Mixing cheese and romance is not normally a recipe for true love but for the owners of The Cheesery in Dundee, it’s a marriage made in heaven.
Hilary and Steve Barney, who together run The Cheesery in Dundee and Broughty Ferry, started selling Cheese Towers to couples as an alternative to traditional wedding cake when they took over the shop in 2016.
Instead of the usual sponge and icing affair, the layers are made up of tiers of cheese such as brie, camembert and stilton.
They now sell around 20 of the quirky cheese cakes a year – they even had one at their own wedding.
“They look stunning and they are a real focal point at weddings,” says Hilary. “It’s a fairly cost effective way of providing food for the evening when you break down cost per head.
“Plus, who doesn’t love cheese?”
Couples can come along to the shop to taste their offering and decide which kind they want to include in their cheese tower.
“It’s such a nice thing to do as a couple,” says Hilary.
“With the best will in the world, not all the guys are going to be like ‘yay, flowers!’.
“Going along to taste the cheeses is like a date.”
And at the wedding itself, the cheese goes down a treat.
“At that time of night when guests are having a glass of wine, people might prefer to opt for cheese instead of the sweet cake,” says Hilary.
Are The Cheesery Dundee’s cheese towers that Gouda deal?
While the price for the cheese towers on The Cheesery’s website can range between £120 and £230, the cheese tower we photographed is worth £345.
Though this seems like a lot of money for cheese, the average wedding cake in the UK can cost between £200 and £700, depending on the number of layers.
“If you break it down, it can work out at £1.50/2.00 per person,” says Hilary.
“The harder cheeses are fine to freeze as well.
“It’s great to cook with them afterwards if there’s cheese leftover. We made a lot of cheese sauce after our wedding,” she laughs.
Cheeses in The Cheesery’s cheese tower:
- Blackmount
- Camembert
- Cornish Yarg
- Gubbeen
- Hebridean Blue
- Alpine Kaltbach
There are also ways to lower the cost, by cutting out sections of the cheese – reducing the weight – and adding in fruit or flowers in these areas.
“It can be cut so there’s gaps,” explains Hilary, “some people decorate it really simply with flowers but it can appear really elaborate.
“You can go as bold with it or as simple with it as you like.”
Cheese towers bode well for a happy marriage
Steve and Hilary of The Cheesery, Dundee, have always had a love of food.
When they lived in London, the pair ran a food truck together. When they moved to Dundee, they knew they wanted to continue their love affair with food.
“We thought about opening up a café or a restaurant, but didn’t like the idea of that,” says Hilary.
“Someone would be in the back making things, and the other would be at the front.
“We didn’t want to have to work Friday, Saturday and Sunday and not see each other.”
“But sometimes I will come to Steve with a [work-related] idea and he will say: ‘can you speak to me in business hours?'” she laughs.
“I’d say that working together has improved over the years.
“It’s nice that we can bounce ideas off each other.
“And we have that shared passion and vision for where we want things to go.”
Conversation