Black Meringue

If I had known you were coming...

Fancy Nancy’s Juliet Sear kindly offered to bake us a cake and our Miss Mullins went along to sample it, how lovely!

There is one thing that I have always loved since I was a child and that is cakes. It is everything about them – the taste, the smell and the decoration. One of my earliest memories is one of my sister’s birthday cakes. My mother created a tea party table, with its own teapot, cups and saucers and the most perfect birthday cake.

Even as an adult, my passion for cakes is still there; but as well as eating them, I love to bake them (much to the delight of the BM office!). So when Black Meringue was invited to tea and cakes with confectionary genius Juliet Sear, I thought it only right to go along, glean some tips and perhaps sample a taste.

Juliet’s custom bakery business, Fancy Nancy, is nestled in the seaside town of Leigh-on-Sea - a Victorian picture postcard of antiquity and all things English. But don’t be deceived. Beneath the sleepy façade there’s a muttering of all things Black Meringue, too: “There’s Brazen Hussy just down the road, which designs corsets and alternative formal wear,” discloses Juliet, “and there’s also a company called Vanity Fur that has a boutique, spa, bakery and café for pets and their owners.” Sounds like the perfect environment for nurturing off-the-wall creativity, and we love a bit of that.

Fancy Nancy is based in Juliet’s family home, which she welcomes me into more like a friend than a client. The kitchen is bright, and full of chrome pots and pans with a fabulous Aga-style cooker. Examples of Juliet’s creations give the place a gingerbread house feel – but it took a lot of hard work to get Fancy Nancy up and running: “When we first moved into the place, it was a shell. It was actually two flats built in 1902 by a famous arts and crafts architect,” explains Juliet. “There’s was no internal staircase or central heating. We had builders in for about 18 months, restoring it, extending the kitchen and building the consultation room. It was definitely worth it, though, and we knew what we were taking on.”

Prior to opening Fancy Nancy, Juliet worked for two years at London’s high-profile Little Venice Cake Company, where she had opportunity to contribute to some celebrity cakes such as Cheryl Tweedy and Ashley Cole’s wedding cake. “I set up that cake. They had a caramel can-can theme, with ruffles on each tier; I think it was four or maybe five tiers, and each tier had little black ribbon on it.”

It was at Little Venice that Juliet honed her baking skills and picked up some spectacular sugar art tricks, which are evident in her ambitious and colourful designs: “I specialise in hand painting using edible paints made from alcohol or coco butter. I can paint virtually anything onto the icing once it’s dry – and that’s’ the part I enjoy the most.” Juliet admits that it takes an artistic touch and a lot of practice to get it right: “Mostly I paint freehand, but you can use templates and stencils. I do get a bit nervous when I get to the painting stage, because you want the icing to be perfect, but it’s fairly easy to rectify a mistake in coco butter – the most nerve-wrecking part of the whole process is transporting the finished cake!”

Juliet certainly isn’t afraid to experiment. Some of her more unusual designs incorporate edible buttons, lilies and chocolate cherubs with the option of having any number of culinary sweet treats to accessorise the wedding cake: “If someone wants a theme to run through the whole wedding, then we can make any kind of cookies or cupcakes to compliment the cake and theme, and if we don’t have the right cookie-cutter, then we can always design stencils from scratch.” And Juliet’s dedication to making fantasy reality knows no bounds: “One lady had a peacock feather theme to her wedding. She had feathers on the dress and woven into her bouquet – it was stunning. She wanted feathers on her cake to match, so I hand painted every strand of each feather individually over two days. It took some time but it looked fantastic once it was finished.”

Juliet also offers custom cakes to taste and can create virtually any combination of different flavours: “Most people go for the chocolate torte, but if someone really likes, say, lemon, we can develop a sponge just for them. The triple-layer cake with fresh raspberry, strawberry and blueberry filling is popular for people who want to serve their cake as the dessert course.”

With the growing demand for ethical and organic produce, Juliet is also keen to support the local community: “I use organic flour, eggs and sugar whenever possible. The eggs are free-range from a farm in Ashingdon and the flour is delivered from Chelmsford to my local health food shop. I think there’s a growing awareness about the importance of using high-quality ingredients, and with all the television programmes and TV chefs, people now have a better idea of what they’re looking for in quality produce.”

Sitting in the studio where Juliet holds her consultations surrounded by various samples of delicious sponge cake, she lets me into a secret: “funnily enough I haven’t got a sweet tooth!” But she does concede to having a favourite amongst her cakes. “It’s the Belgian chocolate torte,” she admits, and having had the pleasure of tasting it for myself, I’m rather inclined to agree.

BM