Go local, go beautiful: Stiffkey Stores, Norfolk
Monday, June 21, 2010
I randomly found Stiffkey Stores’ Facebook page after someone tweeted it and sat open-mouthed and wide eyed as I looked a photo of one of their cupcakes. I don’t visit Stiffkey very often although my childhood friend Remy works at the Red Lion there (which is well worth a visit as Frankie, who runs the place, was actually my boss when I did a stint at the eponymous “Londoners do the country” restaurant The Hoste Arms, so the food is A*). As we had a morning out at Wells-Next-The-Sea I asked if we could go via Stiffkey and check out the cupcakes.
The shop is exactly what I’d hoped for: great presentation, a real country feel and a friendly service. They stock a selection of gifts and decorative items for the home and there were shelves presenting me with lots of eyecatching foods in pretty packaging. But the thing I found best was the bakery. For the first time, I finally got to try some wood-fired oven bread from their artisan bread display. I chose a wholemeal loaf (trying to be healthy!) which was delightful and kept for a good 3 days. The cupcakes were also extremely beautiful and I had a choice of several different coloured flowers. I got a hot pink one, featured above. The icing was perfect, I’d expected it to be really hard in order to get it to stay in that shape, but not at all, although I did create plenty of crumbs afterwards!
I really hope this shop is here to stay, it’s got a lot of potential and should have quite a few visitors once the summer holiday season kicks in. As for me, I’ll be back in a couple of weeks when I’m on holiday in Norfolk and going to pick up a couple more of those cupcakes.
Visit Stiffkey Stores facebook page
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Catherine
