About Us

I founded The Hopping Bakery (as Flourish was original named) early in 2018, but my love for the sweeter side of life goes back way further than that.

I’m a born and bred cake lover. Sponge cake, cheesecake, fruit cake. Flapjacks, shortbread, scones. You name it, I want to eat it. Growing up, I was lucky enough to have a mum that was a great home baker, with the delicious smells and tastes that regularly came from our kitchen making me very popular with friends. I’d like to think they simply enjoyed my company, but I’m not too proud to admit that there might have been another reason for them inviting themselves round. In any case, it has always made me associate baking with feeling at home, comforted, and bringing people together. There’s no better feeling than that, right?

From then on, I’ve always loved recreating the same sensations through my own baking.

About Us

Let’s talk brownies

Despite being an all-round cake lover, brownies are in a completely different league to me. The premiership of the cake world. There’s just something so special about that rich, gooey slice of chocolatey wonder that I’ve never experienced with any other food. Not to mention that they’re so versatile, and are so often the solution to many life problems. See examples below:

Quick sweet treat on the go? Brownie.
Or as part of a dessert to impress guests? Brownie.
Want to tell someone you love them? Brownie.
Or to tell them you’re sorry? Brownie.
Breakfast, lunch, dinner? Brownie, brownie, brownie.
Had too much chocolate? Eat some fruit… Just kidding, cue the blondie!

The quest for the gooiest brownie

Anyway, my unconditional and undying love for brownies understandably made me gravitate towards them whenever I opened my baking drawer. Perfecting my flagship Triple Chocolate Brownie was a massive moment for me, and when I won the University of Sussex’s ‘Best Slice’ contest for my Chocolate Orange Brownies, it really hit home that I could make a bloody good brownie that other people love too.

Whenever I got a hankering for a flavour of brownie that I hadn’t seen anywhere else, my creativity took off and I found myself experimenting with different combinations that were almost always a hit. (My quest to create the gooiest brownie has resulted in many pools of molten chocolate as opposed to a stable, handheld brownie. I see no issue in this but I don’t reckon it’ll travel well.)

What next?

And here's where my passion for baking really took off.

Any free time I had I was either baking or thinking about my next creation. I ate (literally), slept and breathed cake. The obsession spiralled so much that I had to make friends take my bakes into work so that they could be eaten by someone other than me- baking brownies may be a skill of mine but self-restraint isn’t! It was only when I had so many people say “Wow, these are so good. I’d buy them!” that I actually seriously considered turning my passion into a career.

So, fast-forward, here I am! Pursuing a lifelong love: bringing the comfort of cake to whoever I can in the hopes that I can brighten up someone’s day in the way that brownies do with mine
everyday.

If you’ve got this far, well done! Have a brownie as your reward.

Jessica