Meet the Bettys employee with possibly the best job in the world

Claire Gallagher’s official title is head of food and drink innovation at Bettys. What that means is that if she gets a new idea for a cake or a chocolate egg, she can go into work the next morning and start turning them into a reality. It’s not quite Willy Wonka, but it’s pretty close.

“My background is a pastry chef and chocolatier,” says Claire, who already has one eye on the Bettys range for Christmas 2018. “Both my grandmothers were bakers, but that love of cooking skipped a generation. I rekindled it and got my first job in a kitchen when I was a teenager growing up in Edinburgh.”

Pretty quickly Claire knew she had found her vocation and it was the pastry section where she hit her stride. Working for a succession of high-end restaurants, including Raymond Blanc’s, she began to specialise in afternoon teas.

“I have a great love for small things which are created beautifully and which taste divine,” she says. “Afternoon tea first emerged in the 1800s. Back then people ate their evening meal much later and it was a snack to tide them over. It is a very British tradition, but while many of the original elements have survived in more recent years there has been much more emphasis on finesse.”

Among her many other responsibilities, Claire, who can generally be found in the development room of Bettys Craft Bakery, devised the various elements of Lady Bettys Afternoon Tea from the delicate finger sandwiches to the range of tiny cakes.

“The key for Bettys is to get the balance between the traditional and the experimental,” she says. “People come to us because they know what they are going to get, but we also want to surprise them a little. That can mean the smallest of tweaks like the introduction of lavender flavour into the scones or adding an unusual flavour into our macarons.”

When it comes to launching a new range, Claire takes inspiration from what’s happening in everything from Michelin star restaurants to foodie magazines.

“If Heston Blumenthal is doing it now, you can guarantee that some version of it will be in the supermarkets in five or six years time.

“One of the great things about working at Bettys is the fact that under this one roof we have so many staff with years of knowledge and expertise.

“Unlike Claridge’s, where an afternoon tea comes a few yards from the kitchen to the table, we have boring things like the supply chain to worry about. Our cakes look as good when they arrive at Ilkley or York as they do when they leave the baker in Harrogate.

“That’s a challenge in itself, but it’s one that I love.”