3 minute read
19 Desserts by Dre
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Baking his way to the top
By LAURA WOODING
Liverpool chef Andre Carrington, the man behind Desserts by Dre, has built up quite a delicious business and quite the instagram following too for his unique boxes of treats.
Born in Barbados and starting off as a chef, Dre began baking imaginative and unique cake combinations and selling them in a treat box, specially made for each customer. The selling point is to never do the same combination twice. His creativity has earned him 10,000 followers on instagram and a lot of happy customers.
Dre would sell at a market at the Bombed Out church in Liverpool and host dessert evenings at restaurants, baking in between work before getting furloughed when lockdown was in place.
He said: “I thought, well I’m not gonna sit at home and do nothing so I’ll bake some cakes and go about selling and I’ve not stopped since and it has really taken off.”
His famous treat boxes have earned him loyal customers and the chance to reinvent himself over and over again.
Speaking about the unique idea, he said: “It gave me an opportunity to trial new recipes and every combination was different, after that combination was finished I never did it again.
“When lockdown came I thought it might be an easier thing because no one could go anywhere and I could deliver to them.”
Recently he hit 10,000 followers on Instagram, however having a huge following doesn’t always equal a huge amount of new customers but his quirky and flavoursome treats have most of his followers placing orders.
“Luckily for me 85% of my customer base that follows me are actually from Liverpool and another 6% are from the Wirral, so it balances out in terms of my growth”
What makes Dre’s business successful compared to other dessert shops? The fact that he finds pancakes and waffles so last year and provides new and exciting cake recipes that you can’t find anywhere else.
“A gateau is usually a really rich cake,cream base and fruits, but I do a lot of quirky flavours and combinations, so it’s quite different to what other bakers are doing.
“You have a lot of cake decorators, which I’m not, and then on the other side people who do a lot of cupcake, brownies and blondies, which I don’t, so I’m somewhere in the middle of nowhere and I stand out mostly in terms of flavour combinations and the type of cake that I do.”
Moving forward, Dre hopes to try more mouthwatering, rare cake combinations.
His next step is to have his own premises and offer what the people want: a deep fried cherry cheesecake, wrapped in pastry with cinnamon sugar, cherry pie filling, white chocolate sauce and whipped cream.
Liverpool chef Andre Carrington at work
As a cake lover myself, I had to know what his favourite was and it turns out we have a lot in common.
Dre said: “My favourite cake to eat is a New York cherry cheesecake. I’m from Barbados originally, so I spent a lot of summers in New York and I remember the first time I ever had a New York style cheesecake and I’ve been trying to recreate that taste ever since.”
Just to clarify for cheesecake experts, a biscoff base is just a trendy phase, apparently, and the only way forward is a digestive buttery biscuit base, as confirmed by the man himself.
“I use digestive biscuits and a butter base, make the cheesecake and bake it for an hour and half in the oven, nice and slow and it results in a custard style, soft cheesecake, all fluffy on the palette.”
Yum.
Follow him and see for yourself @dessertsbydre
