Last year saw the Tour De France passing through Yorkshire and cycling fever ran riot. We’re nothing if not proud of our home county of North Yorkshire, so we’re very excited that the cycle race is returning again this year as the Tour de Yorkshire, even more so that a number of our shops and even our bakery will see the Tour passing by their front doors. Check out the route that the cyclists will be taking on the Biking Yorkshire site created by Blue Chip Holidays, and make sure you click onto Stage 3 and Helmsley to spot us making a little feature in the fact box! If anyone can name all the towns and villages that the tour will head through that are home to one of our Thomas the Baker stores, we’ll be very impressed! Have a look at our store list here for a few hints. In celebration of the event, we’ve put our best icers…

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  Phew, we just keep getting busier and busier over here at Thomas the Baker! Well, it’s to be expected in the run up to Halloween and Christmas – did you know that by the time you’re just starting to think about Christmas around now, we’ve already got your Christmas puddings and cakes in production? Anyway, spot that lovely lady in above? That’s my sister Beth, according to the press release that’s gone out to the news this week, the “smart cookie” who is the brains behind the business (no one told me!). She’s been hard at work in the Confectionary department of the bakery recently helping to develop a few new products especially for her favourite time of year, Halloween, including these four handcrafted designs on shortbread biscuits that we’re calling “Spcookies”! The four ghoulish designs are a mummified monster, spooky skull, petrifying pumpkin and a Munster. But they’re not all we’re throwing into the ring for Halloween…after we…

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We’ve been so busy over at Thomas the Baker, creating new products while still keeping the old favourites just as good as ever, that we haven’t had much time to keep up with this blog! Nevertheless, we’ve got a new product hot on the shelves at the moment that we just had to share you with you while it’s still brand new: the Helmsley Plum Loaf. I was lucky enough to be able to sample this while it was still in production a couple of months ago and was definitely taken aback by it. While in the past I’ve never been a big fan of sweet loaves, apparently I am now, particularly with this plum bread! I’ve found it’s perfect to have as a snack any of time of the day, but my favourite ways to have it are as a tasty breakfast instead of a piece of buttered toast, or after a meal when you’re wanting something sweet but…

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As you might know, the voice behind this blog is Simon Thomas’ daughter, Sian – while I don’t currently work in the family business (I spent my school holidays doing that and wanting to eat everything!), I do help out with the blog and social media. But my day to day job is at a Digital Marketing Agency in Ripon, Bronco. Today is Christmas Jumper Day with Save the Children UK (#ChristmasJumperDay) so we decided that we would team up to our bit to support the charity. Everyone at Bronco turned up to work today in various styles of Christmas jumpers (take a look here for some close ups and to read more about it!) and Thomas the Baker donated a few of our favourite Christmas treats in order to help raise some money for the charity – Mince Pies, Tipsy Imps and Christmas Truffles. Many people in the office donated a few pounds to get some tasty treats, and Hannah…

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We always have an especially busy run in the weeks before Christmas here at Thomas the Baker, and this year has been no different to usual. Alongside our old favourite Christmas products that fly off the shelves like the Mince Pies, Tipsy Imps and Truffles, this year we’ve added a few new hampers packed full with yummy Thomas the Baker festive goodies to our range. The Hampers range from the smallest which is priced at a very reasonable £16.50 up to a large one stuffed with every Christmas taste you can imagine at £75, with a few sizes in between. They are available to buy in our online store where you can get them delivered to your home for only £7 (no matter how many you order to that address, the delivery cost will always be £7!); you can pop into one of our stores and order one directly from there; or you can visit our own Helmsley Delicatessen and Butchers,…

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We’ve got an exciting competition going on in our stores at the moment, giving our customers a chance to win one of hundreds of gingerbread persons that we’re giving away every single day as well as the grand prize, the brand new Kindle Fire HD 6! Unfortunately the giveaway isn’t open to our online customers, but all you need to do is visit any Thomas the Baker store (find your nearest one here) and purchase a pack of Halloween Novelty Biscuits, both the Spooky Bats and the Ghosts. Make sure you check the card inside the packaging as it will tell you whether you’re a lucky winner of a free Gingerbread Person, or even the finder of a Golden Ticket, meaning you’ve won the grand prize of a Kindle Fire HD 6. The gingerbread person can be redeemed there and then in the shop for you to enjoy! We’re also now on Twitter, so make sure to follow along with us on…

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We’ve recently been working on a couple of new recipes at Thomas the Baker that I’m especially excited about and have just released into the shops: a Triple Chocolate Cake and a Sticky Toffee Pudding. The Triple Chocolate Cake, as seen in the above picture, is a rich chocolate sponge cake containing dark Belgian chocolate chunks and topped with Belgian milk chocolate chips (these are my personal favourite ingredient in the bakery!); a generous slice of this is perfect with a cup of tea in the afternoon. It is available for only £2 in our shops. The Sticky Toffee Pudding is a super indulgent dessert; a luscious toffee pudding made with butter, dates and golden syrup, topped with lashings of our homemade sticky toffee sauce. This can be heated up in the microwave or in the oven following the instructions on the label for a taste of luxury in the evenings with a scoop of proper vanilla ice cream or…

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We’ve been away for a little while on holiday, but we’re back and raring to go with an exciting event at our main York branch of Thomas the Baker, our Market Street store: a fantastic Open Day with the opportunity to get involved in various activities and try out a few samples of our favourite foods. As you can see above, we’ve recently installed a couple of new “Bakers” in our window which have been drawing plenty of attention. A competition to name the new Bakers and their mouse in the window which will be 50p per entry with all proceeds going to the Help for Heroes charity. The prizes for the chosen names at the end of the day will be a £50 Thomas the Baker hamper for each baker, and a £25 hamper for naming the mouse. Free samples will be available throughout the day. There will be free balloons and biscuits for children. “Gingy”, our lifesize Gingerbread…

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We chose the lucky winner to our competition over the weekend, so congratulations! But don’t worry if you weren’t lucky enough last time, because you’ve still got 5 more chances to win that box of 6 Artisan Bread Loaves, including 2 San Francisco Sour Doughs, 2 Brown Seeded Loaves and 2 Pain de Campagnes. Unfortunately last time there were some entries we had to disqualify for not playing by the rules: in order to enter, you must be subscribed to the blog via email (it’s easy to sign up by typing your email address into the box in the sidebar), otherwise none of your entries will count. So simply follow the instructions below, and good luck! a Rafflecopter giveaway

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We’re back again featuring our Artisan bread range, and this time it’s with something more exciting than just a description of it – this time, you can get the opportunity to win a box of 6 loaves all for yourself, all at the click of a button! We wanted to be pretty generous and make sure that as many people as possible get a taste of our breads and spread the word about them, so we are offering 6 lucky winners the chance to win a box of 6 loaves each week for 6 weeks! That means that there are 36 loaves up for grabs to 6 people. As a reminder, the Artisan Bread Box that you’ll be up with a chance of winning is available to buy on our website here and includes 6 spectacular loaves: 2 San Francisco Sour Doughs, 2 Pain de Campagnes, and 2 Brown Seeded Loaves. For the next 6 weeks, we’ll be posting one competition each week here on…

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