Cake Cupboard

Cake Cupboard News!

The Cake Cupboard closed at the end of Summer 2025. It may be back next year, but we have plans for bigger and better things. Keep an eye on @IslayBaker for updates.....

The story of the Cake Cupboard

We are not sure when or why we started baking muffins each morning to accompany the guests’ breakfasts, but those muffins led us to where we are now. One Sunday morning with muffins left over we decided to put a sign on the gate offering takeaway coffee and muffins to anyone who may be passing. An hour or so later a coach load of tourists came to the door and our tiny café in the guest lounge was born. This café, much like sitting in someone’s front room, was tremendously popular, leading to not only becoming a finalist in the Scottish Home Baking Awards but an eight-year relationship with the Celtic House Coffee Shop and Outback Art Gallery as their baker.

Moving on a few years, improvements to the guest bedrooms left us with no separate toilet and a failed planning application for additional facilities led us to close the café. However, we could still see the need for some kind of facility, and in 2019 the first Cake Cupboard appeared. An old display cabinet, with glass removed and new doors fitted became a fixture during the summer months at the side gate of Burnside Lodge. Completely self-service and painted baby pink, it appeared in many a social media post and gets a mention in several guidebooks of the island.

It turned out that the narrow base of the original cupboard was not able to withstand the Islay weather so at the end of that season it was re-purposed, and the replacement cupboard was fashioned from the inner wooden frame of a divan bed and the sides of a pine wardrobe. Although the sides were subsequently replaced with some leftover plywood and an old bookshelf, as the tongue and groove let in too much rain.

The Second generation Cake Cupboard, situated near the front porch (to take advantage of a degree of weather protection) also serving breakfast rolls and home-made pies; along with making use of the enormous second hand Gaggia coffee machine. Although designed to be takeaway, many people lingered and made use of our mis-matched selection of outside seating and enjoyed the view. On days when the weather really wasn’t conducive to outside dining, we happily served through car windows, operating Islay’s only Drive-Thru!

In everything we do, we try very hard to produce as little rubbish as possible, using mugs and plates for customers who were lingering nearby, and if not: the cups, cling film, cans and cake boxes could all be recycled in the box by the cupboard. The cake boxes themselves are on their second use, folded from out-of-date tourist maps.

We have plans for 'Boozy Brunches', 'Tipsy Teas', 'Hogmanay Hair of the Dog' and hope to open Islay's first coastal sauna before we see 2026 out - so watch our social media to see how we get on. And thank you to all our visitors and loyal locals for your support over the past 12 years.