In our house September and October are months of many birthdays! It sure is an expensive time of year! This of course means birthday cake...and lots of it. First a little about me and my love of baking. I have always been creative having gone to art school many years ago before going to University to a pursue a far from creative career. I did need an outlet for my creative side though and often this would be baking. Bread, cakes, cookies and tray bakes - I tried it all. I would look at the videos of amazing and imaginative cakes on youtube and think 'wow' - I loved to see what others had made. Then I realised that I could use youtube to learn so much about how to make my own cakes so I started to watch cake tutorials and try a few of my new found skills out at home. Ok, there were. a few disasters but there were far more successes. the kids weren't complaining and they gave me very honest feedback on my creations. The yard staff at the local riding school didn't complain either as I often turned up weekly with 24 assorted cupcakes for them to dig into whilst my daughter had her riding lesson!
Anyway - back to the busy birthday months of September and October and the need for birthday cake. My new found skills meant that the birthday cakes were a bit more adventurous than usual. they were big, they were bright, they tasted lovely and they even had homemade fillings and decorations on them. What's more, I loved making them. I wondered if maybe I could sell a few of my cakes, so, with the encouragement of my kids (and my sons girlfriends setting up and Instagram account featuring many of my bakes unbeknown to me!!) I set up "Cake of all kinds" and began work not only on my cakes but a brand, a website, a Facebook page and a blog! Oh, and I took over that Instagram account that my sons girlfriend had sneakily started!
The began the testing. Working out flavours, combinations and prices. What works with what? Baking each thing in turn and taking decent photographs of it to put on the website and on my social media accounts before launching my website out there and seeing what happened. And that's where we are now. Baking every day, testing, photographing, recording recipes and flavour combinations (today was vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream piped roses and chocolate and raspberry ripple cake with chocolate buttercream piping). Uploading the pictures, writing the descriptions and so it goes on. It feels like a lot of work considering my website isn't even live yet!
By the time you read this it will be live and hopefully my cakes will be selling like....well, hotcakes!
They look and taste truly amazing .