Our Deputy Editor Amanda David gets her pinny on to try out the BakesterBox home baking kits.
When Tamsin Robinson was five, she received her first cookbook. Now, she’s the founder of a game-changing baking box - BakesterBox - which is available either as a one-off order or on a monthly subscription.
Tamsin, a Le Cordon Bleu-trained pastry chef, had spent a decade creating delicious cakes and patisserie for private and corporate clients but decided it was time to share her skills and equip others with the tools and knowledge to create fabulous bakes, too.
BakesterBox came about in July 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic’s first lockdown. Stuck at home, with no way to work in a pastry kitchen as she had previously planned, Tamsin started writing online recipe content for a local magazine. She received lots of questions about substitutions and ingredients, and realised that people wanted to bake at home but did not necessarily have the ingredients (or scales!) needed. So, she thought: why not provide others with everything they need to bake, and bake really well, using the premium ingredients she had become accustomed to ever since studying at Le Cordon Bleu?
Each box is filled with professional quality ingredients similar to those used by top chefs in 5* hotel and Michelin-level pastry kitchens, handy baking tools like dough scrapers and piping bags, and easy-to-follow baking tutorials. All of this ensures you can #bakeyourbest at home.
Tamsin said: “My dreams are for BakesterBox to be able to offer more patisserie-style items, like tartlets, choux pastry and mousses to give my customers even more of a pastry-chef experience at home. Of course, I would love for the business to grow and become a well-recognised brand nationwide too. Eventually, I hope to own a bricks-and-mortar patisserie where customers could come and sit in for cakes (and Afternoon Tea!), take in-person baking classes using BakesterBox kits and purchase baking kits to take home.”
I tried the Blond Chocolate, Pistachio & Cardamom Cookies box. It arrived beautifully packaged and with high quality dry ingredients neatly measured out and packaged, plus a step-by-step recipe card and a skills tutorial card (this one was on how to cream butter and sugar together and showed pictures comparing 'just-mixed' with 'light and fluffy' - so useful if you are a novice baker).
This would be a great kit for introducing someone to baking - literally all I had to do was weigh some butter, add an egg and mix everything together, bake (the kit even includes baking parchment) and then enjoy! I was impressed with the more adventurous and unusual flavour combination; new bakers can get delicious and impressive results with ease, whereas more experienced bakers will still enjoy the convenience of just needing kitchen staples to make something fabulous.
Details on availability and how to order here.
[Items in this article may have been gifted to Chatting Food. No financial payment has been made to feature in this article, and entries to the feature are made independently by members of the Editorial Team. This page contains affiliate links and we may receive a small commission for purchases]
Deputy Editor, Chatting Food London: Amanda David
Freelance food writer, copywriter and blogger Amanda David is dedicated to sharing news about London’s restaurants, bars, events and general wonderfulness. It’s a tough job but somebody’s got to do it.
She has also just launched a new website, A Cook's Bookshelf, reviewing cookbooks old and new, with side-by-side photographs of recipe illustrations next to her home-cooked version.
Follow Amanda at:
Instagram: @LondonGAT and @a_cooks_bookshelf