Bara Brith CakesCake shop · Cardiff Road, CaerphillyCaerphilly

The team

Gwenllian, Seren, and Nain's recipe.

A mother who has baked since 1988 and a daughter who came home from art school to draw cakes, in the old haberdasher's on Cardiff Road since 2012. Two more on the counter on a Saturday and a Monday baker for the vegan and gluten-free. The certificates are below because a bakery should be asked for them.

Gwenllian Morgan, a Welsh woman in her late fifties with short silver hair, in a cocoa apron over a cream blouse, holding a bara brith loaf on a board in a warm bakery kitchen

Gwenllian Morgan

Founder and baker. The sponges, the bara brith, the bakestone

Baking since a Saturday job in a Bedwas bakery in 1988, then twenty years running the cake counter at a Cardiff department store until it closed in 2011. Gwenllian opened the shop on Cardiff Road in 2012 in the old haberdasher's, with her mother's bara brith as the first thing in the window. She bakes every sponge, makes the bara brith every day and the Welsh cakes every morning, and is the reason the buttercream is Swiss meringue.

Seren Morgan, a Welsh woman in her late twenties with long auburn hair plaited, in a blush linen apron, piping buttercream onto a tier at a workbench, sugar flowers drying behind her

Seren Morgan

Designer and decorator. The consultations, the sugar flowers, the Saturday drive

An illustration degree in Cardiff and a year at a sugarcraft school in London before joining her mother in 2017. Seren does every consultation, draws every wedding cake before it is made, makes the sugar flowers (about forty minutes a rose), and drives every wedding cake to the venue herself on a Saturday morning, which is why there is one a Saturday. She built the estimate page so couples would know the price before they sat down.

  • 64wedding cakes last year, one a Saturday at most, every one delivered and set up by Seren
  • 14years on Cardiff Road, under the castle, in the old haberdasher's
  • 900bara brith loaves a month at Christmas, from Nain Morgan's recipe
  • 4.9average rating

The rest of us, and the paperwork

Who else, and what to ask any baker for.

The counter

Ceri and Bethan on Saturdays, both of whom started as Saturday girls and now box a three-tier cake better than anyone. They know every flavour because the rule is that you taste it before you sell it.

Mondays

Aled bakes the vegan and gluten-free sponges on Mondays with the shop shut, the kitchen cleaned down, and his own tins. He trained at a gluten-free bakery in Bristol and checks the labels twice.

The paperwork

A food hygiene rating of five on the door; an allergen sheet for every flavour that goes with every cake; £5 million public liability that covers delivery and set-up at venues; and the van fitted with shelves that do not slide.

Where the money goes

The wedding cakes pay the wages; the bara brith pays the rent; the Monday bake paid for the second oven; and the Rudry farm and the Carmarthenshire creamery are paid weekly, because the butter is the cake.

A small cake shop with a blush-pink shopfront and gold window frame on a Welsh town street, a castle tower at the end of the road

The shop

A haberdasher's until 2011, a cake shop with a bakestone in the window since 2012.

Number 7 sold ribbon, buttons and knitting wool under the castle for sixty years. Gwenllian took the lease the month the department store cake counter closed, painted it blush, put her mother's bakestone in the window so the street could watch the Welsh cakes, and the first thing she sold was a bara brith. "If people can see it being made, they will believe it was."

Finding the shop

The price before the consultation, and the Saturday before you ring.

The estimate page works out a wedding cake from the tiers, the finish and the servings, with the lead time and the next free Saturday. Then one form orders it, a celebration cake, cupcakes or the tasting box; Seren replies within the working day.

Estimate a cakeOrder or book a tasting