A cookery programme on TV about the art of making cupcakes was just the inspiration Kay Weldon needed to open old-fashioned tea rooms in Blarney
STEPPING INTO Miss Katie’s Tea Rooms is like stepping back in time to an era when elegant afternoon teas were a prominent feature of society.
It was Kay Weldon’s three-year-old granddaughter, Katie, who gave her the inspiration for recreating the old-fashioned afternoon tea of old and making it into a business venture.
“I was watching a cookery programme on TV with Katie one evening and they were making beautiful cupcakes. She thought they were lovely and it put the idea of a tea room into my head, I knew there was nothing like it around Cork at the time.”
Weldon travelled to tea rooms in Killarney, London and Boston, as well as the cake show at the Chelsea Flower Show to get ideas and she knew she wanted her premises to have an “old-time feeling” to it.
“I thought it was a lovely idea for people to come in for tea or coffee and cakes with conversation, which is a dying art.”
The tea rooms, which opened in March, in the village of Blarney, Co Cork, are quaintly decorated with a wonderful selection of fine china, each of which tells its own story. Some pieces have been handed down by Weldon’s mother and the rest have been donated by family and friends or picked up in charity shops.
Every table is immaculately set with table linen and china, the tea is served in proper teapots and the only foods served are cakes and scones. Taking pride of place in one corner is an old china cabinet that came from a guesthouse that Weldon’s mother ran in Blarney many years ago.
While Weldon is thoroughly enjoying the experience of running the old-style tea rooms, her life has changed dramatically. From working in a nine-to-five office job, she is now in the kitchen by 5am – or even earlier – every morning starting the day’s baking.
A native of Passage West in Co Cork, Weldon went to London to work in the bank after finishing secondary school. She returned to Ireland where she married and had four children – her eldest son, Edward, tragically died of the heart muscle disease, cardiomyopathy, in 1998.
For many years, she was heavily involved with bringing foreign students to Cork and she developed great friendships with families in Italy, whom she still visits regularly.
In more recent years, she had been working as a legal accountant for her partner, solicitor Mick Malone, as well as doing the accounts for the bar they run in Blarney.
She explains: “I had been doing the food in the bar as well, but the bar business had become so precarious that nobody was coming in anymore. The tourists have not been around the last couple of years and we’ve been so quiet, we were only opening at 4pm.”
When Weldon decided to go ahead with her idea for old- fashioned tea rooms in Blarney, she converted part of the bar premises into a kitchen/bakery and shop.
“I had no formal training in baking. I did several cookery courses in Ballymaloe, but anything I know I learned from my mother, who was a cook. A lot of her recipes were never even written down, but have been handed down over generations.”
Weldon had decided to specialise in cupcakes and, as part of her research, her daughter Sinead visited the famous Magnolia bakery during a Sex and the Citytour of New York.
“We went for afternoon tea in the Ritz in London. It cost €41 each, but it was worth every penny. It lasted two hours and we had our own waiter assigned to us. I decided I wanted to give people the chance to enjoy afternoon tea with the service of the Ritz, but at a fraction of the price.”
She encourages parents to bring in their children and is busy planning storytelling mornings with the stories of Beatrix Potter being told against the clink of china in the background.
In the run-up to Christmas, she is planning to organise Christmas table and fireplace decoration classes in the tea rooms.
Her cupcakes have really taken off and Weldon now sells them at markets around Cork, while her mini-cupcakes are particularly popular at birthday parties for smaller children.
“I would be very conscious of value for money and that has to be the emphasis in recession times. What went on five or 10 years ago does not apply now, but you adapt.
“I might not make a fortune on one particular item, but I believe that if you give personal good service and a fair price, the customer will come back.”
Weldon’s daughter, Sinead, now does all the cake decorating after discovering she had a natural talent in this area. She spent a number of years working in the hospitality sector in Australia and New Zealand before returning to Ireland to settle down.
Her speciality is the pretty doll cake, with a skirt made of layers of icing which, not surprisingly, is a huge hit for little girls’ birthday parties.
As well as decorating the cakes and working in the legal business, most weekends Sinead can be found at a festival or show, standing behind a “Cupcakes by Katie” stall.
“I do miss New Zealand, but I had been travelling since I was 17 and I needed something to make me stay here, so I bought a house in east Cork.
“The legal business is very structured and all about set information, so it’s nice to leave it for a while and be creative decorating the cakes – it’s the best of both worlds,” says Sinead.
As for Kay, she has gone from closing the door of the office at 5pm and going for a walk or away for weekends to getting out of bed and into the kitchen before daylight to start her preparation.
“I’m a morning person, so the early start doesn’t bother me at all. I try to be out of the kitchen every day before 9am when Sinead comes in to do the decorating.
“I come back then again to work in the shop and if I’m doing markets or festivals, I could be working until late at night.”
Although she agrees that it’s very hard to get away from the business when you are your own boss, Weldon says she is thoroughly enjoying meeting customers, consulting with them over cake orders and reviving the art of conversation.
