THEN: In July 2016, Irish Country Living visited Lorraine Aspill at Daisy Cottage Café in Tinahely, Co Wicklow. Previously voted 'Ireland’s hardest worker', Lorraine was juggling running the café with developing her range of award-winning bread and scone mixes, which often meant a 3am start.
NOW: While a few things have changed since we last met Lorraine, one certainly hasn’t: her wake-up call.
“My ovens normally go on at 1.50am on a Saturday morning, just to make sure everything is beautiful, fresh and a lot of the time hot going down to the market,” she says.
Early starts aside, Lorraine feels that she has a better work-life balance after making the decision to close the café in 2017.
A 2am start is still the norm for Lorraine. \ Ramona Farrelly
“The overheads just kept going up and up,” she explains. “I loved the café, I loved meeting people, but I just felt all my energies were being put into the café and I seemed to be working six days a week, nearly 20 hours a day, for the café.”
Award-winning scones
Since then, Lorraine has invested her energy into developing her Daisy Cottage Farm range, which includes her Blas na hEireann award-winning scone mix, brown bread mix, no-flour bread mix and Irish white soda bread mix.
Lorraine has invested her energy in developing her Daisy Cottage Farm range, which includes her Blas na hEireann award-winning scone mix, brown bread mix, no-flour bread mix and Irish white soda bread mix.
The range is currently available in Lidl stores nationwide, but also online, after launching her website earlier this year, which, luckily, coincided with the home-baking boom during COVID-19.
“We have a lot of regular customers now who enjoy the fact that they can just click, order and have it delivered two or three days later by courier,” says Lorraine.
Another development during COVID was what Lorraine calls “green Saturday”, which has proven “a great social outlet for the village and surrounding areas”.
I find my market on the Saturday keeps me in touch with people
Every Saturday from 10am-2pm, she pitches up at the green in Kiltegan to sell her treats, ranging from lemon drizzle cake to rasher, cheese and scallion sourdough.
She also hosts a weekly 'battle of the scones' where two flavours are posted on Facebook (for example, apple and blackcurrant versus cherry and almond) and followers are encouraged to pick their favourite and tag a friend they would like to share them with. The winner is picked at random and receives six scones.
Thesis
“I find my market on the Saturday keeps me in touch with people,” says Lorraine. “I’m a people person and I like to be out and about.”
In the meantime, she is also writing a thesis, having decided to return to college in 2018 to complete a masters in gastronomy.
“It is a fantastic course and I thoroughly enjoyed it,” says Lorraine.
“It helped me put it into focus that I’m not just a little artisan baker out in the middle of nowhere, I’m part of a bigger picture.”
For further information, visit www.daisycottagefarm.ie or follow on Facebook and Instagram.
Read more
'I went back to what I do: I baked' - Lorraine Aspill
'It’s not like a factory... they only lay one egg a day!'
THEN: In July 2016, Irish Country Living visited Lorraine Aspill at Daisy Cottage Café in Tinahely, Co Wicklow. Previously voted 'Ireland’s hardest worker', Lorraine was juggling running the café with developing her range of award-winning bread and scone mixes, which often meant a 3am start.
NOW: While a few things have changed since we last met Lorraine, one certainly hasn’t: her wake-up call.
“My ovens normally go on at 1.50am on a Saturday morning, just to make sure everything is beautiful, fresh and a lot of the time hot going down to the market,” she says.
Early starts aside, Lorraine feels that she has a better work-life balance after making the decision to close the café in 2017.
A 2am start is still the norm for Lorraine. \ Ramona Farrelly
“The overheads just kept going up and up,” she explains. “I loved the café, I loved meeting people, but I just felt all my energies were being put into the café and I seemed to be working six days a week, nearly 20 hours a day, for the café.”
Award-winning scones
Since then, Lorraine has invested her energy into developing her Daisy Cottage Farm range, which includes her Blas na hEireann award-winning scone mix, brown bread mix, no-flour bread mix and Irish white soda bread mix.
Lorraine has invested her energy in developing her Daisy Cottage Farm range, which includes her Blas na hEireann award-winning scone mix, brown bread mix, no-flour bread mix and Irish white soda bread mix.
The range is currently available in Lidl stores nationwide, but also online, after launching her website earlier this year, which, luckily, coincided with the home-baking boom during COVID-19.
“We have a lot of regular customers now who enjoy the fact that they can just click, order and have it delivered two or three days later by courier,” says Lorraine.
Another development during COVID was what Lorraine calls “green Saturday”, which has proven “a great social outlet for the village and surrounding areas”.
I find my market on the Saturday keeps me in touch with people
Every Saturday from 10am-2pm, she pitches up at the green in Kiltegan to sell her treats, ranging from lemon drizzle cake to rasher, cheese and scallion sourdough.
She also hosts a weekly 'battle of the scones' where two flavours are posted on Facebook (for example, apple and blackcurrant versus cherry and almond) and followers are encouraged to pick their favourite and tag a friend they would like to share them with. The winner is picked at random and receives six scones.
Thesis
“I find my market on the Saturday keeps me in touch with people,” says Lorraine. “I’m a people person and I like to be out and about.”
In the meantime, she is also writing a thesis, having decided to return to college in 2018 to complete a masters in gastronomy.
“It is a fantastic course and I thoroughly enjoyed it,” says Lorraine.
“It helped me put it into focus that I’m not just a little artisan baker out in the middle of nowhere, I’m part of a bigger picture.”
For further information, visit www.daisycottagefarm.ie or follow on Facebook and Instagram.
Read more
'I went back to what I do: I baked' - Lorraine Aspill
'It’s not like a factory... they only lay one egg a day!'
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