We recently had the opportunity to pay a visit to Primrose Bakery, a haven for anyone who has a soft spot for beautifully decorated cupcakes in a variety of flavors and vintage furniture in pastel shades of pink. Martha Swift and Lisa Thomas, the founders, have ensured that as soon as you step inside their little corner, you are greeted with the mouth-watering smell of fresh baking and ground coffee.

The North London bakery began small and has only grown and gained in strength as the years have passed. Swift and Thomas were the first company to supply Selfridges from a domestic kitchen, then opened a new shop in Covent Garden and have recently released a new book, showcasing the best and tastiest of their creations. “We can’t send our cakes further than a certain distance,” said Thomas, “and we were getting inundated with people asking if we could mail them to different parts of the world. We felt that a book could reach further.”

“What we do is achievable by everyone,” Swift added, “some of the cookbooks out there are really daunting, with hundreds of ingredients and a method that goes on and on. They are beautiful to look at but aren’t things we make every day. These are things we do every day and to write about things we don’t stand by would have just been silly.”

Instead, what you have are a selection of recipes, which force you to choose between coffee and walnut cupcakes and chocolate and banana. What’s more, it is obvious that they have all been tried and tested before being included in the book and chosen to suit each and every season, something which the both of them feel very passionate about.

“We work through the year with what’s good, and what’s in season” said Swift, “our strawberry cupcakes are incredibly popular but we only make them if the strawberries are in season.