Charly's Bakery

So it’s the 30th June and our long awaited holiday has arrived. We’re off to Zanzibar, and will be doing as little as possible, while eating as much seafood as we can find, on the sunniest beach, for the next 10 days. Good books, beautiful island, lots of fish (cause we’ve gone fishing) and Charly with his 3 Charly’s “chicks” – BLISS!
We’ll be back, baking our Mucking Afazing cakes on the 23rd July, so place your orders via email. We are really sorry if our holiday coincides with your special occassion, and you can’t have a delicous Charly’s cake this year. Remember our holiday dates change to suit school holidays, so next year, we might be open on your birthday.
Almost all our hardworking Charly’s staff have kids, so we try and give them a chance to holiday with them.
So… Sabonana, Adios, Farewell- we’ll be back in 3 short weeks.

So a very exciting day for Charly’s Bakery – We made (former) President Thabo Mbeki’s 65th birthday cake and delivered it to Parliament this morning. The cake was our delicous Wicked chocolate cake- 3 tiers, and was iced in the ANC colours- We piped Happy Birthday Mr President on the middle tier, in gold, and put edible images of our President’s face in the shape of a green Africa, as well as edible ANC flags, all around the sides of the cake. We put a gold number 65 on top of the cake. Look in our recent pictures section for a photo of The Cake!
It looked Mucking Afazing- fit for a President in fact!

World famous, brilliant author of The Red tent, Anita Diamant, which is on my list of 5 best books I’ve ever read- and I’m a bookworm, visited Charly’s Bakery in Cape Town yesterday.
Her email, received last night follows below. We love it when people we love and respect, and who have travelled the world ….think our cupcakes are the best in the world and Mucking Afazing-YAY

“Best cupcakes in the world
19-Jun
Dear Friends:
Anita Diamant here. I ate my cupcake in the car. I LOVE cupcakes. They have been my favorite dessert since childhood

Yours are the best I ever tasted. Bar non (including the HUGE fancy ones in NYC)
Now I really will have to return to Cape Town.

Thanks so much.

Anita

PS: The brownie was a pretty close second.”

So yesterday, a Dutch camera crew comes in to take photos of our cakes, cupcakes, shortbread daises and hearts and our Molo Lolo Gingerbread boys for their magazine called Glossy. They are writing an article on Cape Town Hotspots and want to feature our bakery- YAY

So today, Friday 15th June, Charlys Bakery had our best sales EVER ! We had so many orders for Chocolate cakes and cheesecakes, and birthday cakes, that we had to stack the boxes on the counters and alll over the bakery, so many orders that there was no room for customers to sit at the tables and eat, cause there were cakes EVERYWHERE. Wow- how amazing that in the middle of rainy June, when business is supposed to be quiet, we break all records.
And most wonderful of all was seeing all the happy faces as our customers collected their cakes. We really have the best job in the world- making cake for peoples happy occassions. How many other businesses have customers just breaking into smiles when they walk into their shop. So many people each day take photos of our shop and our cupcakes, cause they have never seen anything like it before. It makes me really happy to come to work each day.

So we just got a call from Eat In Magazine to tell us we’ve been nominated for the BEST SMALL PRODUCER of the yearin the RMB Eat In National Awards. Voting closes on Saturday 16th June ,so there is still time to vote. Thanks to all of you have nominated us. We’re taking over the world, one cupcake at a time!
Vote now for the 2007 Small Producer Awards at this link:

VOTE

So today we baked the most amazing giant gold Bar chocolate cake to celebrate Louis Karoll architects 55th birthday year in business. Congratulations to Louis Karol and all who work there for this amazing achievement

Each year, Charly’s bakery closes for the July school holidays so all of us can go on leave together with our kids. This year our break starts on the 1st July and we re-open on the 23rd July. You can place your orders via email, for our kids birthday cakes, quiches, wedding cakes, birthday cakes and cupcakes. Our cake and quiche price lists are downloadable on our website- front page under the skpe logo. We will answer your emails to confirm, as soon as we are back from our trip to Zanzibar- Yay for beautiful sunny beaches. We can’t wait to relax. It’s been the most amazing year for us at Charly’s Bakery. We have grown so much- we are officailly twice as busy now as we were one year ago, so thanks to all of you for the Mucking afazing support.
Lots of love and we’ll miss you

So this week, Drum magazine did the most amazing story on Alex- our daughter, manager and creative genius. Three pages of photos about her life, hopes, dreams and how much she loves being a South African, Capetonian woman who spends her days decorating endless beautiful, chocolate, birthday cakes at Charly’s Bakery.
We’re so proud of you Alexi.

Hellooo…

In December 2005 we got a phonecall from “Let’s Fix it” (A program on E-TV which makes dreams come true for people who can’t afford to make their own dreams come true) to ask us if we would like to sponsor a christmas party for 30 pensioners in Athlone- our response “ABSOLUTELY!”
So we called up a friend who owns a decor company (Nadine from Theme Creations 0828550918) to ask if she would like to come onboard and do the decor for the party- her response “ABSOLUTELY!”
And so it happened- we did a selection of chocolate cupcakes with each pensioners name piped on each cupcake, a selection of bright red vanilla petit fours with gold stars and christmas trees piped on each one, Wicked chocolate cake “Flower Pots” each planted with a red rose and touched with our edible gold paint, christmas tree shaped cookies, homemade sweeti-pies painted with gold edible paint and wicked chocolate cake covered in white icing with red roses in the centre. Nadine and her team did an unbelievable job with the decor using red roses, gold base plates, gold organza saches at the back of each chair, christmas crackers and LOADSSSS more.
The party was an unbelievable hit, but it didn’t end there…
Next up was a christmas party for 500 underprivlidged children in Belville. We did 5 cakes each served 100 kids- we did a range of chocolate and vanilla cakes covered in white buttericing with christmas trees, stars and candy canes piped in bright colours on each cake. The kids went CRAZY- they had an AMAZING time and we had enough cake to feed every child twice.
The show was aired on Christmas day 2005- where they showed an interview with me (Alex) and my sister Dani setting up each party and discussing what we had done- FAME AT LAST!

I have attached a photo of the pensioners christmas party for everyone to see.
Have a FABULOUS day and watch this space for lots more blogging.

Alex
The Charly’s Chick