Cake is something that’s kept many of us going during lockdown – both the eating and the baking (who hasn’t made banana bread in the last 12 months?).

But for one businessman it’s proved a new lifeline as we emerge on the other side of the restrictions. Ben Hutton, owner of Queen’s pub on Churchgate Street in Bury St Edmunds, was forced to close his award-winning farm to fork restaurant, Ben’s, at the height of lockdown. While it was used as a farm shop for a spell it’s now set to become an intimate event and private dining venue, with the menu at Queen’s altered to include some of those Ben’s favourites.

“We’re bringing over the Ben’s concept to Queen’s,” explains Ben. “We’ll use a lot more of our own produce from our smallholding, and Suffolk produce from smaller suppliers. But there will still be nice burgers and food challenges. We’re working on those at the moment. We did this as a trial last year and found because there was more variety people came in more frequently. The teams worked really well together so we thought we might as well put all our eggs in one basket.”

In the meantime, a new opportunity sprung forth in the form of Crumbs – the pub’s sweet little sister business, which is already gaining quite a bit of attention in the town.

“We’ve always made loaded cheesecakes,” says Ben, “but since lockdown we’ve pushed them for celebrations and special occasions, and we’ve had so many repeat orders we found we were making them all the time. So we wanted to break off and have this other little business purely making cheesecakes..plus our new cookie pies and treat boxes.”

Look away if you’re on a diet, because these bakes mean serious business. We’re talking individual loaded cheesecakes topped with all the chocolates under the sun, 11inch stuffed cookie pies, and parcels of cookie slices, cookie cups and mini cheesecakes.

“We do everything. One loaded with Oreos. Another with Reese’s Pieces. Basically any chocolates we can get our hands on. If we’re making a caramel cheesecake we’ll have caramel buttons, Cadbury’s Caramel, Caramac, Twix.”

East Anglian Daily Times: A stuffed cookie pie from Crumbs, Bury St EdmundsA stuffed cookie pie from Crumbs, Bury St Edmunds (Image: Crumbs)

All flavours of the goodies change weekly and can be found and ordered on the Queen’s website up until Friday for collection from the pub on a Saturday or Sunday. This week’s menu includes a Kinder Awesome cheesecake with chocolate ganache, MIlky Way, Bueno, Happy Hippos and Kinder Surprise, and the Oreo Overload cookie, stuffed with cookies and cream spread and Oreos, and topped with Milky Bar cookies and cream chocolate, and more Oreos.

Three tiered cheesecake wedding cakes look like they’re becoming a speciality too. “We’ve already had some booked in for summer,” says Ben, “we haven’t seen those anywhere else.”