No pork, no lard, no alcohol, no gelatin: what that actually means

We put four words on almost every page of this site: no pork, no lard, no alcohol, no gelatin. It shows up so often that it’s worth explaining exactly what it means in practice, not just as a badge.

Why these four, specifically

These are the four ingredients most likely to quietly exclude someone from a shared dessert table — whether for religious reasons, personal choice, or because a gelatin-set dessert isn’t vegetarian-friendly. Rather than keep a separate "special diet" menu, we simply don’t use any of the four in anything we bake, so every item on the menu works for every guest.

What replaces them

Gelatin is the one people ask about most, since it shows up in mousses, cheesecake stabilisers and some glazes. We set our cheesecakes by baking technique instead (our Basque Burnt Cheesecake gets its barely-set middle from oven temperature and timing, not gelatin), and our tiramisu is built without alcohol in the coffee soak — still properly coffee-forward, just without the traditional marsala or rum.

Is it halal-certified?

This is an important distinction: avoiding pork, lard, alcohol and gelatin makes our bakes suitable for many halal-conscious guests, but we are not a halal-certified kitchen. If certification specifically (not just the ingredient list) is a requirement for your event, this matters — get in touch before you order and we’ll tell you plainly whether it’s a fit.

What this means for your dessert table

In practice: you can build a mixed dessert table for a mixed group of guests — colleagues, family, wedding guests of different backgrounds — without needing to separate out a "safe" tray. Every box, tart, cake and cookie we make follows the same four rules, every time.