Fatties Bakery: why you should be following Chloe Timms' incredible desserts on Instagram

Victoria Stewart on why you need to take a look at London baker Chloe Timms' Instagram account
Biscoff & salted caramel brownie
Victoria Stewart14 March 2016

Who: Chloe Timms, a 29-year-old sweet maker and entrepreneur based in south London who prides herself on making small batches of salted caramels in the traditional way. She uses fresh cream and dairy, no condensed or evaporated milk, and “caramelises the sugar first to get that real richness and depth. I use a lightly salted organic butter and always Halen Môn salt - nothing else compares for me.”

Number of followers: 9.1k

Tagline: ‘SALTED CARAMEL DREAMS. Made in camberwell, South East London.’

Featured food: Salted caramels are Timms’ speciality but if you’re lucky you’ll also get close-ups of salted caramel brownies, salted peanut butter pretzels, salted caramel marshmallows, salted caramel treacle tart, miso caramel popcorn, dark chocolate caramel cookies.

Tempered chocolate and dipped caramels

Why we should follow her: Because sometimes, just sometimes, you have to drop the self control act and just stare at pictures of gorgeous sweets for minutes on end. Oh, and the fact that Timms sometimes layers her photos using slightly hazy filters all adds to the caramel dreaminess.

Takes pics with: iPhone 6

First post: “I had no idea what Instagram really was at the beginning…. so the first few posts were while I was working at The Meringue Girls kitchen and making sherbets and sweets, and they were all really badly taken, using no filters or hashtags or anything!”

Fatties salted caramel adorning Blutop ice cream sandwich

Most popular post: “It was a chestnut flour brownie with clotted cream and salted caramel - I think it only got really popular because Nigella Lawson liked it, and people saw that and did too. Otherwise anything oozy or with salted caramel in it does well. Sometimes I’ll take lots of pictures of pretty things, which gets lots of likes, but then noone buys them from the market stall because what people actually like to eat is the really bad, gooey stuff.”

Claims to fame: “When Nigella Lawson followed me and asked me to send her some of my salted caramels, I thought it was incredible. She is the queen of salted caramel!”

Best London food Instagrams - in pictures

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Background: Timms graduated in illustration at Camberwell College and worked part-time in a vintage shop before working for six years at a company that did colour forecasting for fashion. She quit her job following a “bad patch, when I had to move back in with my parents. I also went through a funny eating stage, when I wouldn’t eat anything, and I realised that it was just my illness and that I needed to conquer it. It was a time when having a baking blog was the thing, and I thought that doing something similar could be a good way of me feeding myself.”

How Fatties came about: “I’d done a Christmas market and people loved the salted carmels so much. So then I started production on those and the rest is history.” Timms rented some kitchen space from The Meringue Girls on Broadway Market and started making caramels, baked goods, and hard sweets. “The caramels are still a big seller.”

Bocaditos

How it works: Timms wholesales her caramels to various delis and coffee shops in London and hopes to begin wholesaling more of her baked goods once she has finished work on her packaging. “And otherwise I have the stall every Saturday at Druid Street Market in Bermondsey.”

Look out for: “I’m starting to take commissions on birthday things. The dream is a shop with an open kitchen at the back so people can see everything being made - but that will take time. I also made a lemony salted caramel sauce to go with a poached pear cheesecake, which will feature in Elly Curshen’s new cookbook, Fast Days And Feast Days, out on April 4.

Find Fatties Bakery stall from 10am-4pm on Saturdays, Druid Street Market, SE1

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