l Shopfitting and interiors

Who can possibly find pleasure in sitting down to write a market report on such an article as sugar, four or five days after the so-called Prosperity Egg has been hatched in America, and we still have to see what will result? Can we look for a cooing dove that means nothing, or a hen which will later be able to help others as well as Uncle Sam?

UK cake maker Michelle Wibowo last week scooped a gong for Britain at the Patisserie Showpiece section of the International Culinary Olympics, with a lifesize dog-shaped sugar sculpture. We were equally impressed (and slightly disturbed) by this sped-up video of her making a life-like baby cake. tinyurl.com/6gvf5k

In these body-conscious, image-obsessed times, it's good to get some cosmetic tips from a nutritional guru who was convinced that beauty came from within a whole century before "Dr" Gillian McKeith.

"We still think the sandwich will be recorded in the Guinness Book of Records because of all the evidence and footage that we will send them"

Bromley cabbie James Edwards has made a startling revelation that sheds some light on the high-fiving world of ad agency marketeers.

Encouraging consumers to eat five portions of fruit and veg a day is a big part of the food industry, writes Wayne Caddy. For consumers, the five-a-day concept makes sense and is easy to understand. Given this, can the baker target incremental sales with products specifically designed for achieving one of your five-a-day?

Potatoes are a very popular vegetable in Europe and were first cultivated by the Incas, in Peru, 6,000 years ago. They were brought to Europe by the Spanish Conquistadors to impress Royalty in around 1570.

l Baking Industry Awards

March 3, 1933: catchphrase competition

This week's "Can't blame them for trying" award goes to The Really Sensible Trading Company, which has predicted nothing short of a revolution in the world of cafetières.

How do you transform obese folk into "ordinary" people? It's obvious, duh! Make them run a half marathon every day. If only Dr Allinson had made his suggestion more forcefully a century ago...

"She knows she has messed up bad"

In a recent BB we slavered over the wonders of authentic Neapolitan pizza. Well, the pizzas from Naples may be a delight, but the city's bread will slowly kill you.

An American newspaper is qualifying for a monument from the housewives of the world. It has discovered, or calculated, that, in the course of a year, the average mother of four or five children makes the 'equivalent' of 1,095 loaves of bread... 50 cakes and 750 pies. She also prepares meat which, if assembled, would make one or two cows and about six pigs, peels 5,100 potatoes, makes 1,200 beds and dusts on average 7,500 chairs every twelve-month. This sort of stuff makes one hungry for statistics. Cannot some baker come up with some intensely human story of the number of times a year his nose begins to itch as soon as he plunges his hand into the dough? If the trade should ever decide to answer its plague of critics, a wagon-load of distressing statistics of this kind would make the public weep oceans of tears. Really, bakers are a most unenterprising lot of fellows.

News agency AFP has reported that thousands of copies of a Swedish food magazine have had to be recalled, after it inadvertently poisoned some of its readers who followed one of its apple cake recipes.

Since autumn started in August this year, what better time to hear Dr Allinson's reflections on how gloomy weather makes one, well, gloomy.

A piece of very old cake has been sold at auction for a whopping £1,000; though admittedly, the item in question was actually an 8 x 9-inch slice from Charles & Diana's 1981 Royal Wedding cake.

"I'm only baking in a glorified wooden shed. Surely this is not running a business. We have had to stop baking cakes to sell and the council are even quibbling over our tables in the garden on planning grounds." - Civilian Diane Tovey falls foul of North-East Lincolnshire council regs after baking and selling cakes for the RNLI in her garden "Just as Disney's 'High School Musical 3: Senior Year' delivers kids joy and fun mom can feel good about, Sara Lee Soft & Smooth breads give kids the taste they want with the wholegrain nutrition that satisfies parents." - Tim Zimmer, vice-president, Sara Lee Fresh Bakery, strains to link the firm's products with the Disney film, following a marketing tie-in in the US "I have lived on Marmite sandwiches, nothing more, for the last 25 years and am dedicated to the art form that is Marmite sandwich-making. Every sandwich I make is created with love, care and attention to detail." - George Lambert, reported by the Press Association to have built a 12ft stack of Marmite sandwiches in a record-breaking attempt

Coffee shops and cafés are playing a "notable" role in the longer-term trend among consumers for frequent eating out of home, according to new research by Allegra Strategies.

Tom Herbert is a fifth-generation baker and director of Hobbs House Bakery, a multi-award-winning craft bakery based in south Gloucestershire

There are many varieties of plum available. Some are sweet and are suitable as dessert fruits and others are tart and can be made into jams or chutneys. Either type can be used for baking. There is a variety of skin colours from green and yellow to dark red and purple.

by bakery consultant Wayne Caddy

20 January, 1933: Bridget Jones wanted

Following a busy and stressful week, there are some jobs you think, you'd love to do - something untaxing that involves getting away from the rat race. Shooting to the top of that aspirational list is 'spokesperson for Starbucks'. When BB tried to check up on reports that the firm had posted its first loss for 15 years, Starbucks' press officer was not budging from her seat on the fence. "I can't be quoted as either confirming or denying it," she said. Nice work if you can get it.

We hark back to time immemorial, when Scotland was still a paragon of healthy eating, courtesy of our resident nutrition expert Dr Allinson (deceased).

Keeping an eye out for bakery coverage in the national press involves a depressing wade through half-baked (sorry!) bakery puns. We sometimes fail to resist the temptation to rise to the occasion ourselves (sorry again!). So the time has come to regularly monitor, name and shame the worst offenders here in Stop the Week.

Cupcake Magic

September 4, 1925: a bone to pick

The Trapdoor Toaster

A time long before our corrupted kids took to the streets armed with blades and economy lager (back in Victorian times they preferred catapults and pennyworths of gin), our esteemed doctor had these words of advice for child-rearers. However, BB will not be held responsible for the consequences of freezing your kids...

Here's a great candidate for our regular shop design feature Interior Motives. One café in a strife-ridden suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, has been decked out like a military post. Patrons at Buns and Guns can enjoy scoffing 'Terrorist Bread' to the sounds of gunfire, blasted over the speakers. Other delights on the menu include 'rocket-propelled grenade' (chicken on a skewer), which you can eat surrounded by replica weapons and camouflage netting, reports the BBC.

Whose fruity smile was used to beguile? Who learned the ropes promoting soaps? Yes it's the gorgeous, glamorous Sara Reid of Rank Hovis - advertising Pears soap in 1972, aged 31/2.

We're not sure what the doctor was getting at when he suggested eating this meal for "good staying power".

This little curio popped into our inbox tagged with the eyebrow raising heading: "Belcolade's chocolate Manneken Pis jets in for 20 Years of Passion celebrations", accompanied by a snap of a nude child made of chocolate.

Wednesday morning is my favourite morning of the week, not because I get up at 3am, but because, an hour later, I find myself at Billingsgate fish market, right in the hustle and bustle of one of the oldest fish markets in Europe, writes Adam Gilbert.