Auchtermuchty Cake Company, the Fife-based gluten-free bakery, has secured its first retail listing with Selfridges.

The luxury department store is stocking 600g sections of the supplier’s Great Taste Awards 3 Star-winning Creole Fruitcake at its Oxford Street branch for £11.99 each.

The initial deal lasts until the middle of spring but founder Catherine Baker hopes it will be extended. In the meantime, she will start selling with online independent grocery marketplace Yumbles and has begun trading with Scottish food box delivery company Fresh Food Express.

Baker said: “They [Selfridges] are really our first retail clients as the business is just over a year old and we started out selling in markets in Fife.”

The company started in the summer of 2014 when Baker was unable to find a really good gluten-free fruitcake on the market. She puts great emphasis on the quality of her ingredients, sourcing as much organic and local produce as possible, and said that 60-65% of her customers were non-coeliac.

She said: “There isn’t a great deal of good fruitcake out there, gluten-free or not.
“At the end of the day you have to have a good recipe but you have to have good ingredients too.”

Auchermuchty also makes a Florentine fruitcake with a cherry, nut and caramel topping, brownies and clootie dumplings and Baker is looking to launch both a chocolate fruitcake and a lighter, alcohol-free, lemon-flavoured cake in the new year.