Tag: uk coffee news

Coffee seed cake recipe for your coffee break

Posted on by Sara Walker

Coffee has such a distinctive flavour that it lends itself to being a cooking ingredient almost as well as it lends itself to being a drink. This cake is a take on the traditional ‘lemon and poppy seed’ recipe, but substitutes coffee for lemon flavouring. The seeds give it texture and crunch. Serve with a large mug of your favourite coffee.

Serves around 8.
You’ll need:

• 80g full fat cream cheese
• 150g butter, softened
• 150g self raising flour
• 250g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 40ml espresso, or very strong black coffee
• 100g poppy seeds

For the icing
• 50ml espresso
• 125g icing sugar

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C, and grease and baseline a 22cm cake tin.

Beat the butter, cream cheese and sugar together until the mixture looks pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating between each addition. Sift in the flour, and stir in the coffee and poppy seeds.

Carefully spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and level the top off with the back of a spoon. Tap the tin on the counter to remove any air bubbles, and put it in the over for around 35 minutes. (Keep an eye on it, as if the top gets too brown you may need to cover it with a piece of greaseproof paper. Check that a skewer inserted into the thickest part of the cake comes out clean.

Remove the cake from the oven and leave it to cool for five minutes before turning out and removing the paper. While it’s cooling, make the icing by mixing the two ingredients together thoroughly. Pour the icing over the cake while it’s still warm, so it can soak in a bit, then leave it to cool properly.

Cut into slices, and serve with cream if you like. For more recipes, ideas and coffee news, keep an eye on our blog at www.wholesalecoffeecompany.co.uk.

Glasgow café sells ‘camelccinos’ for charity

Posted on by Sara Walker

In amongst all the ‘avocado lattes’, ‘rainbow lattes’ and ice cream serving cups, sometimes there’s a coffee trend we can really appreciate. Yes, it’s a bit of a gimmick – but it’s a gimmick with a purpose. A café in Glasgow has invented ‘camelccinos’ – yes, that’s right, coffee with added camels’ milk – to help support traders in Kenya.

Over the last few years, we’ve seen trends for adding almost anything to coffee, including yak butter, salt and various non-dairy milks such as almond. This is a new one on us, though! Camels’ milk is said to be more nutritious than cows’ milk, containing more iron and vitamin C. Although we’re not used to it here in the UK, it’s commonly drunk across Africa and the Middle East and can be used as a substitute for human breast milk as it’s nutritionally the closest type of milk. It can have health benefits, including reducing the risk of heart disease and stroke.

The initiative to bring ‘camelcchinos’ to Scotland is funded by the British government’s Department for International Development, and is being run by Mercy Corps, a global team of humanitarians with offices in Edinburgh. They’re helping female Kenyan traders to increase the shelf life of their camels’ milk, which can spoil rapidly in the high temperatures, leading to a lot of wastage. So far, the project has funded solar-powered cooling units as well as refrigerated transport. The Willow Tea Rooms, where the drink is on sale for £2.40, say it’s proved popular so far. The project aims to raise funds by donating 10 per cent of the profits from each drink, but also to highlight awareness for the traders.

Here at the Wholesale Coffee Company, we’ve got everything you need to offer your customers a fantastic cup of coffee – except, possibly, camels’ milk! Take a look at our range of coffee beans, coffee accessories and coffee supplies at www.wholesalecoffeecompany.co.uk.

Coffee trends: the ‘doughnut cup’

Posted on by Sara Walker

Coffee in an avocado. Coffee in a chocolate ice cream cone. Deconstructed coffee. It started out strangely, and honestly it’s just got worse – a bakery in Australia is doing odd and terrible things to a simple and inoffensive cup of coffee by serving it in a ‘doughnut’ cup.

Now, we’re not against a doughnut. We’re not against coffee and a doughnut together, provided that one’s served on a plate and the other in a cup. We do think, though, that serving the coffee inside the doughnut isn’t an improvement – surely you’ll just get a sloppy drink and a messy doughnut?

The Kenilworth Bakery in Australia obviously doesn’t agree – it’s developed a special doughnut which has been coated with cinnamon then hollowed out and lined with Nutella to make it more resistant to liquid. It’s then filled with an espresso shot topped with foamed milk.
The bakery describes the new creation as ‘amazing’, and says they’re proving popular with customers. They took about a week to perfect, and there’s also a version available filled with hot chocolate instead of coffee.

It’s served on a wooden platter, and the customer has to drink the coffee quickly before tacking the doughnut – a task that looks surprisingly difficult, as the doughnut is quite..er…doughy. Don’t expect to look elegant eating one of these!

They do love a gimmick in Australia, and while we applaud this bakery’s innovative spirit we don’t think this is going to catch on. You have to drink the coffee quickly before it soaks too much into the doughnut, and we think you’d have an easier time keeping both items separate!

Here at the Wholesale Coffee Company, we’ve got everything you need for your commercial coffee business, restaurant or café including a wide range of coffee beans and coffee accessories. Sorry, we don’t have any doughnuts!

Coffee news: independent cafe sparks online debate

Posted on by Sara Walker

The owners of a Surrey cafe have found themselves involved in an online discussion after they rebuked a large group of customers for not buying enough food and drink.

Many of us now treat cafes as an extension of our offices, browsing the internet, sending emails and arranging to meet clients. With the recent upsurge in remote working, more and more freelancers and homeworkers head to coffee shops for at least part of the day, lured by fast wifi and the prospect of some social interaction in an otherwise featureless day. There’s a tacit understanding between cafe and customer, though, that in order to qualify for the central heating, wifi and comfortable seating you need to keep being a customer – ie. you need to keep ordering food and drink. Try to get through a day on nothing more than free glasses of tap water, and you’d rightly expect to be asked to leave.

There are no hard and fast rules about how many drinks or sandwiches you should order per time period, though, and Henry’s Bistro Cafe in Wallington, Surrey, clearly thought they’d got the thin end of the bargain recently. The independent run cafe recently informed a group of 17 customers that they had been occupying the premises for too long, and hadn’t spent enough in return.

One of the group shared the cafe’s comments, which stated that the party of 17 had spent only £55 in total over three hours, on social media. The business claimed that this equated to ‘less than the price of a cup of tea’ per person per hour. The cafe went on to justify their comments by saying as they’re an independent business and a new start-up, they don’t have the financial cushioning of other, larger businesses. They pointed out that the amount spent by the group didn’t cover the costs of serving them (adding up staff costs and overheads), and said that the group had given them ‘no incentive or obligation’ to serve them in the future.

The Facebook post was widely discussed among the members of the Wallington town group. Many comments were in support of the business, pointing out that no independent enterprise could thrive in the town unless it was properly supported.

If you run your own independent coffee business, take a look at our main website at www.wholesalecoffeecompany.co.uk for great prices on all your coffee needs.

 

 

 

 

Coffee fads: could this be the world’s strongest coffee?

Posted on by Sara Walker

More crazy coffee news from (have you guessed it? That’s right) Australia. From the country that brought us the avo-latte, the carrot-cino and the flat white (OK, that last one might have been a good idea) comes what could be the world’s strongest cup of coffee. Invented ‘for fun’ but available to brave customers, the drink, named the ‘Adelaide Asskicker’, contains 80 times more caffeine than a standard cup of coffee.

It’s made up from four espresso shots, 120ml of cold brew coffee (where the beans were left to steep for 10 days), and eight coffee ice cubes (made from cold brew coffee where the beans were left to steep for 48 hours). Phew! Each ice cube alone is thought to contain caffeine equivalent to two espresso shots. The owner of the Viscous Cafe, who invented the drink, advises that it should be drunk very slowly over a three to four hour period, and the resulting caffeine buzz may take several hours to wear off. He says he put the super-coffee together on request for a shift-working nurse who needed to keep awake. The drink is now on the menu, but comes with a health warning that customers should drink it at their own risk.

While we like a nice strong cup of coffee as much – if not more – than the next person, we won’t be advocating putting a week’s worth of caffeine in a cup and drinking it all at once! We believe coffee should be savoured, so that’s why we’re committed to tracking down the best quality beans and roasting and grinding them ourselves to maintain quality control. To browse our range of top quality coffee beans and coffee accessories, all available at great wholesale prices and suitable for every commercial coffee business, visit our main website at www.wholesalecoffeecompany.co.uk.

Speciality coffee market is stronger than ever

Posted on by Sara Walker
UK speciality coffee market looks stronger than ever
UK speciality coffee market looks stronger than ever

There’s good news for UK providers of speciality coffees such as lattes and cappuccinos – according to The Future of Coffee, a recently-published report by Allegra World Coffee Portal, (WCP), the market speciality coffee drinks looks set to rise by 13 per cent year on year. That’s more than the expected growth of 10 per cent across the whole UK coffee market.

Based on over 1500 customer surveys and dozens of UK industry leaders across all sectors of the coffee market, the report makes a correlation between the increase in small, independent coffee outlets focussing on quality and service and the rise in demand for speciality drinks. Small companies are embracing new technology and cutting edge techniques to source and process their coffee from bush to cup for a better experience for the consumer.  “In the future, greater attention to agronomy and processing at origin will help yield higher quality beans”, it concluded.

The report made the following findings:

There are now 180 speciality coffee roasters in the UK. Of those interviewed, two thirds are relatively new businesses, roasting for less than two years.  The speciality green coffee bean market is currently estimated at an annual value of 40 million euros, with that set to double by 2020. The speciality roasted coffee bean market is currently valued at double the amount of the green coffee bean market, at 80.1 million, which is set to more than double in the same time-frame. Estimates put the number of independent speciality coffee shops (i.e. shops whose main business is the supply of coffee to consumers) at around 1,400 in the UK – that figure is also set to double by 2020. Just under two thirds of the retailers interviewed plan to open new shops in the next three years.

If you’re in the business of supplying speciality coffee drinks, we’ve got everything you need to make your business go with a swing, all at great wholesale prices. From coffee accessories to top quality coffee beans and supplies, you can browse our range at www.wholesalecoffeecompany.co.uk.