‘The Garden Cafe’ at Craft Nurseries in Essex has won The Tea Room Cake Award at The Cake Awards UK 2013 on July 17th up against major supermarkets and top UK chefs.
Karen Harries who runs the Coffee Shop on site at Craft Nurseries entered her Apricot and Coconut cake in to the competition earlier this year and discovered it had reached the position of finalists for this award. She was then shocked and delighted to receive the 1st place Winner’s award at The Park Lane Hotel London on July 17th.
Entries were based on a strict criteria for quality of ingredients and presentation, recipe innovation and texture, taste and value, judged by Bruce Langlands - Harrod’s Director of Food, Will Torrent - Award Winning Patissier and Chocolatier and Allan Jenkins - Editor of Observer Food Monthly magazine.
Karen has been running The Garden Cafe for 8 years and has built a fine reputation for her fabulous home cooked & quality menu, the relaxed farmhouse kitchen and garden ambience is a relaxing setting amongst the shrubbery of Craft Nurseries, Lawford, Manningtree, Colchester. The family run nurseries has been nurturing plants and customers for 20 years and is well loved in the community, 95% of the plants sold are grown on site, a good old fashioned garden centre run by Andrew and Colin Davey third generation brothers in this family business.
At a time when many garden centres have found this year a challenge Craft Nurseries have now made the news for the second time this year as they already reached the ‘Spotted’ Column of The Sun Newspaper last month for their generous deliveries of free Tomato plants to the neighbourhood and surrounding villages.
If you'd like to sample their award winning cake, Craft Nurseries and The Garden Cafe are at 34 Harwich Road, Lawford, Manningtree, Colchester, CO11 2LS