BestCuppa would like to congratulate Ellie Taylor of Craigavon, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, for winning our very first online competition! We  hope she enjoys tucking into the fantastic Honeybuns goodies that are on the way to her.

For everyone else, there’s 6 new competitions online now for you to enter – there are some amazing prizes. Enter now, and hopefully your name will be listed here next month.

Good luck (and don’t forget to post a review of any cafés you visit)…

The BestCuppa team

BestCuppa are thrilled and excited to be able to offer not one, but SIX fantastic competitions this month. After the massive success of the Honeybuns competition – which doesn’t end until tomorrow night, so there’s still time to enter – the winners of these new comps are in for an amazing treat if they are randomly chosen after the competitions close.

bottlegreen want to help you to celebrate picnic season in a quintessentially English way. One lucky winner will receive an amazing drinks hamper, filled with a selection of bottlegreen’s mouth-watering cordials and sparkling pressés, including unusual flavours such as bottlegreen’s award-winning elderflower and new exotic Mango & Orange. bottlegreen’s drinks contain no artificial flavours, colours or sweeteners making them an ideal family treat to enjoy in the great outdoors this summer.

BestCuppa have also teamed up with the fabulous people at Fudges, the premium biscuit makers, to give one lucky reader the chance to win a hamper of award-winning sweet and savoury biscuits. Whether it’s melt-in-the-mouth Cheddar Wafers or delicate Chocolate Florentines, there is a Fudges biscuit to suit every taste or occasion. The Biscuits for Cheese Selection or Cheddar Topped Cheese Straws are just perfect for dinner parties and for afternoon tea, the Ginger Stem Biscuits, hand-dipped in Belgian dark chocolate, are quite superb. The Fudges bakery dates back to 1926 when Percy Fudge (great grandfather of the current Managing Director Steve Fudge) established his business with the aim of providing outstanding service whilst making award-winning baked goods. Still based in Dorset to this day and building on Percy’s foundations, Fudges carries an extensive range of products, always using only the finest ingredients.

Courtesy of Mighty Leaf Tea you could win a stunning collection of 108 individually-wrapped biodegradable silken tea pouches containing sumptuous blends of whole tea leaves, flowers, herbs, spices and fruit pieces – flavours too big for ordinary teabags.

Shelton’s Coffee are a young company based in East Midlands that aim to satisfy the consumers’ demands for innovative and authentic coffee products. They specialise in supplying new, unique, and innovative coffee. All of their products are 100% Colombian gourmet quality coffee, individually packaged, easy to prepare and enjoyable on the go. Shelton’s are offering a 500g bag, and 2 tins of Chococafe – Roasted coffee beans covered in a smooth layer of chocolate. The bitter high quality coffee bean combined with a layer of sweet chocolate make it a delicious snack for any occasion. Also, the prize includes 1 box of 12 mixed flavours units of Shelton’s Coffee, dissolvable flavoured coffee cubes, Individual foil packaging, 100% natural, without chemical additives, to enjoy on the go. Flavours: Amaretto, Sambuca, brandy, cinnamon, vanilla, lemon and natural.

Aimed specifically at cafe owners/managers, there are two competitions this month just for you!

Keeko Kids specialise in bespoke products that occupy children visiting coffee shops and cafés. Keeko Café colouring boards are wall-mounted and hold an A4 colouring pad. As the pads are perforated at the top, children can cleanly and easily tear-off a sheet to be coloured-in. By entering our competition, you can win a Keeko Coffee/Café colouring wall-board including branding with your café logo! Also included is a generic Keeko colouring pad for the board which can also be branded with your company details! (Additional pad refills and crayons available to purchase as required). Unique and individual, market leaders Keeko offer a simple concept that allows personalised branding and encourages passive play. Keeko have been supplying the food service industry for the past 10 years with a simple innovative product that effectively and efficiently keeps children happy and quiet.

Another great competition for cafes – in association with Detpak, BestCuppa are offering the winner a carton (500 pcs) of Ripple-Wrap™ cups in the Vivo print, in a mix of 8oz and 12oz capacities. Vivo is a print not yet introduced in the UK – meaning the winner will be the first to have them in the UK and indeed Europe. Detpak is an international paper and board food packaging producer whose wide range of high quality products makes it the supplier of choice for many businesses. Detpak was the first to introduce the Ripple-Wrap™ Hot Cup, and has recently debuted a new range of 100% compostable packaging, branded Rebbit™. Other Detpak products include Smooth Double Wall Hot Cups, Food Pails, Lunch Boxes, Retail Bags, Patisserie Boxes and Pail-Paks™. Detpak’s range is available from a network of key suppliers throughout Europe and the United Kingdom.

What are you waiting for – log in to BestCuppa and enter TODAY! And while you are at it, please leave a review of the most recent cafe you’ve visited. Thank you!

Denver Mill in the West Norfolk fens is such a wonderful setting for a coffee shop. It is also a working flour mill producing all its own flour, which is used to produce bread and cakes on the premises. The mill, which was built in 1835, is now run by Mark Abel, his wife Lindsay and their son Paul who is a millwright (the mill is currently being restored and should be in full working order by the end of 2009). The Abel family took over the mill on a five-year lease in June 2008 from Norfolk Historic Buildings Trust (it was given as a gift to the people of Norfolk in 1971).

Denver Mill, Norfolk, UK

The working mill is a wonderful example of preserving Norfolk heritage with a fascinating history. The windmill was joined by a steam-powered mill around 1860 to help with increased flour production. As technology progressed, a Blackstone 45hp oil engine was added in the 1930s to continue flour production, and the windmill was then used as an animal feed mill. This engine is a single cylinder horizontal crank oil engine, designed to run on heavy fuel oil or diesel oil. The engine ran from 1932 until 1969 for six days a week – during the war it ran for seven days a week.

The Blackstone engine

The windmill stopped production in 1941 following a lightning strike and during the Second World War its workshops were used for various engineering projects ranging from church organ repairs to agricultural engineering and also secret government work.

Denver Mill from the carpark

The complex includes the bakery (producing bread and cakes from home-milled flour), a tea room, holiday accommodation in the old Miller’s House and also some craft units. The concept behind the attraction is not to make money but to educate visitors in how a traditional mill operates and to show them the workings and the end product – traditionally baked bread.

The bakery can produce around 100 loaves a day; this is enough to sell to a small loyal band of customers and also to supply the coffee shop.

Tea Room entrance

The Denver Mill tea room uses this fresh bread to produce the most sumptuous freshly made sandwiches. During Winter 2009 the bakery is to be moved into a larger area at Denver to allow more capacity.

BestCuppa asked Mark and Lindsay about their venture.

Why a mill in Norfolk?

We were looking to set up a mill wrighting yard for our son and Denver Mill seemed to offer us a wonderful opportunity to restore the mill and set up a holiday cottage and bakery/coffee shop business as well… it’s taken a year to get it ready to promote and now we think we are ready.

What is the philosophy behind the coffee shop and bakery?

We use fresh local ingredients as much as we can… our cheese and eggs come from Norfolk which is such a wonderfully diverse county for food. We produce artisan bread using our own flour and I think people appreciate more that the food we provide is top quality and produced in the local area… we make bread with pride rather than to meet targets.

Comfy seating area inside tea room

What other projects have you got on at the moment?

We are starting the ‘Upper Crust Bakers Club’, which will provide an exchange of ideas between bakers, farmers and other interested parties about traditional bread and flour. One of the latest ideas to emerge from this is about wholemeal bread (bran and semolina are waste products that would normally go to animal feed). If one can think back, VitBe bread (no longer available) was very high in bran (twice as much bran) and because we produce a great deal of semolina and bran in dressing the grain to produce flour we had an idea that we might provide VitBe type pre-mixes for use in bread machines as people seem to be nostalgic for this type of bread.

Outside seating area

In addition we are running a competition – looking for ideas and recipes to use bran and semolina and have launched a competition called ‘a load of ole squit’ where we ask for recipes and will publish the best ones in a book.

What is the prize for the competition?

The prize for the best recipe will be a weekend break for two at the mill holiday cottages – worth £350. The winners will also take part in our new activity offering called ‘From Plough to Plate’ where they will harvest their own wheat, dress the grain, mill the grain into flour and then bake their own bread to take away.

Courtyard area with outdoor seating

What future plans do you have?

We want to make the mill and the bakery sustainable – we don’t really want it to get too crowded and are not interested in making immense profits but are more interested in getting the message over and educating visitors about windmills and traditional methods of flour milling and baking.

Denver Mill visitor shop

Denver Mill is well worth a visit. It is about 35 minutes from Ely, Cambridgeshire, on Sluice Road just off the A10 towards Kings Lynn. If Mark is there he will happily give you a personal tour of the windmill and the steam and diesel powered mills. You can also get a fabulous sandwich or cake and coffee and it’s not expensive. Highly recommended!