Tiptree Patisserie

There’s a brand you might be familiar with, even if you haven’t quite appreciated the history behind it. Wilkins and Sons Ltd have been making jams since 1885 in the Essex village of Tiptree, and their distinctive labels are on the shelves of supermarkets across the country. If you haven’t bought them yourself, it’s more than likely that you’ve seen the little mini-jam pots at a hotel breakfast table; last year they sold more than 50 million pots in over 60 countries worldwide. As a proud Essex girl, Tiptree is a brand I have always loved (the Raspberry Seedless jam is my favourite) so when I had the chance to find out a bit more, I jumped at the opportunity.

A mutual friend had put me in touch with Daren McGrath, who is the Managing Director of Tiptree Patisserie, part of the Wilkins and Sons family of companies. He was kind enough to show me around their bakery in Witham, Essex for a look behind the scenes of this local food business, which operates on a global scale.

Many of us know the English fruits and jams that Tiptree are famous for, and as much as possible of the fruit is still grown on their own farm, including of course the very special heritage Little Scarlet strawberry (to find out more about Little Scarlet visit www.tiptree.com). However, given the range of products it can’t all be grown here in the UK. For example, the oranges used in the marmalade come from Seville. I was pleased to learn that Tiptree has their very own ‘man from Del Monté’ (can I say that?!) called Robert, who inspects the crops of known and trusted producers in warmer climes, ensuring only the best are given the Tiptree label.

The company has grown immensely since the 19th century and now boasts a wide range of products in addition to the jams and preserves including condiments, juices, jellies, gin liqueurs, Christmas puddings and even the most delicious fruit smelling candles and diffusers. There are 11 Tiptree tearooms across the country and a growing bakery business which makes a range of bread, cakes, scones, pastries and patisserie for a variety of commercial and private customers.

The patisserie business started to provide cakes for the tearooms but now has a much larger customer base. Sitting down for a chat with Daren before touring the bakery, I was amazed to hear that Tiptree Patisserie products are sold as far field as Singapore and China, providing customers in the Far East with a genuine taste of the English countryside. Daren has personally toured China, giving live cookery demonstrations to thousands of people, educating them on the delights of an English cream tea. He is even a bit of a Chinese social media star!

Daren wouldn’t give away all his secrets but I got a few titbits, such as a spoonful of apricot jam in the Coronation chicken sandwich fillings and carrot cake laced with Tiptree’s finest marmalade. It was fascinating to hear how passionately the Chinese have embraced the concept of the cream tea. Daren admitted to being nervous when he realised the Chinese palate isn’t particularly fond of jam and they don’t really have an equivalent there. But he has obviously worked some magic, as the company is now exporting tens of thousands of scones, clotted cream and jam to China every month.

I then had a tour of the bakery, which I was completely blown away by, but not for the reasons you might think. The bakery operates 24hrs a day, 6 and a half days per week making breads, cakes, scones, biscuits, patisserie and savoury pastries. They make around 900 different products, as well as bespoke cakes for all sorts of occasions. From the spectacular – the largest cake they ever made was a 3 metre high carrot cake in the shape of a life-sized giraffe to celebrate a birthday at Colchester Zoo, which had 4000 portions – to the more prosaic – 14,000 Victoria sponges to a specific height, so they could be stacked on the trolleys they had at the event venue.

The bakery makes products for a wide range of customers from small scale caterers to big hotels and grand functions, but it wasn’t the range of customers that I was so impressed with. It was the fact that every cake, scone, biscuit and bread is made by hand, in small batches, by humans using equipment any of us would recognise. They had the same gingerbread man cutters that I have at home! They bake in batches to a maximum of 40 and yet they offer consistency and quality in everything they produce. Daren knows exactly which baker has made every item that is sent from the bakery. Their name is on the box and everyone working there prides themselves on delivering a quality product for every customer, big or small.

Daren summed up the ethos of the bakery perfectly when he said to me, “There’s cake, and then there’s cake made with love”. At Tiptree we have real passion for what we do. It’s our name on the box.”

There was so much I loved about my visit to Tiptree. Not just meeting Daren, whose enthusiasm and vision for the future of the business was genuinely inspirational. Not just that as the business expands it stays true to its ethos of having staff as part owners of the company, making everything by hand and allowing no additives in anything they make. Not just that the staff there clearly understand that the relationship people have with cake is special; we have cake to celebrate all the special moments in our lives and the staff at Tiptree understand their role in that. And not just that you can now go to a department store in Singapore and have a proper English-made scone with clotted cream and Essex jam, the idea of which makes me immensely happy.

And finally, Tiptree are committed to developing the future of the industry, by training apprentices that are passionate about the business, to ensure that the renowned and trusted Wilkins and Sons Ltd. fruit farmers legacy of making quality products continues for another generation.

Looking to the future, Tiptree sponsors the World Bread awards (worldbreadawards.com) which are always looking for new entrants, particularly younger bakers. So if you have a budding bread-head in your family make sure they get their applications in. Daren and the other judges will be waiting!

Sweet treats in the Shire

This time a year ago we were in North Devon. We stayed in a pretty little village called Chittlehampton near Barnstaple, although Jim insisted on calling it the Shire. I think this was mainly influenced by the fact that the cottage (which he called Bag End) had very small doors and low ceilings which meant that the only place Jim could stand up straight was on the stairs, he had to shower on his knees and bend nearly double to get through the doors. I, on the other hand, found the cottage perfectly proportioned and very cosy with the added bonus that I could reach all the cupboards and fittings very easily.

We had a good time, helped enormously by the fact that the village had a great pub called the Bell Inn, which served good food and had an extensive gin list, including a new one on me, Wicked Wolf of Exmoor, a small batch-made spirit made in the wilds of Exmoor. The village also boasted a post office and shop which sold locally-made cheddar and clotted cream which you had to request from behind the counter and was spooned into a unmarked plastic tub for you to take home with you.

I got baking as soon as we got home. Which of course meant we had to have the following 3 arguments:

  • is it scone rhyming with cone, or scone rhyming with gone?
  • should scones have sultanas in?
  • jam then cream, or cream then jam?

I’m not even going to try and answer the first question as I know it raises considerable agitation with certain people. I heard that the Queen says scone rhyming with ‘gone’, so that is some guidance I guess. I like sultanas but Tommy doesn’t, so we tossed a coin and he won. The Cornish tea has jam and then cream on top (which I prefer, with apologies to my Devonian mother-in-law) and the Devon cream tea should have the cream on first. What a minefield to pick your way across for a tea-time treat. The clotted cream was delicious, which was the main thing.

After a short break, I usually feel energised to get back into the creative side of cooking, so I decided to tackle something I have been meaning to try for ages. Marshmallows. I had bought a sugar thermometer a while ago but it was still in its packet and buried at the back of a drawer. But I found it and got to work.

The ingredients are really quite simple: white sugar, liquid glucose (which you can find in most supermarkets with the baking ingredients), water, gelatine leaves, egg whites and vanilla. The only tricky bit is getting the temperature of the sugar correct, but the thermometer takes all of the guess work out of that. The sugar has to be heated to the hardball stage. When I told Jim I was going to play hardball with the sugar he hurried out of the kitchen in case it turned violent.

I used a James Martin recipe for my first attempt and it worked really well. The main thing to bear in mind is that it takes quite a while for the sugar syrup to get to the right temperature. I used my digital thermometer as well because I didn’t trust the analogue one, but it worked okay. It is important to be very careful with hot sugar, don’t ever touch it with your fingers and use a good sturdy Pyrex jug to pour it onto the egg whites slowly. This is not a recipe to do with small children I would say. The other thing is that you will have to wash everything in very hot water afterwards as it is the only way to deal with the hardened sugar.

But it really wasn’t difficult and the results were absolutely delicious. Soft, pillowy, melt-in-the-mouth, more a texture than a flavour, and I felt inordinately proud of myself when they were done. If you want to have a go, here is the recipe I used:

Ingredients

450g granulated sugar

1 tbsp liquid glucose

200ml water

2 large free-range egg whites

9 sheets gelatine, soaked in 140ml water

1 tsp vanilla extract

vegetable oil, for greasing

5-6 tbsp icing sugar, for dusting

5-6 tbsp cornflour, for dusting

Method

  1. Soak the gelatine leaves in 140ml cold water in a small bowl.
  2. Place the granulated sugar, glucose and 200ml of water into a heavy-duty saucepan and bring to the boil.
  3. Cook over a medium-high heat until it reaches 127ºC or the hard ball stage on a sugar thermometer. This could take up to 15 minutes.
  4. Place the egg whites into a very clean grease-free bowl and whisk to firm peaks. An electric whisk or stand mixer is best as there is a lot of whisking!
  5. Add the soaked gelatine sheets and water to the hot sugar syrup carefully. Stir through until dissolved, then pour into a heatproof jug.
  6. Continue to whisk the egg whites, then pour the sugar syrup onto the egg whites, whisking all the time until the whites are shiny. Try not to pour the syrup directly onto the whisk attachments but rather down the side of the bowl.
  7. Add the vanilla extract and continue to whisk at a medium-high speed for at least 5 minutes, but it may take up tot 10 minutes. The mixture needs to be thick enough to hold its shape on the whisk.
  8. Lightly oil a shallow 30x20cm baking tray and dust the tray with some icing sugar and cornflour. Spoon the marshmallow mixture into the tray, smoothing the top with a palette knife.
  9. Place in the fridge for at least an hour to set.
  10. Dust some more icing sugar and cornflour over a board or clean work surface, use a palette knife to loosen the edge of the marshmallow, then turn it out onto the dusted work surface.
  11. Cut into squares and roll in the icing sugar and cornflour to coat well and then store in an airtight tin or jar. Serve with chocolate sauce or fruit coulis for a yummy dessert .
N.B. this blog first appeared as a column in Herts & Essex Observer on 25 February 2016