Martin trained as a chef before he ever thought about cakes, and spent the best part of a decade in hotel kitchens up and down the West Country. It was a colleague's wedding cake — made in a rush, as a favour, from a recipe scribbled on the back of a delivery note — that got him hooked on the slower, fussier side of baking. Within a year he'd swapped savoury service for Saturday mornings spent piping buttercream, and Martin's Cakes was born out of the garage at the family home in Ashcombe.
What began as word-of-mouth orders for friends and neighbours slowly turned into something busier. We moved out of the garage and into a proper fitted kitchen in 2015, added a second oven a few years after that, and now bake for customers across Devon and into Somerset — though the way we work hasn't really changed. Cakes are still made in small batches, tasted before they leave, and iced by hand rather than sprayed or stamped.
Martin still does most of the baking himself, with his niece Ellie handling icing and decoration three days a week — she trained in sugarcraft and has a much steadier hand for lettering than he does. Between them they cover everything from a simple sponge with a few piped rosettes to three-tier wedding cakes with sugar flowers made petal by petal.
We buy eggs from a farm just outside Newton Abbot, butter from a Devon dairy, and fruit in season wherever we can get it locally. It costs a little more than the wholesale alternative, but it's the difference between a cake that tastes like an occasion and one that tastes like a Tuesday.
We take a limited number of orders each week so that nothing gets rushed. For anything beyond a simple traybake we'll usually have a short phone call or a chat over the counter to talk through flavours, size and any dietary needs — we bake gluten-free and egg-free sponges regularly, just ask when you enquire. Larger or tiered cakes are best booked at least four weeks ahead, especially in the summer wedding season, though we'll always try to help with less notice if we can.
Curious what's possible? Head to our cakes page for a sense of the range, or get in touch directly through the contact page.