Bad Girl Bakery: The Cookbook

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Our bakes are big, indulgent and generous. The name gently pokes fun at people who are disapproving of treats. Everyone has someone in their life who, if you reach for a sweet treat, they will say: "Oh, you bad girl …" She had accidentally fallen into a successful career in arts marketing at; Dundee Rep, Scottish Opera, Theatre Royal, BBC Scotland resources, before returning to her home city working at Dundee Contemporary Arts.

The bakery’s debut cookbook, from independent Edinburgh-based publisher Kitchen Press, promises to be the icing on the cake for the thriving young business. There’s so much I wish I’d known ha ha! I think the biggest thing is we didn’t give a single thought to success to enjoy it. When we opened the shop, as excited and committed as we were, we worried so much about people not coming, about not being busy and about failing that we were completely blindsided by how busy we were. We didn’t have enough staff, or space or time. I think I’d say caution is fine but it’s OK to plan for success too. That and you can never have too many aprons!Jeni Iannetta from Bad Girl Bakery has a cookery book coming out in November, with Kitchen Press, she admits to being a cook book fan owning over two hundred, "I'm obsessed with them and the fact that I have my own is just astounding like a fantasy." Everything is made by hand in small batches although she is no longer the only baker, she works with a small team. I know it doesn’t sound very exciting, but there is a moment where you’ve got your melted butter chocolate and sugar. Your eggs have gone in and it looks like a bit of a mess and you go ‘Is this right?’ Oh, that’s tough! I guess I’d say complicated doesn’t necessarily mean better. Simple recipes made with great ingredients are my favourites.

I started Bad Girl Bakery because I love to bake. I’m definitely more of a cake baker than a sourdough baker. While I understand the science of baking (I can laminate with the best of them!) that’s not what interests me. The cakes we bake are far closer to home baking than multi-step process baking. That’s what we bake in our bakeries and that’s what I want to share here. Our approach to savoury food is exactly the same. Great ingredients and no fuss recipes with hints and tips for maximum flavour. You go in every morning with a blank canvas and a fresh start. There is something really simple about it.

Bad Girl Bakery

I wrote Bad Girl – with Darren – and I got help with recipe testing from our head baker Toni Davis and baking manager Rachel Knox. It was something the team worked on and I’m really proud of the fact we worked together and achieved that. Jeni always has a showstopper, she said, "even if you are not going to eat it, it will bring you to the display and make you go, wow. I moved to the Highlands after I met my husband Douglas. He was a single father and my stepson Felix, now 13, was only four then. I fell in love with Christmas properly when we moved in together as a family and there was a wee person who I was responsible for helping feel the Christmas magic.

Measure the milk into a jug, then add the melted butter, eggs, maple syrup, vanilla and mashed banana and mix with a fork. Pour this over the dry ingredients and mix gently (on low if you’re using a stand mixer) until the ingredients are nearly combined – you want to be able to see a bit of dry flour in the mix. Give it a final stir using a spatula so it’s only just combined.Did you come up with new recipes for this book or will we discover how to make some of our delicious favourites? So when the business opened, as you get more confident, you start to experiment with things on your own and as your experience grows you start to understand that basic ratios work and you can adjust the flavours on those and we spend a lot of time thinking about what will taste nice, what is the texture like, is it seasonal, what good produce have we got – and things just kind of spiral from there.

It won't be turkey. Probably beef with all the trimmings – pigs in blankets and roast potatoes. We are quite traditional at Christmas.

Reasons for Bad Girl Bakery closure

She explains the idea behind the Bad Girl name, "in everyone's family there is someone who frowns upon indulgence saying, 'you've had cake. you're a bad girl,' it is about gently poking fun about that. She adds, "if I hadn't have taken that chance, I wouldn't have had any of these opportunities. It gave me the confidence to produce on that sort of scale and it was just so exciting." We quizzed Jeni to find out about her circuitous route to cake-making success, her baking inspiration, and how the bakery’s breakfast muffins came to be served in First Class on the famed Caledonian Sleeper, the overnight train running between the Scottish Highlands and London. We bake by hand in the same way you would at home (our mixers are just a bit bigger). Bad Girl Bakery started as a wee, at-home bakery (where 6 cakes a week was busy) and now we produce tens of thousands of portions of cake a month, and serve cake, coffee, breakfast and lunch, 7 days a week with a staff of 25.