Dee's origins

• Only high quality ingredients are used, such as pure unsalted butter. 
• No butter substitutes with transfats come through our door. 
• All the eggs used are free range 
• We are currently working at  sourcing locally produced free range eggs. 
• Wherever possible, we like to keep our food airmiles down by using locally produced ingredients. This is especially important to us in terms of eggs, chicken and meat. 
• The cakes are sweetened with dark muscovado and demerara sugar.
• We are  also in the process of  developing a gluten free version of the Dee's Rum Cake.

The cakes are basted after baking with rum and a little kirsch. My mother always used kirsch on her rum cakes. She told us stories of her first part time job when she arrived in England, which was as the assistant to a German gourmet chef, Mrs Kerscher. This probably explained why we have great childhood memories of my mother producing a wide variety of baked goodies on her days off and for our birthday parties.

She always used white rum on her cakes and would keep dried fruit soaked in fortified wine all year round, in a sealed jar ready for making cakes at any time.

I was also fortunate to have a childminder before I started infant school called Mrs Blackwood, who was a professional baker. She had a massive Kenwood Chef with all the attachments and would bake cakes on the days that I was at her home. I was inspired by her calm attitude to baking.