Rachel Leigh Bakes – The Old high street

Rachel Leigh, mother of four, nurse, baker, gets up at 4.30am to make her cinnamon buns.  That’s dedication.  They are worth every, sugary, cinnamony mouthful.  Rachel started out on Folkestone’s Harbour Arm market and her business grew into a hut during the Christmas Festive Markets.  Now she has her own shop on The Old High Street where you’ll meet Heather and Rachel, hard at work.  Folkelife went there to witness baking heaven.

“I have been working as a nurse in the NHS since 2013.  I’m still registered but I think I’m going to let that go next year.  I worked until 2022, and yes, that means working through the pandemic where I was in ICU.  That was tough.  There’s a group of us who worked together and when you’ve experienced that, there’s a special bond between us.  I really struggled with my mental health around that time and had some counselling.  My counselor asked me what I enjoyed doing and it’s baking… so I started to bake.  I left my permanent job in the NHS and just did some agency work for a while, and the rest of the time I baked. 

folkestone harbour

“During the spring and summer of 2022 my husband Matt encouraged me to apply to have a stall at Folkestone Harbour.  They had the marketplace on the station platform at the time.  I’d pile the table high each weekend, and each weekend worry, and each weekend I’d sell out.  The kids would help, and I couldn’t have done it without Matt.  Then I applied for a hut for the Festive Marketplace and did that for two Christmas’s.  Cooking everything at home was becoming an issue though.  Matt would come in to make a cup of tea and I’d shoo him away ‘you can’t come in here!’.  I wanted to get my kitchen back, and so did the rest of the family.”

creative quarter

“I was planning my next move after the Festive Market of 2023 and thought I’d apply for a place in the Creative Quarter.  I’d heard that places take ages to come up so I wasn’t in a hurry and that was fine for me.  Then this place came up in the April, and we needed to get in and turn it around to be open by May.  So the relaxed thought of ‘it will take time’ went out of the window!”

Baked to perfection

“Luckily my husband is an electrician, and he has friends who are plumbers etc so we were able to get it all done, and open.  Now I find myself getting up at 4.30am on a Saturday to bake the cinnamon buns.  Each weekend I make 60 a day and they go within hours.  People come in to buy and freeze them.

“The feedback from customers has been brilliant. It’s all too easy for us to worry that we’re not good enough, yet each day I have been doing well and seeing bakes just racing off the shelf. I’ve signed a two year lease here and then we’ll see what happens.  I’ve also taken a day off, Monday, but am in here baking again from Tuesday.  We close early though so I get to go home and spend the afternoon and evening with the kids. 

“I find I need to have a job to go to, in order to come home and be the best mum I can be. Being a nurse, it’s a mentally challenging job, and always on the ball.  I need that stimulation.  The baking is a constant at the moment, and I’m enjoying myself.  The recipes are my take on things I’ve seen others make.  I am constantly tweaking and refining the recipes so that they’re honestly mine.”

size matters

“Also, if people are going to make a special effort to come to the shop, I want it to be worth it.  You won’t find any small slices here!  I’m serving a decent portion so you know you’ve got your money’s worth!  You don’t have to eat it all at once.

“When I started out some people did suggest I buy in some croissants and cook them from frozen.  But I want everything to be authentically me.  I could never do that, just serve something that I hadn’t created myself.  We’ve got some savoury items here now, I don’t know if you can smell the cheese scones?  And I can now present the layer cakes which was difficult to do on the stall, I just didn’t have the space.  So I’m adding to my list of what’s on offer. 

“What I find exciting is that this is my own business that I’ve created myself.  All I need is to keep enjoying what I do, and have everyone enjoy what I make.  There will be new recipes and seasonal goodies, and I’m looking forward to getting comfortable here.”