Carleton Cakes is a producer that knows a thing or two about modernising Christmas staples.
Farmer Wilfred and his wife and home economics teacher, Doreen set up Carleton Cakes as a retail bakery in 1994, something they had always wanted to do.
“They’d always wanted to go into business and over the years, they started supplying some of the local supermarkets,” says their son Dylan, who entered the business in 2011. “Around the turn of the 2000s, Wilfred and Doreen decided to to get out of the retail and just go wholesale.
“It was a big risk but since then, we’ve gone from strength to strength. We supply Irish retailers and coffee shops in the UK and right across Europe, and employ 150 staff. We’re small batch production, so instead of having an automated production line where you pull ingredients in one end and it comes out fully packed with hardly any hands on it, we are very labour intensive. We rely a lot on our staff and everything is handmade.”
As opposed to being overly processed, sticking to their roots as a home bakery has allowed Carleton Cakes “to be really flexible”, Dylan explains. It also has helped them with their partnership with Simply Better and “to stand by their ethos of the finest ingredients”, he adds.
Gearing up for Christmas, Carleton Cakes are making five products for Simply Better this year: the Simply Better Christmas Cake Slices that they have been making since 2019 – Simply Better Handmade Panforte Slices, a spiced Italian fruit cake and Simply Better Hand Decorated 8 Mini Fruit Cakes’ – two products that they launched in 2024.
Adding to the range
To add to that range, Carleton Cakes have added two brownie versions this year, jumping on one of the biggest dessert trends of 2025.
“One is an orange-flavoured brownie that combines rich chocolate with a zesty citrus twist. The other is a Dubai chocolate -inspired pistachio brownie,” says Dylan.
“What we tend to find is, when you talk about Christmas in general, you
have traditional Christmas cakes and spiced fruit, but there’s a huge portion of the population that just don’t eat fruit cake.
“We always wanted to offer something different. So the brownie we’re using is based on the one that we do all year round for Simply Better. It’s a fantastically popular brownie, and we’re adding a modern twist to it.
Seery’s Bakery supply Christmas puddings for Simply Better, including Neven Maguire’s special Christmas pudding recipe. \ Tom Clarke
“If you think of a traditional chocolate combination, it is chocolate orange. But then obviously there’s the latest trend with pistachio and you’d be foolish not to do it. It compliments the brownie very well.”
All the products are made in Carleton Cake’s facility on the Cavan/Monaghan border, which they moved into in 2020. Their ingredients are sourced “as locally as we can”, Dylan says, using Irish butter, Irish free range eggs and whiskey from west Cork for the fruitcake.
“It’s just real honest home baking,” he reflects. “Simply Better really value products that are authentic and real and similar to what you could make at home.”
Seery’s Bakery
Producers Seery’s Bakery and Carleton Cakes have plenty in common. Both bakeries were started by home economics teachers, women who turned their love for baking into local businesses, and now, the two brands supply nationwide as part of the Simply Better range.
The seed for Seery’s Bakery was planted back in 1989 by Philo and Oliver Seery. What started out as Philo baking and selling a few bits to her friends and neighbours in Carlow grew into a small bakery where she sold fruitcakes.
“These would have been old recipes passed down from her own mother,” says Brian Seery, who represents the second generation of the bakery which he manages alongside his wife, Lorraine. When Brian first joined the business, he describes his remit as “how to grow the product range.”
“Up until then, it was all fruit-based products which were fantastic for a certain market, but it wasn’t really a younger person’s type products. My remit was to try and modernise the range but also grow the business from an export point of view. Now, roughly 50% of our business is export and we’re producing somewhere between five and six million cakes per annum. It’s been quite a journey over the last 30-something years.”
Brian and Lorraine of Seery's Bakery. \ Tom Clarke
One of the shifts in that journey occurred nearly 20 years ago – in 2007, when Seery’s Bakery began trading with Simply Better. “We’ve supplied them in some shape or form every year since,” Brian reflects.
On the shelves this Christmas, you can find the Simply Better 6 Month Matured Pudding which hasn’t changed from day one (it’s “something that works” quips Brian) alongside a Simply Better 18 Month Matured Christmas Pudding. There are also three alcohol infused offerings: Simply Better Coole Swan Christmas Pudding Crown, Simply Better Irish Whiskey Christmas Pudding, Simply Better Hennessy ® Cognac Christmas Pudding.
What’s it been like expanding the range? “We look closely at the trends, particularly over the water, and what the celebrity chefs are bringing out,” says Brian. “What was massive for the Christmas pudding category back in 2011 was Heston Blumenthal sticking an orange in the middle of a pudding, and it revitalised what would have been considered like a dying category.
“Fundamentally the basics of a Christmas pudding are a little bit like the foundations in a house. There are certain things that you need. Dried fruit, breadcrumbs, wet ingredients. There are additions like nuts and cherries.”
Simply Better has been “receptive” to what Brian describes as “fun innovations” about pudding centres and tops. “One of the things that Simply Better really want to do is stay ahead of the market. I think they’ve done that quite well.”
This year, Seery’s Bakery has been entrusted with Neven Maguire’s cherished Christmas pudding recipe. “It’s a real endorsement. For us to be able to take Neven’s recipe and turn it into our own but not lose any of the authenticity around it, that’s quite important.
“It’s a very traditional style based on an old recipe. There are no bells and whistles really,” says Lorraine. “It’s what we call an honest-to-God Christmas pudding,” adds Brian. “It’s just on a bigger scale, but it is replicating what is done in family kitchens around the country.”
Having steamed and prepared millions of puddings, Brian and Lorraine know that making one yourself is a task that can get out of hand and become stressful. “Every January and February, without fail, we get a letter from customers around the country who decided to buy the pudding because they’re under pressure and they thought: I’m going to outsource this particular one,” says Brian. “They’ve wrapped it up in tinfoil and pawned it off as their own.
“They say, ‘why would I go out and spend all that money, time and effort and then it doesn’t go right?’ We know yours is a safe bet,” Lorraine continues. “I’ve had people saying to me ‘it’s as good as what my grandmother used to make’, and it gives them that nostalgia as well, which is lovely.” Well, isn’t that just about the highest compliment a producer could receive?
Scan the QR code to shop Neven Maguire’s Christmas Pudding
Carleton Cakes is a producer that knows a thing or two about modernising Christmas staples.
Farmer Wilfred and his wife and home economics teacher, Doreen set up Carleton Cakes as a retail bakery in 1994, something they had always wanted to do.
“They’d always wanted to go into business and over the years, they started supplying some of the local supermarkets,” says their son Dylan, who entered the business in 2011. “Around the turn of the 2000s, Wilfred and Doreen decided to to get out of the retail and just go wholesale.
“It was a big risk but since then, we’ve gone from strength to strength. We supply Irish retailers and coffee shops in the UK and right across Europe, and employ 150 staff. We’re small batch production, so instead of having an automated production line where you pull ingredients in one end and it comes out fully packed with hardly any hands on it, we are very labour intensive. We rely a lot on our staff and everything is handmade.”
As opposed to being overly processed, sticking to their roots as a home bakery has allowed Carleton Cakes “to be really flexible”, Dylan explains. It also has helped them with their partnership with Simply Better and “to stand by their ethos of the finest ingredients”, he adds.
Gearing up for Christmas, Carleton Cakes are making five products for Simply Better this year: the Simply Better Christmas Cake Slices that they have been making since 2019 – Simply Better Handmade Panforte Slices, a spiced Italian fruit cake and Simply Better Hand Decorated 8 Mini Fruit Cakes’ – two products that they launched in 2024.
Adding to the range
To add to that range, Carleton Cakes have added two brownie versions this year, jumping on one of the biggest dessert trends of 2025.
“One is an orange-flavoured brownie that combines rich chocolate with a zesty citrus twist. The other is a Dubai chocolate -inspired pistachio brownie,” says Dylan.
“What we tend to find is, when you talk about Christmas in general, you
have traditional Christmas cakes and spiced fruit, but there’s a huge portion of the population that just don’t eat fruit cake.
“We always wanted to offer something different. So the brownie we’re using is based on the one that we do all year round for Simply Better. It’s a fantastically popular brownie, and we’re adding a modern twist to it.
Seery’s Bakery supply Christmas puddings for Simply Better, including Neven Maguire’s special Christmas pudding recipe. \ Tom Clarke
“If you think of a traditional chocolate combination, it is chocolate orange. But then obviously there’s the latest trend with pistachio and you’d be foolish not to do it. It compliments the brownie very well.”
All the products are made in Carleton Cake’s facility on the Cavan/Monaghan border, which they moved into in 2020. Their ingredients are sourced “as locally as we can”, Dylan says, using Irish butter, Irish free range eggs and whiskey from west Cork for the fruitcake.
“It’s just real honest home baking,” he reflects. “Simply Better really value products that are authentic and real and similar to what you could make at home.”
Seery’s Bakery
Producers Seery’s Bakery and Carleton Cakes have plenty in common. Both bakeries were started by home economics teachers, women who turned their love for baking into local businesses, and now, the two brands supply nationwide as part of the Simply Better range.
The seed for Seery’s Bakery was planted back in 1989 by Philo and Oliver Seery. What started out as Philo baking and selling a few bits to her friends and neighbours in Carlow grew into a small bakery where she sold fruitcakes.
“These would have been old recipes passed down from her own mother,” says Brian Seery, who represents the second generation of the bakery which he manages alongside his wife, Lorraine. When Brian first joined the business, he describes his remit as “how to grow the product range.”
“Up until then, it was all fruit-based products which were fantastic for a certain market, but it wasn’t really a younger person’s type products. My remit was to try and modernise the range but also grow the business from an export point of view. Now, roughly 50% of our business is export and we’re producing somewhere between five and six million cakes per annum. It’s been quite a journey over the last 30-something years.”
Brian and Lorraine of Seery's Bakery. \ Tom Clarke
One of the shifts in that journey occurred nearly 20 years ago – in 2007, when Seery’s Bakery began trading with Simply Better. “We’ve supplied them in some shape or form every year since,” Brian reflects.
On the shelves this Christmas, you can find the Simply Better 6 Month Matured Pudding which hasn’t changed from day one (it’s “something that works” quips Brian) alongside a Simply Better 18 Month Matured Christmas Pudding. There are also three alcohol infused offerings: Simply Better Coole Swan Christmas Pudding Crown, Simply Better Irish Whiskey Christmas Pudding, Simply Better Hennessy ® Cognac Christmas Pudding.
What’s it been like expanding the range? “We look closely at the trends, particularly over the water, and what the celebrity chefs are bringing out,” says Brian. “What was massive for the Christmas pudding category back in 2011 was Heston Blumenthal sticking an orange in the middle of a pudding, and it revitalised what would have been considered like a dying category.
“Fundamentally the basics of a Christmas pudding are a little bit like the foundations in a house. There are certain things that you need. Dried fruit, breadcrumbs, wet ingredients. There are additions like nuts and cherries.”
Simply Better has been “receptive” to what Brian describes as “fun innovations” about pudding centres and tops. “One of the things that Simply Better really want to do is stay ahead of the market. I think they’ve done that quite well.”
This year, Seery’s Bakery has been entrusted with Neven Maguire’s cherished Christmas pudding recipe. “It’s a real endorsement. For us to be able to take Neven’s recipe and turn it into our own but not lose any of the authenticity around it, that’s quite important.
“It’s a very traditional style based on an old recipe. There are no bells and whistles really,” says Lorraine. “It’s what we call an honest-to-God Christmas pudding,” adds Brian. “It’s just on a bigger scale, but it is replicating what is done in family kitchens around the country.”
Having steamed and prepared millions of puddings, Brian and Lorraine know that making one yourself is a task that can get out of hand and become stressful. “Every January and February, without fail, we get a letter from customers around the country who decided to buy the pudding because they’re under pressure and they thought: I’m going to outsource this particular one,” says Brian. “They’ve wrapped it up in tinfoil and pawned it off as their own.
“They say, ‘why would I go out and spend all that money, time and effort and then it doesn’t go right?’ We know yours is a safe bet,” Lorraine continues. “I’ve had people saying to me ‘it’s as good as what my grandmother used to make’, and it gives them that nostalgia as well, which is lovely.” Well, isn’t that just about the highest compliment a producer could receive?
Scan the QR code to shop Neven Maguire’s Christmas Pudding
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