking at home as a child, but never considered it as a potential job despite her obvious talent.
She said:
“I’ve baked all my life. My grandma is a baker, and my mum – it’s what we have always done as a family.
“I did a foundation course in art and design, and went to uni to do graphics, but I decided it wasn’t the field I wanted to be in.
“I used to bake caked for friends at school, but I never thought of it as a job. Working at Harlow Carr, we used to do Friday bake-offs. Everyone said, ‘you need to go on the Great British Bake-off’ and I never thought about it seriously.
“But eventually I thought, ‘why am I not doing this? I love it’. “
Taking the plunge, Lizzie enrolled on a course at Leeds City College to give her the professional understanding she needed to back up her experience. Once finished, she and mum Sue opened The Kitchen, a coffee shop on Otley Road, in autumn 2016.
Starting with a small menu of light lunches and cakes, they soon became popular with locals and Lizzie’s cakes had a particularly strong reputation.
When events took place, such as the UCI Road World Championships which passed in front of the door in 2019, The Kitchen was packed with cycling enthusiasts and the cake bench laden with special creations which all disappeared by the end of the day.
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However, it was not Lizzie’s most ambitious bakes which proved the biggest hit during the five years the coffee shop was operating. She said:
“We made Mars bar crispies when we were kids and we thought they’d work well – I just updated it and added a layer of chocolate. They became our best seller, along with scones. Everybody still asks for them if I bump into any of our customers!
“Our Mars bar crispies would sell out every day. It’s the easiest thing – it takes 20 minutes to make. I’ve done all this training, learning how to make a cake properly, and it’s that simple childhood recipe that people love the most.”
When her parents decided not to renew the lease on The Kitchen last autumn and to move away, Lizzie knew her future was in baking.
She wanted to focus on her true passion and, before the coffee shop closed its doors for the final time, she began building up cake orders for birthdays and other celebrations. In many ways, the covid pandemic had actually helped her.
“When we were opening up, we started doing afternoon teas to deliver to people’s homes and that went really well. I knew people wanted a treat then, but I thought people would still want that even after covid.”
Though she knew what she wanted to do, Lizzie realised it would be some time before she would earn enough from her own baking to make a living. Over the last year, she has indulged her other passion: she has been working for a dog charity and a kennels, caring for animals and enjoying time outside.
An array of Lizzie’s Baked creations
Meanwhile, she has tested the water by offering pre-ordered boxes of cakes on selected weekends, which have always proved a big hit with customers old and new. She has also been building up contacts for wholesale business, baking treats for other cafes and shops to sell to customers.
Now ready to launch her new venture, Baked, Lizzie is holding a pop-up shop this weekend at Oatlands Community Centre – just around the corner from her home.
She’ll spend this week creating a huge stash of goodies to sell on Saturday between 9am and noon, as well as taking pre-orders to be collected on the day.
A selection of favourites from The Kitchen will be on offer alongside new recipes she has been perfecting. However, Lizzie knows she’ll need to stock up on the famous Mars bar crispies:
Greggs to open shop in Knaresborough“It’s crazy that that one thing went so mad, but it’s so nice because it’s such a nostalgic thing we had as children. I’m just going to have to do trays and trays of it!”
A new Greggs shop is set to open in Knaresborough this year, the high street bakery giant has confirmed.
Its location has yet to be officially announced, but it is believed to be at the former Fultons Foods unit on the High Street.
The building has remained empty since the frozen food store closed in March 2021.
The former Fultons Foods store, 32 High Street, Knaresborough.
A Greggs spokesperson told the Stray Ferret:
“Greggs is due to open a new shop in Knaresborough later this year. While we are unable to share any details at the moment, we will be sure to share further information in the coming months.”
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A staff recruitment advert seeking ‘retail team members’ for the new branch has been posted online.
It lists the location as 32-32B High Street, the unit formerly occupied by Fultons.
The advert says:
Sneak Peek: The Secret Bakery, Knaresborough“Our shop will trade from 6:30am through to 6pm, Monday through Saturday, and 8am until 6pm on a Sunday.
“We are looking to build a team to support this new shop for us.”
Harrogate’s The Secret Bakery has expanded and launched a second branch in Knaresborough.
The shop and cafe, in Market Place, sells baked goods, including artisan bread, cakes and sandwiches, which are all made at the Knaresborough Road site.
The new outlet, which also serves drinks, including coffee, is being run by the bakery’s co-owner Jane Spencer, a former teacher from Keighley.
She said:
“This shop used to be The Reading Room and we used to deliver bread here from our shop in Harrogate. When they decided to close, we thought it was a great opportunity for us to open in Knaresborough
“A lot of our Harrogate customers come from Knaresborough, so it’s nice that we can be here.
“I would say our most popular product is our bread, particularly our sourdough. People come from all over to buy it. Our cakes and scones are also really popular.”
Jane Spencer (right), co-owner of The Secret Bakery, Knaresborough and Aime McNaught in the new shop and cafe.
Opening hours are currently under review, but the aim is to eventually open seven days a week, from 8am until around 4pm and from 10am on a Sunday.
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Mrs Spencer and her husband James bought The Secret Bakery in November 2020.
The business is continuing to grow, with work starting next week to develop the Harrogate site.
Mrs Spencer said:
“It will give us some more space in the back to make all the bread and cakes and everything.
“We are also going to be opening later from Thursday through to Sunday and offering things like bread and dips. We will also be serving alcohol.”
The cafe area at The Secret Bakery, Knaresborough.
Refurbishment of a former Chinese takeaway on Leeds Road, Harrogate, has unveiled a “ghost sign” of a tiny library that closed around 50 years ago.
Liberty Library was a subscription library where readers paid a nominal fee to rent books. It’s believed it was there from the 1930s until the early 1970s.
Subscription libraries were popular alternatives to larger public libraries in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Harrogate’s Boots chemist also offered a subscription library service in the town at the time.
Pannal and Harrogate historian, Anne Smith, said she remembers visiting Liberty Library in the early 1960s.
She said the books were not “highfalutin” and catered mainly to the female reader. It also sold toys, sweets, stationery, stamps and newspapers.
Ms Smith said:
“It was very useful. There was a big table the back with all different books on it. The books were tremendous.”
The sign was made by a business called Wilson Signs
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Leeds Road
Liberty Library also sold annuals for children such as School Friend, Dandy, Beano, Knock Out and Film Fun. Children would save up their pocket money throughout the year and come before Christmas to pick up the end-of-year editions.
Ms Smith said the section of Leeds Road looked different in those days. Some of the buildings that are shops today were houses and had gardens where there are now usually parked cars.
Other notable Leeds Road businesses at the time included Paul’s Bakery, Padgett’s greengrocers and Scott’s.
Leeds Road in 1955, with Liberty Library on the left. Photo credit: unknown.
Liberty Library closed in the early 1970s as subscription libraries went out of fashion.
Two people on social media shared their memories of Liberty Library with the Stray Ferret.
Brian Skinner said:
“I remember visiting it and borrowing books before I joined the children’s library in town. It must have been in the late 40s. We also ordered our Christmas annuals, paying for them over a period before Christmas. Happy days.”
John Carr said:
“I remember the Liberty Library from growing up in the area in the 50s & 60s. I used to buy my matchbox cars and other toys from it.”
Mr Carr has a directory of businesses from 1948 that lists Mrs E Worfolk as the proprietress of Liberty Library.
He added:
“I recall an elderly (weren’t they all when we were little?) man who ran it but didn’t know his name.”
The sign was spotted by Ghost Signs, a website and social media account that is dedicated to the fading remains of hand-painted advertising.
Anyone else spotted this find from @speccy2?
Would love to know more about the library, and what the tiny lettering bottom right is, likely a signwriter's signature…#ghostsigns #ghostsign #libertylibrary #harrogate #shopfront https://t.co/9ixNCusoLv
— Ghostsigns (Sam Roberts) (@ghostsigns) March 8, 2022
Harrogate family speak of tragedy behind new bakery
A Harrogate family have spoken of how the loss of their 12-year-old son led them to set up a bakery in his memory.
Reef Carneson died in June last year after battling cancer since he was a baby. He was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia at just five months old.
Although Reef’s death left his parents Lydia and Ryan — who are originally from South Africa — grieving, the family resolved to try to do something positive.
‘He was a miracle’
Reef was the first to undergo a bone marrow transplant in Pretoria, South Africa, when he was just 11 months old.
Lydia says she and her husband, Ryan, were told that Reef would have “just days to live”.
However, Reef was a fighter and pulled through.
Lydia said:
“We realised that he was a miracle.”
Complications from his condition led the couple to take him to America in 2011 for treatment for graft-versus-host disease, which meant his body was rejecting new bone marrow.
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The family settled in Los Angeles where Reef’s condition improved until he was diagnosed with skin cancer.
He seemed to be improving but his health began to deteriorate over the years.
Following the election of President Donald Trump, the family was forced to leave America when the immigration rules were changed and their work visas became void.
Lydia, who also has British citizenship, took Reef and the family to Chapel Park in Newcastle where they settled in February 2021.
Four months later, Reef passed away after his cancer had spread.
Moving to Harrogate
Lydia and her family decided to leave Newcastle in search of a fresh start.
She said:
“We could not stay in Newcastle. The memories were too much.”
Once in Harrogate, Ryan, a trained pastry chef, tried to find work but found the grief too much to handle.
Despite the heartache, the couple decided to make a fresh start in their lives.
Reef dressed in his chef outfit ready to help his dad.
In January this year, the pair launched IndulgenceByRyan in an effort to make something positive out of their grief.
The business was inspired by Reef, who Lydia says always wanted to be like his dad and would often help him in the kitchen.
Lydia said:
“It’s so difficult to function normally when you have such grief.
“We had always thought about the bakery because it is something that we wanted to do and he [Reef] always wanted to be like his dad.”
She added that she hopes the family’s story will help others who may be grieving the loss of a loved one.
The bakery specialises in cakes, cookies and chocolate and recently has taken on a partnership with Harrogate’s fairytale boutique, Beyond Imagination Emporium.
It does not currently have its own shop in town and is currently deliveries only. Lydia says owning an outlet in Harrogate is “the dream”.
Pop-up cake shop to open on Harrogate’s James Street“We would like a nice place for people to meet up and have coffee.”
Bakers Warburtons is to open a pop-up cake shop in Harrogate next week.
The former Swarovski store at 36 James Street, which once sold diamonds, will now sell cakes throughout the summer.
The shop will sell the newly-launched Ellie Warburtons cakes, which come in eight flavours, including cookie dough and raspberry with passion fruit compote. It will not sell bread.
The cakes are being launched on a trial basis in temporary stores in Harrogate and Skipton, which will be open all summer.
People will be able to buy the cakes online after their national launch on June 21.
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Jonathan Warburton, chairman of Warburtons, said:
“This is an exciting new venture for our family business and we are taking very much an entrepreneurial approach to how we build the brand while bringing with us the core of Warburtons ethos – quality and taste.”
The Skipton pop-up shop at 18 Otley Street will open on May 28.
Double, double toil and trouble. Fire burn and cauldron bubble. This hidden gem of a lockdown business inspired by witches has been brewing up a different kind of magic.
Coven Bakehouse, set up by friends Mark Gibson and James Paylor, started out of a small home kitchen in Harrogate earlier this year.
While a conventional oven is working for now they are keen to upgrade to a professional kitchen as soon as possible.
Orders are already picking up for their brownies and cookies – with more treats are on the way – so they now have an eye on a shop unit on Knaresborough’s High Street.
Both Mark and James, who are both 27 and met when they were 16, work in industries that have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
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However, the pair hope to have the doors open to customers in Knaresborough by the end of summer.
Indulgence is the name of the game here. Coven has a limited collection of caramel egg brownies, chocolate orange brownies and various gooey cookies.
James Paylor, a graphic designer and co owner of Coven Bakehouse, told the Stray Ferret what inspired the branding:
“That came from my partner, she works at Mother Shipton’s Cave and she is obsessed with witches. You have to be to work there.
“We were throwing around lots of names and as soon as she said it we knew it was the right thing. From then things started to fit into place.
“So it would perfect to start out our first shop in Knaresborough.”
Mark Gibson, who is a chef by trade, also told the Stray Ferret:
“It was halfway through the first lockdown when we saw lots of businesses selling cakes and stuff.
“We were looking at what they were doing and knew we could do it a hell of a lot better.
“So we knew if we were going to ever start a business, which is what we have always wanted to do, then now was the perfect time.”
This is part of the Stray Ferret’s ‘hidden gem’ series. We are trying to highlight small independent businesses. They need to be tucked away but growing in popularity with an eye-catching and unique product or approach. Send us an email with your nominations.
Hidden gem: Harrogate traditional bakery on the riseFlour, water, salt and yeast. This small hidden gem of a Harrogate bakery may keep the ingredients simple but there is so much more that goes into its bread.
The Secret Bakery, on Knaresborough Road, has been on the rise ever since it opened the doors just over a couple of years ago.
Sarah White, who has been involved from the very beginning, believes that there is a real and growing demand for more traditional bread.
The bakery had a humble start in life out of the previous owner’s house in the Saints area of Harrogate. But requests soon flooded in from the likes of Fodder and Weetons.
“Good homemade bread and cakes has always been the ethos of the business. It is tiring work but it is worth it.
“People like the homemade bread, it is a labour of love. They can tell we bake the bread here and they really appreciate it,” Sarah said.
Small bakeries used to be the heart of towns and villages. While factories and supermarkets make the majority of bread these days, the independents are staging a comeback.
It has never been work for the feint of heart. The staff are often at work around 5am to start mixing, folding and shaping.
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As an essential business, The Secret Bakery has been able to keep its doors open throughout the year.
There was plenty of demand in the first coronavirus lockdown, with people queuing of the door and down the street to try and get a slice.
It was difficult at first as some staff had to give up their roles to look after children when schools closed but the bakery got through and thinks it helped put them on the map.
James Spencer has just taken over The Secret Bakery, allowing Sarah to spend more time doing what she loves: baking.
He has big plans for the shop and told the Stray Ferret:
New bakery to open in Harrogate“Ever since I came in it just felt right. There is potential to get some tables and chairs outside, open up the space in here a bit and get some alcohol involved.
“If it goes well we could tap into the football crowds when they come back. I am also thinking about setting us up on one of the delivery services.”
A new bakery shop plans to open in Harrogate this month to serve up fresh bread, cakes and sandwiches.
Bakeri Baltzersen is the newest venture from the team behind Baltzersen’s cafe. The bakery will open on the same street as the cafe and coffee shop on Oxford Street.
The owners originally planned to open in May but were forced to put their plans on hold by the coronavirus pandemic.
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Now work has once again started at the Bakeri Baltzersen unit next to Harrogate Theatre and the key cutting and shoe repair shop Timpson.
The sign is up and so are the shelves for the bread as workmen start to decorate the premises in keeping with the Scandinavian style of Baltzersen’s.
Behind the scenes of Bakeri Baltzersen.
In recent months Baltzersen’s has been using part of its cafe as a temporary bakery shop. It will return to being a coffee shop when this new bakery opens.
Paul Rawlinson, the owner of Baltzersen’s, took inspiration from his Norwegian grandmother for the cafe, which opened in 2012. The business expanded in late 2018, opening a coffee shop in the neighbouring unit on Oxford Street.
News of the venture is a boost for the town’s traders at a time when many businesses are struggling to survive as a result of the pandemic,