Burnside Lodge, Port Wemyss, Isle of Islay
Burnside Lodge B&B, Shore Street, Port Wemyss, Isle of Islay PA47 7ST What3words///toasted.packages.feasting
Telephone: 01496 860296 Email: Burnsidelodge@outlook.com
Cake Cupboard News!
The Cake Cupboard will re-open
for 2024 on Good Friday!
Keep an eye on @IslayBaker
for the re-build......!
Self service cake and drinks available Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays throughout the season from the Cake Cupboard! Plus most weekends there will also be pies, special cakes and good coffee. Feel free to ring 01496 860296 to check what we have.
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 current cupboard is 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 Cake Cupboard, as it is now, is situated near the front porch (to take advantage of a degree of weather protection) which allows us to also provide 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 linger and make use of our mis-matched selection of outside seating and enjoy the view. On days when the weather really isn’t conducive to outside dining, we happily serve through car windows, operating Islay’s only Drive-Thru!
We try very hard to produce as little rubbish as possible, and as a result we encourage everything to be returned to us. If you are lingering nearby, you will be given mugs and plates, if not: the cups, cling film, cans and cake boxes can 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 also happily use people’s own cups if they have them.
We have been lucky to be very well supported by local people and other businesses in the Rhinns throughout our many incarnations and continue to be busy, particularly at the height of the season, so do occasionally sell out. Do feel free to give us a call to check what we have, before you venture down. And as it says above…. the best day for pies is a Friday!