Luke is a curious 8-year-old. The type of kid, who on his only day off school comes and helps his mum at work, in a restaurant she waits tables. As his mother proceeds to serve the most glorious cocktails of all – Irish coffee, Luke cannot resist lending a helping hand. The enhanced coffee drink is indeed a lot more than just adding whiskey into a coffee cup. In fact, the outstanding challenge is to figure out how to layer the rich visual of light cream over dark coffee. For Luke, it is way more than a drink. This event and the magical experience of the cream, delivered in a dramatic long pour by an 8-year-old self, mark his entrance to the sugar-driven world.
Growing up, Luke felt accustomed to the company of like-minded pâtissiers. That same year he first visited the restaurant L’Ancienne Ecole in the South of France, owned by his aunt Monica, where Luke very quickly found his natural aptitude for making desserts and working as a part of the team. Essentially, that year he became a go-fer in a top tier restaurant kitchen. By the age of 11, Luke Goold was making most desserts unsupervised and independently. He continuously frightened regular customers when admitting he was the young master chef behind that divine banoffee pie they devoured so voraciously. “You can’t tell them you made it!” Monica would shout. Either way, this is definitely less of a shock than Remy the rat from Ratatouille hoping to become the next French chef...
L’Ancienne Ecole allowed Luke to experiment and study the recipes, fulfilling his passion to understand how and why they work. This granted a 16-year-old the principal pastry chef role, where he oversaw the production of all desserts for the restaurant. “Not your typical adolescent,” you might say. Ever since Luke’s promotion to pastry chef, desserts sales tripled and three months later the venue had regular customers returning solely for desserts and coffee. Luke loved it.
Now an adult, Luke holds more than 30 years of restaurant and catering experience. During these years, Luke realised that most of the time chefs neglect desserts by going for a more convenient and generic solution, such as sourcing frozen products. He understood that in many kitchens it was simply impractical and wouldn’t make financial sense in employing a dedicated party chef, meaning there had to be a compromise. But over time he felt the current market suppliers for frozen desserts focused on creating and supplying the cheapest possible product for the highest possible price, he felt that it didn’t have to be this way.
...this and the precious experience working as a principal pastry chef at L’Ancienne Ecole led him to wonder – what if he created a dessert-only kitchen, where desserts would be the main priority instead of an afterthought? The idea and evident gap in the market resulted in establishing his own company Cake on Demand in East Tilbury, Essex - a family run, handmade dessert delivery service, that provided luxurious desserts for local hotels and restaurants. Word spread and soon he had local customers knocking on his door wanting birthday and celebration cakes delivered for their occasions, gaining him the name “Cake man”.
Food always comes first and together with Luke’s passion for food science and how ingredients work with each other.
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