Manchester’s favourite naughty dessert cafe has reopened its doors this week with a brand new pancake menu.
Not content with celebrating on just one day, the team is stretching Shrove Tuesday out into the whole week, serving up delightful late-night pancake stacks loaded with the likes of blueberry crumble, maple syrup, Kinderella cream and hot fudge from 4pm.
After that, they’ll be launching a new birthday-themed menu from 7 March to celebrate the cafe’s 7th anniversary with plans to introduce more cakes, cookies, gelato and brownies as the weeks go on.
Image: The Manc Eats
Black Milk loyalists will be happy to know that the famous milkshakes are staying, and pancakes will become a regular feature of the menu going forward too.
The brand is also working on a special new flavour of its lauded cream spreads, due to be released this spring.
Bosses have used the closure to give the site an overhaul: refreshing the interior with new ‘chocolate bar’ tiling, replacing the patterned wallpaper with fresh, neutral pale pink walls and installing a brand new kitchen for their new head baker, Kendra Groves.
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An award-winning pastry chef, Kendra has recently moved to Manchester from Queensland, Australia to take on the role, having previously run her own bespoke cake business Wild Child Cakes back home.
As Wild Child Cakes, she has baked up some crazily Instagrammable and colourful creations, decorated with everything from ‘drunken Barbies’ clutching miniature bottles of Absolut vodka, to festive dragons and gnomes – so we’re very excited to see what she’s going to create for them here in Manchester.
She tells us that for Black Milk’s birthday week, she’s planning on creating a huge “five-tier extravaganza” combining “lots of colour, sprinkles, and things like that.”
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Old school flavours will be the order of the day, with the buttery, vanilla birthday favourite that is funfetti due to make an appearance – perhaps crossed in some way with every Mancunian sweet tooth’s other obsession, Lotus Biscoff.
This week, the cafe will only be open during the evenings as they get settled back in with their new team.
Doors will open 4pm until 8pm from now until Friday, then on the weekend a soft launch for the site will see opening hours run from 12-8pm.
Feature image – The Manc Eats
News
Advice issued as ‘quademic’ of winter bugs continues to take hold in Greater Manchester
Daisy Jackson
People in Greater Manchester are being urged to get any vaccinations they are due done, as a ‘quademic’ of winter bugs runs rife.
Cases of flu, Covid, norovirus and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) are continuing to take hold across the country, and here in Greater Manchester.
The city is seeing more flu cases and hospital admissions than usual for this time of year.
So now health chiefs are urgently reminding eligible people to get their flu jabs and other vaccinations, to protect themselves and others.
Mancs are also being reminded to follow key public health advice, such as frequent hand washing and staying at home when you’re ill.
The flu vaccination drive runs until the end of March and people who are eligible for it can get it from their GP, pharmacy or one of the city’s walk-in clinics, where no appointment is needed.
Dr Cordelle Ofori, Manchester’s Director of Public Health, said: “Our advice is very similar to recommendations made during the Covid pandemic.
“It’s really important to keep washing hands well and regularly; cough or sneeze into tissues or your arm; wipe down key communal surfaces like handles on doors; and where possible, stay at home if you are ill to avoid passing on any infections.
“And, in addition to this we would urge anyone who is also feeling financial or food pressures to ring our free cost of living advice line on 0800 023 2692 or text on 07860 022876.”
Councillor Thomas Robinson, Executive Member for Healthy Manchester and Social Care, at Manchester City Council, said: “Manchester people are well-known for how they look after one another – and passing the flu message on could save lives, as well as unnecessary illness at a time when people face many pressures.
“We want to make it as easy as possible for people to have their vaccination, so please do go to our walk-in clinics if you are 18 and over and eligible for the vaccine. No appointment is needed: it’s quick, easy and done by teams who want to help you.”
Nurses plea for Government support as 90% say patient safety is being ‘compromised’
Emily Sergeant
Patients dying in corridors, a lack of equipment, and generally unsafe practices are the findings of a harrowing new report into nursing.
Towards the end of last month, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) – which is biggest nursing union and professional body in the world, with more than 500,000 members – asked its members to answer a short survey into the state of nursing throughout 2024, and thousands of nurses across the UK responded.
The report documents the experiences of more than 5,000 NHS nursing staff, with several raw, unedited, and often heartbreaking responses included, all of which confirm that ‘corridor care’, as it’s known, is “widespread” nationwide.
Almost seven in 10 (66.8%) respondents said they’re delivering care in “over-crowded or unsuitable places”, such as corridors, converted cupboards, and even car parks, on a daily basis.
More than nine in 10 (90.8%) said patient safety is being “compromised”.
According to the findings from the survey, demoralised nursing staff reported caring for as many as 40 patients in a single corridor, and find they are unable to access oxygen, cardiac monitors, suction, and other lifesaving equipment during this time.
Some of the more shocking accounts including in the report are of female patients miscarrying in corridors, and nurses being unable to provide adequate or timely CPR to patients having heart attacks.
Nursing staff also report cancer patients being put in corridors and other “inappropriate” spaces.
Nurses are calling for Government support as 90% say patient safety is being ‘compromised’ / Credit: Stephen Andrews (via Unsplash)
More than a quarter of nursing staff surveyed said they weren’t told the corridor they were providing care in was classed as a “temporary escalation space”, which is what the report says NHS England referred to it as, and this means that certain risk protocols and measures may not be in place to ease pressures and protect patients.
This is why the RCN is calling on officials to publish how many patients are being cared for in corridors and other inappropriate places.
The union is urging the Government and NHS England from an RCN-led coalition.
RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive, Professor Nicola Ranger, said this devastating testimony from frontline nursing staff shows patients are coming to harm “every day”, and are “forced” to endure unsafe treatment.
“The revelations from our wards must now become a moment in time,” Professor Ranger said.
“A moment for bold Government action on an NHS which has been neglected for so long. Ministers cannot shirk responsibility and need to recognise that recovering patient care will take new investment, including building a strong nursing workforce.”
Georgina Pellant -
2nd March 2022 
