Family life is SWEET!
They’re the super-talented sisters who’ve helped make baking cool. And now they’re sharing their most delicious recipes... in five unmissable pullouts for Mail readers
HANGING from the ceiling of the Three Sisters Bake’s cheery café in Killearn is an Oscar Wilde quote. ‘After a good dinner one can forgive anybody,’ it reads. ‘Even one’s own relations.’
It is, perhaps, an apt motto for a food business run by a trio of siblings. Yet Gillian, Nichola and Linsey Reith, whose company Three Sisters Bake has gone from family experiment to Scotland’s best-loved purveyor of cakes in less than a decade, are all decidedly firm friends.
‘I can’t imagine doing something like this on my own,’ says Nichola, the middle of the three at 38 (Gillian, 40, is the eldest, Linsey the youngest at 35). ‘We all know we can look to each other if anything goes wrong. We’re so lucky to have that support.’
But surely running a firm that includes three cafes, a wedding business and a busy online cake shop can’t always be, well, a piece of cake? ‘It’s funny,’ says Nichola. ‘The stuff we argue about are the silly little things, like what colour are we going to paint a wall. That’s what we fight about. On the important stuff, we do agree. I think that’s why it works. We do all have the same vision of where we’re trying to take this thing.’
THREE Sisters Bake first opened in Quarriers Village in 2011 after the trio quit their jobs to follow their dream of running a different type of cake shop. The siblings did everything themselves, with Nichola in charge of the baking, Gillian on front of house and Linsey cooking. Today they employ around 50 people and even have their own cookbook.
And starting on Monday, the sisters will be sharing their favourite recipes with Mail readers. From lemon and lavender cake to coconut and passionfruit tart, Scotch eggs to sweet potato brownies, there’s something for everyone, whether your tastes veer towards sweet or savoury.
‘We’ve tried to get a really good mix of flavours in there,’ says Nichola. ‘This is the kind of food we serve in our cafes, and the type we like to eat ourselves at home.’
Growing up in Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire, the sisters were always fascinated by cakes and sweets thanks to the sweetie shop run by their grandparents in Kirriemuir, Angus.
‘Our granny was always very into baking and did some home baking for the shop,’ says Nichola.
‘It was almost as if she had her own business within the business. She used to make millionaire shortbread and tablet which was famous across Angus. The money she made was her own. It was entrepreneurship on a small scale but in those days quite unusual. She was a real inspiration to us.’
Meanwhile, at home, mum Alison was a home economics teacher and everything that came out of the Reith family kitchen, including the baking, was made from scratch.
‘We always joked that we didn’t know who Mr Kipling was until we left home,’ Nichola says. ‘Everything was homemade, and my mum never bought in cakes or biscuits. Growing up having that influence around you all the time definitely shapes your attitude to food, and cooking and baking.’
After going to university, the three started out in conventional professions – Nichola worked for a pharmaceutical company after completing a degree in chemistry, and Gillian in hospitality, while Linsey worked in the yachting industry – but running their own food-based business was always something of a shared dream.
‘All through our twenties we were very close, even when we didn’t live in the same part of the world. And when we got back together we’d always talk in very fantastical ways about potentially running some sort of food business together,’ says Nichola. ‘Then in 2011 we all found ourselves living in Glasgow at the same time and thought “wow… we need to do this”. It went from a pipe dream to something we had to do.
‘We thought if it didn’t work we could go back to the day jobs. But at least we’d given it a try.’
Their first café, in Quarriers Village, a tiny place outside Bridge of Weir, was a huge risk.
‘Our belief was that if you create something really good then people will come. But we did think it would take a while,’ says Nichola.
‘We thought we’d start small and it would just be the three of us and then maybe after a year or so word might start getting around.’
In the end, that wasn’t quite how things panned out. ‘On day one we opened the doors and there was a queue. That continued all day until we locked up at night and all looked at each other and said: “what just happened?”
BY the next day we were phoning friends begging them to come in and help. My dad would come home from the office at 7pm then come into the café and do dishes until midnight.
‘Those first few weeks were a crazy whirlwind.’
Word had indeed got around, and within months Three Sisters Bake had established itself as the hot new café in the Central Belt.
A cookbook followed, while some of the café’s signature bakes – including salted caramel brownies, raspberry and almond cake and their homemade scones – became famous far and wide.
Today, as well as their original café, they run another in Killearn Village Hall – alongside a wedding business, the colourful and achingly trendy Cake Bar in Glasgow’s West End, as well as pop-ups at the Glasgow Arches and festivals across the country.
There has even been a successful BBC TV show, Flour Power, which aired first on BBC Scotland and then nationwide last year.
‘It does still feel very surreal,’ says Nichola. ‘Sometimes I walk into one of the cafes and think “wow, we created this”.’
Ironically, the business has become so successful that the sisters are rarely to be found in the same location any more.
‘It’s funny because nowadays we’d
say we don’t spent enough time together,’ she says. ‘We often spend the whole week in different places doing different things. At a minimum we try to work together once a week so we can keep focused on where the business is going and what we’re trying to achieve.’
Thank goodness, then, for family events, which have expanded as the sisters’ own families have grown (Nichola has two children, Linsey one and Gillian has three and is pregnant with a fourth).
‘Our numbers are getting bigger and bigger but we do all try to get together and do social, family things once a month,’ says Nichola.
‘One of the rules is we really try not to talk about work on those days because although we love what we do, we also understand that our husbands and our parents don’t necessarily want to listen to us talking about business. So we try to avoid talking shop when we’re all together.’
Instead, the extended Reith clan will get together and put on a big, informal spread – the type of food they love to serve in their cafés and which feature in the entertaining section of next week’s recipes.
Think fish tacos with sour cream and cheese, potato salad, chicken, chorizo and chickpea stew and leek and cheddar quiche.
WHEN we do all get together you don’t want to be stuck in the kitchen trying to make a roast dinner for everyone.
‘We’d far prefer to have a lovely buffet, chuck it on a table and say “help yourself”. That way, particularly with kids, you can have something for everyone.
‘We’re really not the kind of family to sit down and say “we’re having roast beef”.’
The same ethos runs through their cakes and desserts – both featured next week – with old favourites such as strawberry sponge cake and cranachan making an appearance alongside more experimental dishes including spiced parsnip cake and poached rhubarb ice cream sundae.
‘The key to baking is to get comfy with the basics,’ says Nichola. ‘Start with something fairly simple that doesn’t have multiple steps and needs a lot of icing.
‘Another thing I would say is choose a recipe you think sounds really tasty and you’d like to eat, and do it a few times. That’s really how you become good at baking, it’s doing things over and over.’
She believes that thanks to shows like the Great British Bake Off, as well as her own Flour Power, baking has become not only more accessible, but also more trendy.
‘I’m sure there are some people who watch shows like Bake Off and have no interest in going into the kitchen, but I think it’s definitely encouraged people to experiment, particularly young people,’ she says. ‘There was a time when baking was seen as something your granny might do, whereas now I think it’s become quite cool.
‘It’s ironic really, because Mary Berry is more of a traditional figure, yet that has translated into something that’s cool for the younger generation.’
Ah, yes, Mary Berry, the baker’s baker. Is she an icon for Nichola?
‘She’s definitely one of them. Her recipes are absolute staples: coffee and walnut cake, lemon drizzle – she’s a go-to for so many recipes.’
In next week’s serialisation there is also a day’s worth of recipes for those looking for gluten and dairy free options, both increasingly
popular these days.
Here you’ll find, among others, quinoa cakes (a café favourite), lamb kebabs, banana bread, and a vegan raspberry and coconut slice.
‘We definitely get a lot more people asking for gluten free and dairy free products than we used to,’ says Nichola. ‘What we try to do with the recipes is create something that’s still delicious.
‘It doesn’t actually matter that it doesn’t have gluten or dairy, it still tastes fantastic.’
Despite baking having become both a job and her all-consuming passion, Nichola says she still enjoys those moments in the kitchen at home, particularly with her six-year-old son, Tate.
‘He’s shown a real interest in baking so I’ve gone back to basics with him, doing sponges and things like that,’ she says.
‘It’s really good fun. Baking has become what I do for a living but it’s nice to do it with a six-year-old and see it through their eyes.
‘It’s something that’s just so enjoyable to do. And then you get to eat this lovely product. That really is what baking is all about.’