Our Story

"It started with a brownie, and a man who never stood a chance."

Before Midnight Bakehouse had a name, it had a moment: early in our relationship, I baked my husband a brownie, and, in his words, that's when he knew. Spoiler: he married me. I like to think it was my sparkling personality. He maintains it was the brownie. We've agreed to disagree.

But really, it started long before that. Back in school, in a food technology classroom, where I discovered that of all the lessons in the week, baking was the one I never wanted to end. I went home and worked my way up the ranks: box mixes, then pancakes, then cupcakes, and then, somewhere in my teens, my first proper brownie. The kind that makes the whole house go quiet.

That brownie sent me down a rabbit hole I never climbed out of. (Yes, a descendant of that recipe is the one that secured me a husband. It's had a lot of practice.) I wanted to know why it worked. Why this flour, why that butter, why five minutes longer ruins everything. I tweaked, tested, and tinkered until "pretty good" became something people couldn't stop talking about.

What started as baking for family quickly grew into birthday cakes, celebration cakes, and wedding cakes that people trusted me to create. My family were the first people to put my baking to the test. They were my first critics, my biggest supporters, and before long, there was always someone asking what I was baking next.

For years, demand kept growing. Every family gathering, birthday, and celebration ended with the same question: "When are you finally going to start selling these?"

But before any of them, there was my mum. She was the first person who saw something in me, long before I saw it myself. While I was elbow-deep in flour, turning the kitchen into a crime scene, she'd be quietly stationed at the sink, washing bowls and utensils as fast as I could dirty them. Me prepping on one side, her rinsing on the other, the original Midnight Bakehouse production line. Every bake I sell has a little bit of that kitchen in it.

And the midnight bit? Entirely true. I've never been much of a sleeper. Some of my best bakes have come out of the oven at 2am: big celebration orders, birthday cakes, and one very memorable night when my husband sat on a full day's cookie order. (He is very supportive. He is also, apparently, very heavy.) I remade the entire thing in a few hours, thoroughly stressed, and the second batch came out better than the first, and the leftover dough accidentally became a brand new flavour. Some of our menu exists purely because of chaos. You're welcome.

Today, Midnight Bakehouse is what I do full time. After years of refining recipes and building confidence in my craft, I left my job to give it everything I had. My husband has been behind me every step of the way, and our cats supervise operations with the seriousness of tiny, furry health inspectors, strictly from the other side of the kitchen door, of course. (They're on the logo in spirit. They're on the sofa in reality.)

Everything is baked to order from our home in Newcastle upon Tyne, by hand, with real butter, proper Callebaut chocolate, and recipes I've been perfecting since I was a teenager. If there's a better ingredient, I'll use it.

Midnight Bakehouse is the result of years of learning, testing, refining, and refusing to settle for good enough. It's my art, my late nights, and my love language.

Made to order. Built to impress. Questionable bedtimes.