welcome to sweet disposition

hello, is this thing on?

Hello! Welcome to sweet disposition. A new newsletter about baking. The doing of it, the chat about it, the love for it.

If you got here via Pudding Lane, thanks for taking the leap and, frankly, thanks for sticking with me through a two-year blogging hiatus. If we’ve not ‘met’ before, then thanks for being here too. I’m Lucy, a baker, writer and PR-person based in Stoke Newington in North London. Here’s a brief recap of how we got here.

I started my blog, Pudding Lane, back in 2014 - that sweet time of microwave mug cakes, salted caramel everything, Sepia Instagram filters and the rest. I shared recipes - and my life - for over six years. My blog was a space where I could write and document my baking exploits, and where I gradually built a beautiful community of readers and bakers. I wrote - for my blog, but also for brands and sometimes magazines - alongside building up a bijou little wedding cake business, and working full time in PR, latterly working for chefs and restaurants which fed my soul as well as paying my bills. Safe to say the many-hatted busy-ness that gives me anxiety and insomnia is also the place that I thrive - much like a pan of boiling water, there’s a sweet spot (and I don’t always hit it).

Then 2020 arrived. A complete and utter shit storm. The restaurants I looked after closed indefinitely. All of my wedding cake bookings got cancelled. And I was stuck at home, like everyone else. So, I pivoted my business and started sending brownies and blondies in the post, with little more strategy than an urgent concern for my financial situation and a good attitude. Luckily, it took off (it was utterly mental, for which I remain eternally grateful), and I spent the majority of 2020 making literally tens of thousands of brownies and sending them across the UK in the post. It kept me going.

Brownie mania - plus a horribly difficult period in my personal life - left Pudding Lane abandoned. The space that for so long instilled excitement, pride and a desire to write stopped inspiring me. So I stopped writing. Of course, my day job meant I didn’t stop writing completely - but I didn’t feel like writing in the personal way I had before. And that was the case for a really long time. Luckily, time breeds perspective, and now I can see that sadness, instability and a total rug-pulling moment made me pull up the drawbridge on sharing my life and how I felt with the world.

2021 was a year of new beginnings. I took back control of my life, the covid situation slowly levelled out, I found new love and - amazingly - the cookbook proposal I had thrown together during my time of bloggers block was bought and signed by my now publishers, Welbeck. I spent the year testing, writing, shooting and proofing my first cookbook Postal Bakes, which came out last year. After a busy launch period and an even busier summer of wedding cakes, I decided to give myself some head space. Some time to be less busy. And more time to do the things that feed my soul. I paused my wedding cake business for a year.

And now here we are, twenty days into 2023 and it’s certainly been a hot minute since I wrote in this way. Over the past few months, the urge and excitement to create, make and share has slowly crept back into my life. I came into this year finally ready to come back to it. I’ve missed it. It seems to be true that a rest is as good as change.

Or… is it? I sat down to write with a nagging feeling that I still needed something to change. I craved that feeling of newness. Returning to the blog I loved so dearly seemed lovely in one way, but like a step back in another. That space is an account of a period of my life that I have moved on from. I wrote Pudding Lane as a fresh, early 20 year old, new and amateur baker. I’ve grown up, I’ve built a business, and I’ve been lucky enough to have my first cookbook signed and published. My life has moved on from the time and space Pudding Lane thrived in - and I want my writing to too. I need that flicker of newness and excitement that can only come - for me anyway - with a new project.

And so to Substack! A new home for recipes, opinions, stories and general ramblings about what I’ve been up to. A way to land in your inboxes. A fresh space to play and grow. And a Brand. New. Name.

I thought long and hard about bringing Pudding Lane over here, but decided to let it be what it was (and still is!). A baking blog with six years of recipes and stories. An account of a chapter that’s closed, and a free to access archive of recipes for those of you who still use them. Occasionally I might post over there, but in the main, you’ll find me here - exploring and examining my sweet disposition.

‘Sweet disposition’ is the name I give to that nudging, subtle hankering for a sweet note, despite being a savoury person 99% of the time. Because contrary to what my writing endeavours of the past decade might suggest, I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. I’m not your cliché ‘dessert person’. But I do know that a little sweetness, now and again, when it’s beautifully balanced and exactly what the moment requires, is one of life’s pure joys.

I’ll be sharing bi-weekly recipes, and monthly round ups of what I’ve doing, eating and enjoying. In true side hustle spirt, I’ll be writing alongside my full time job and other baking-related projects, so I don’t want to overpromise on how often I’ll slide into your inboxes… stay tuned.

For now, sweet disposition is free to read - you just need to subscribe, which you can do by clicking here:

Thank you for being here. It feels so good to be back.