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My Baking Beginnings

I guess a good place to start would be when I was a little girl. Both my grandmothers played a huge part in my baking beginnings - they were equally as good as each other at different things.


Nanna Slater was famous for her apple pie, made from the fruit that was picked from the tree that held my childhood swing. Nanna Jackson always had rock cakes in a tin and I helped with many a cake, my main job being to scrape the sides of the bowl with the spatula and, of course, lick the spoon! Seeing them both bake as I was growing up had a huge influence on me.


When my daughter was old enough to have a slice, I decided it was time I started making her birthday cakes.


My very first design was a Minnie Mouse cake (see picture below) - well, we all have to start somewhere don’t we! I made it at my mum’s house the night before Amber’s 3rd birthday party. The work surfaces were full of party goodies which left me no space at all in which to work - so I sat on the kitchen floor decorating the cake and getting stressed until 3am! Please don’t judge me for the hygiene aspect of this. I was a 23-year-old single mum desperately trying to make my daughter’s 3rd birthday cake look remotely presentable, as it was to be seen in public the following day!


I probably couldn’t have picked two worst colours for this cake - not knowing anything about baking at the time, I had no idea how hard it was to make icing particular shades. Red and black were an absolute nightmare - at one point I didn’t think the icing was ever going to be the red I required. Back then I don’t think I even had a smartphone to be able to search on Google or YouTube for anything to help. So I simply made it up as I went along and hoped for the best. I didn’t even own cutters for the lettering - I used a cheap tube of black icing from the supermarket and squeezed out some form of wording that I believe just about looked like ‘Amber’. I figured the best thing I could do at this point was to sprinkle the cake with as much edible glitter as I could to cover up any flaws -, and walk away!


However bad that cake looked, I must admit that to this day I am still rather proud of it. That sense of achievement you get when you finally finish a cake is so satisfying.


Making cakes then became an addiction for me. I made the majority of Amber’s birthday cakes from that point on, gradually getting better each year - well, at least I hope I have.


I would love to hear how some of you began your baking journey. Please do let me know in the comments section on this website. Thank you.




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