This was the last of our 2018 workshops, and boy, did we make it a good one!

Eleven people joined Louise at Bakesmiths in Bristol to bake three vegan cake recipes:

Coffee Cake
Cherry and Almond Cake
Fairtrade Banana Cake

Every baker went home with a great batch of cakes to share with friends and family - or to hide and enjoy on the sly!

While the cakes were baking, we also had some good discussion about what it means to be vegan, the benefits and challenges of, and how egg and butter replacements can be used in cakes. We ended in a team challenge, which saw the winners go away with a gift bag of vegan treats from Wild Oats, Bristol.

Thanks for your enthusiasm, guys, and we hope you enjoy the recipes time and time again. Don't forget the bonus recipe in your workshop goodie bags!

Our baking workshops may be back for 2019, so if you didn't get a ticket to one this year, don't worry - ask Santa! If and when we run another, we'll announce it here, on our Facebook and Twitter, so make sure you're following along to get the latest news.

The Team @ 280 Bakes

Make a coffee cake
​An obvious one to start with, but it couldn't get much tastier. Have you tried adding walnuts for extra taste?

​Order a coffee cake from us
​...and coffee cake is one of the cakes on our same day CakeOD service, so we can get to you in time for tea!
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​Trade up your instant coffee
Never tried filtered coffee from ground beans? Today's your day - and coffee cakes taste so much better for the freshly ground ingredient, too. 
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​Book onto our next workshop
​One of the cakes we bake at our workshops is a coffee cake. Yum!

​Go out for a coffee and cake date
​Which friend do you need to catch up with? A chat over coffee and cake is perfect for a wet weekend like this one!

​​Take a coffee cake round to a friend who needs cheering up
​Nothing says friendship like sharing a cake.

​Make an album of your favourite cake photos and use the cake from the above ideas to add a coffee cake to the collection.

​Let us know what you get up to today for National Coffee Cake Day!

​The Team at 280 Bakes

I've had a challenging day, so I am determined to end the day on a positive, right here! Making the world a better place is a challenge for us all, from global leaders to making-small-changers. Cake is fab, we all know that, but bear with me while I tell you why our cakes are making the world just that little bit better.

Vegan diets are not everyone's cup of (non dairy milk) tea. Sure, animal rights may not be everyone's priority, but a plant-based diet has deeper implications than that: There's the wider environmental issues like soil erosion, climate change, and deforestation that a heavily meat based diet can exacerbate. Having a healthy planet should be top of our lists. We, and our grandchildren, will have no other home!

Enjoying a more plant-based diet can have a significant impact on our footprint on the planet, from creating less greenhouse gases, to the amount of pressure we're putting on our natural water resources. Vegan cakes can help here, as, among other animal product ingredients, they don't contain dairy milk or butter. Intensive dairy production is known to be environmentally detrimental, so the more vegetable based alternatives we can find here, the better.

Have you tried our vegan carrot cake? Our plant powered Victoria Sponge? Find out more here about our popular vegan cakes.

With hundreds of recipes, you'd be in safe hands if you order a vegan cake, like 60% of our customers do.

The Fairtrade movement ensures a fair price is paid to farmers in developing countries. From coffee to chocolate, cotton to tea, so many Fairtrade products are out there... Including our very own award winning banana cake!

Right now, you can get 15% off banana cakes for Fairtrade Fortnight, so drop us a line quoting FAIR18 and we'll deliver right to your door.

There's no denying, a good cake shared with a friend can make your day. We have hundreds of recipes, all wanting to be tasted by you, so why not share a smile with someone today, over a piece of home baked cake?

After all, changing the world needn't be only about the big campaigns and movements. Bringing some happiness to someone's day is all part of being human and making the world a better place.



Have you tried our Sweet Temptation range yet, inspired by your favourite sweets?
How about our low fat / low sugar '280 Skinny' range? You know, we even run a 'guilt free' baking workshop showing you how to make some of these 'healthier' cakes!

Have I missed anything? Are there other ways that cake makes the world a better place? Let me know in the comments below!

Louise
280 Bakes

Guilt Free Baking is our second workshop to be developed to help you to bake at home a little easier, to have some fun meeting like minded people, and to learn some new skills.

On Saturday 16th June, we'll be hosting the first of our 'skinny bakes' courses, where you can join us to bake low sugar and low fat cakes. Tickets are available now for just £40 for a three hour course, so don't miss out - our last workshop sold out in just a couple of weeks!

Find out more about our workshops here and follow us on Facebook and Twitter to hear the latest news. We'll be announcing the recipes we'll be baking for this course shortly, so stay tuned!

The Team @ 280 Bakes

Thirteen lovely people from all over the south-west joined us for our vegan baking workshop in January, and look at the fabulous work they did! We had a mix of baking amateurs and people who had a little more experience, vegans and non-vegans both. The cake lovers went away with 18 buns, six of each of the three recipes we baked. We take a 'hands-on' approach, with each baker making their own cakes to take away. While we waited for the cakes to cook, we played games and held discussions on vegan themed conversation and all things cake!

​If you're interested in coming along to our next workshop, check out our calendar of events. We'd love to see you there!

​Big thanks to Harriet who took the fab pictures - wasn't she great?!

See you next time, 

The team @ 280 Bakes