The concert was in a local church near to my home in Beeston so I knew quite a few members of the audience. It was interesting to observe how many of these people I either met or got to know better through various cake related activities. Sometimes I had met members of their family when delivering, or made personalised cakes for special occasions.

A similar but unexpected thing happened when we ran a Classy Cupcakes stall on the Fine Food market in the city centre last month. We had lots of enthusiastic general public consumers but in addition, previous customers came to say hallo, which was very nice indeed. Other visitors included people who had been following the story of Classy Cupcakes via our website, Facebook and blog.  It was great to catch up with everyone and I felt really connected with lots of different people (through the medium of cake!)

As someone who has previously worked away from home a lot, had little contact with people of similar age through children at school until the last few years, and whose parents and family live in various different parts of the country, this contact is a wonderful thing. And it keeps growing as customers pass my details on to their friends and family…

I am finding that the internet is an excellent medium through which to deliver my local, highly bespoke service. But face to face contact with the local community is really where it is at!

Interestingly, I seem to be attracting far more wedding business through word of mouth and internet searches, which is not only efficient, but also very flattering. 

Since I started this business, I have struggled with where I fit in to the ‘wedding industry’.

I don’t think it helps that I didn’t dream of a fantasy wedding when I was younger. I did not aspire to be a fairytale princess and whilst I love a good party, I did not really want me (and my dress) to be the focus of attention for a whole day. Most of the weddings I went to in my twenties and thirties were very happy affairs and occasionally I questioned my stance. But I was fiercely independent and the maternal urge did not kick in. 

I married at the age of 40 and our wedding was an informal affair. We walked with 20 or so close friends and family from the Registry office to a local restaurant for lunch and followed up with a huge party in a community hall. There were no bridesmaids, posh cars, buttonholes or suits. It was perfect, for us. 

This may explain why I made a decision very early on not to treat weddings as anything different from another special celebration. As always, I set out to make something to a specific brief and work carefully to make that as perfect as possible. I do this for all my orders and therefore I don’t charge any more for wedding cakes. I can’t stand that people are being charged a fortune for celebrating something beautiful. 

I had a couple of very poor ‘wedding’ experiences towards the end of last year. One venue asked me to bid to be preferred supplier only to find out during a meeting I had carefully prepared for that this entailed paying them £1700 for the privilege. Another venue readily accepted my mini cupcakes and cookies to hand out to guests at their wedding open day but ‘forgot’ to put any of my leaflets out. 

If you’re planning a wedding (or indeed any special celebration) I urge you to taste, cross cost and make sure you are happy with your deal! Good luck!

I cooked a hot lime beef salad followed by lemon posset and raspberry shortbread for some visitors last weekend and really enjoyed the company, the food and every single element of the preparation. This included a complex mixture of the perfect music, a peaceful and sunny afternoon, a sparkling kitchen and polished cutlery and crockery. For me, a perfect home cooked meal is one inspired by seasonal food or travel memories or a picture from a book or a magazine which involves a bit of research in my trusty cook books, but is ultimately a departure from a recipe in order to create something original. (Although I doubt anything is original any more due to the preponderance of cooking programmes!) 

On a normal working day, even if I am hugely busy with orders, everything is cleared away at 5pm so I can cook the evening meal for the family. Baking/icing and other cake duties resume as necessary after 7pm. 

I have spent many, many hours in my kitchen over the last few years. It is not enormous but it is VERY organised. I am very lucky to have this workspace and my aim is to continue to lovingly create lots of cakes from this space. Again and again my customers commend the just cooked/home cooked nature of my products.  There has been no greater recent compliment than that from an older gentleman customer who stopped in his tracks when he had eaten one of my vanilla cakes with strawberry conserve and vanilla butter icing. He said “I haven’t tasted cake like this since I was a boy”. Wonderful!

It’s all good stuff and it’s great that people are coming to me (and coming back to me) to make more and more assorted goodies.

I try very hard to carve out some time for me but I’m not very good at it. I was interviewed about work/life balance on the radio recently and stated that when you run your own business there is ALWAYS something to do. At least I am filling my time doing something I enjoy.

Ordinarily, I can rush along with various jobs and juggle requirements but things get harder when the house is full with other people and their own requirements, especially when the other people are teenagers on holiday. Their priorities are going out or staying in their rooms. To the extreme! They have friends to see, odd hours to keep, new games to play on the computer, chats to have, life to live, great times to be had. I’m afraid my personal and work ethic leaves limited sympathy for laziness, messiness and noise, which can be quite difficult under the circumstances.

The boys are good, there is no doubt that they want to fit in and don’t want to upset anyone. But time and again I come back to the fact that I am not their mum and this is not really my responsibility – but still I seem to have primarily taken on the roles of housekeeper and disciplinarian.  Not very rewarding jobs! I am probably quite jealous of their lack of responsibilities!

So, things will settle down again soon when school and University resumes and I am bustling around doing my own thing.

I have done so much thinking about this situation and it affects my life every single day. There is no total resolution in sight, but no doubt I will keep mulling it over. Such is life!

I mentioned the blog as a jokey aside during a wedding tasting session with a lovely lady and her family. I was already supplying the cupcakes for their wedding this year and they came to me to talk about a tiered wedding cake in addition.

A few days later I received a wonderfully sensitive email from the lady who had read my blog and told me that if I was serious, she thought she could help! She had lost a lot of weight over the last year or so on the Slimming World diet and she thought this could work for me. I am unaccustomed to asking for help, so it was refreshing to take the message totally in the spirit it was sent and reach out to grab a helping hand.

A week later I made my way to her new group and immediately felt relaxed and welcomed. There were no public weigh-ins, not much talk about weight, no pressure to look a certain way, not a hint of humiliation, a lot of honesty and quite a few laughs!

In the weeks that followed, I found a stark contrast to other diet regimes. This has been easy to follow, with a huge list of foods I can eat freely. I have reconnected with raw ingredients and forced myself to take a break from work to eat at least three times a day. I feel much more energetic and look quite sparkly! I’m afraid chocolate, biscuits and cakes are not encouraged much, but anything is possible and it’s just a balance of priorities. After 6 weeks of not feeling like I’m missing out in any way, I am delighted to have lost nearly 1½ stones!

Easter has been a bit naughty – but I am not panicking. After all, it’s not a race!

Apart from a few holiday blips (and we are all human!), this experience has taught me to make some really good food choices. It just doesn’t feel like a restrictive diet. Hopefully that makes it sustainable for the future, which is exactly what I blogged about in the first place!

Yum Yum!

I enjoy their enthusiasm to succeed and bright thinking but I cringe at their desire to ‘do business’ in line with their definition of that action. Sharp suited and perfectly made up, they often attempt to distance themselves from responsible decisions, grab the glory for successful ideas and generally undermine each other. It is fabulous entertainment! Of course, the most obvious observations are reserved for Alan Sugar – and he delivers them wonderfully. 

I had a look at the Apprentice website last weekend and it seems every candidate has been defined by one key phrase.

Some are hilarious: “When it comes to business I can be like an animal and I will roar my way to the top”

Some are far from modest: “I’m better than unique; I’m naturally gifted in business” and “I truly am the reflection of perfection”

And some are downright aggressive: “I would call myself ‘The Blonde Assassin’. I let people underestimate me just so I can blow them out of the water” 

My favourite is from Jane: “Anything is achievable if you have drive, determination, and a seriously good work ethic”. I hope she wins (if she really means it!) 

Of course, this is such a distorted version of business! The best business people I have met are personable and great at communicating with and nurturing their staff.  The best business relationships, in my experience, are open and honest. A partnership relies on mutual respect, building on individual strengths, and acknowledgement of weakness, to construct something stronger. 

Give me a cupcake - NOW!!!

I set off in my new business with a spirit of integrity, openness and trust – virtues which were sadly lacking in my working life in recent times. I have been rewarded with some wonderful customers, great partnerships and an honest approach to business. Hence, not surprisingly, it feels pretty good!

I was the only female member of the esteemed computer club at school, in the early 1980s, where we used to have to call a technical centre to connect our teleprompter device. Having executed that minor miracle of the age, we then proceeded to mess around playing simulated greyhound races with imagined dogs called ‘Eyesocket’ and ‘Screamer’. 

In the late 1990s, I worked with a fashion and textile prediction dot com company.  There was a shiny front end to this operation with a London head office, an international network and graphically beautiful website. I worked mainly at the back end, pushing out ideas and researching resources. They did roll me out regularly to do some refined face to face selling. 

Later still, in the late 2000s, I worked in the School of Computer Science, which is where I encountered the near future. This is where I learnt about computer enabled 24 hour working, zero limitation global communication and all manner of mobile devices and gadgets. 

I sleep with my iPhone!

Lately, with the cake selling, I have learnt all about websites, Facebook and Twitter, especially with regard to effective marketing and networking and branding. The pace is breathtaking but my 48 year old brain is hanging on in there! My customers regularly say they feel as if they know me before they come to me for their cakes because of what they have read on my website, business Facebook page and Twitter. How powerful is that?

I wonder what will come next…

21 years of favourite things!

It reminded me of an exhibition I went to at the Tate Modern when it first opened. I still think of a particular installation from time to time. The artist had put lots of her childhood and young adult possessions in a garden shed and asked the Army to blow it up. She had then strung all the debris up from the ceiling of a large room in the gallery surrounding a single lightbulb. As I walked round the room, I could see twisted bicycle wheels, dolls with legs missing, models, shoes and lots of unidentified objects. I found it mesmerising. 

I am sure most of us could boil down the essence of what makes us happy on 120 cakes. (And maybe discard the rest to be blown up by the Army!) But the trouble is that we rarely get a chance to do so.      

Changing my job so radically gave me an opportunity to think again about what matters. When unburdened with ego related to society’s expectations I can make quite a bit of progress with these thoughts.  

Sometimes I think I have taken full advantage but I am sure there’s always further to go…

This year, with 5 times the number of orders, I was ready for anything. 13^th February was a late night, icing by moonlight – and 14^th February was a very early start.

Oh what a lovely day! I visited every corner of Nottinghamshire with a little diversion into Derbyshire. The cakes were highly bespoke and careful labelling of boxes ensured that the right messages were delivered to the appropriate lover. I was greeted by lots of surprised smiles and happy vibes.

Everything went to plan and I ended up somewhere near Rufford, ready to talk to BBC Radio Nottingham about the ‘14 days of love’ campaign I had been taking part in. I parked up 10 minutes before the broadcast and smiled out over the fields.

But then, panic! No mobile phone signal!

A five minute dash later I pulled into a little layby on a country road, much to the surprise of a lorry driver who was sitting there quietly having his lunch. I don’t think he was really expecting a Cakemobile to appear from nowhere. I had a little chat with Francis Finn, who seemed quite surprised that people were sending cupcakes as love tokens! 

I was expecting to be pretty pooped by 14^th February evening, so I met with my hubby for a lovely relaxed lunch. I had smoked trout and tapenade – really delicious. I couldn’t manage pudding, which you might expect given my proximity to vast numbers of cakes in recent hours.

And the hubby? Naturally, he had a cupcake… with a heart on. Aah!

Soppy Valentine cakes

My work now is largely calm. Settling down to produce huge numbers of cakes can promote a meditative atmosphere and that has been very welcome over the last couple of years. 

Being a pretty organised business, I wouldn’t ever say we have got to really chaotic levels – but when the oven is beeping, the mixer is buzzing, the door knocker is striking, the emails are piling up and the phone is ringing, it can be a bit frantic at times. The good news is that the consequence of each of those alarms usually signals something nice – delicious cakes, enthusiastic customers etc. 

Reflecting further on the compliment, I wonder whether I have sought out chaotic situations in the past, maybe specifically in order to rectify them!  

Even after all this relatively serene period, I don’t think the urge to bring harmony will ever go away. But I can think of worse aspirations.

We are changing our name in order to reflect more truly the goods we have been producing for our customers for some time now. The website and marketing are being updated but our offer remains the same – high quality, freshly baked goodies – cupcakes, specialised patisserie products, birthday cakes, celebration cakes and catering for special events. 

Our customers love to come to us with their specialised requirements and we love a challenge – a perfect match! After 30 months of operations, we have now catered for lots of different events and amassed many testimonials, some of which can be viewed here: http://www.thebestof.co.uk/local/nottingham/business-guide/feature/classy-cupcakes/86981/review 

We continue to offer our very popular ‘Art and Science of Baking’ workshops for kids age 5 to 14, delivering bespoke arrangements either in the Classy Cupcakes kitchen or a venue of our customer’s choice.   

I am already looking forward to all the wonderful goodies we will be producing for our lovely customers this year. As always, full highlights will be posted on our Classy Cupcakes Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Classy-Cupcakes/139011602796472 

Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can help with any ‘specially baked’ requirements…

It wasn’t just the abundance of freshly baked cakes, pastries and beautiful bread that was so appealing, it was the fact that these products were so readily available and it was perfectly normal to have an independent baker on what seemed like every street corner.

In these shops there was hardly anything packed in plastic with cardboard packaging, or carrying a really long sell by date, or with greasy, sticky and gloopy toppings and steeped in artificial colours and flavours. The gingerbread looked like it had just been decorated; the bread had been baked that morning and was all going to be sold the same day; the cakes were decorated with real fruit or some fancy, yet simple topping; the pastries were screaming to be eaten.

Interestingly, there was not a cupcake in sight (though I saw a china one in Vienna). But I saw fondant fancies, cookies, jellies, sugar candy, marzipan pigs, meringues, handmade chocolates and sweet bread rolls. The shops were beautiful. Window displays glittering out in to the street; rows of slicing cakes in various stages of consumption; some little personal trinkets detailing the character of the shop; and goodies piled high.

Lots of the accompanying signs were hand written and therefore a bit shabby, but I like to think the baker had an urge to make some Cannoli or Fornarine that day and they were hastily promoted.

It was extremely interesting to be in Europe just as Prime Minister Cameron was distancing the UK from any detailed part of the EU rescue negotiations and later to hear the rousing response that had yielded in the polls. Culturally I yearn for a more European approach to life in the UK. Where is the civilised city lifestyle which incorporates all ages? Where is the pride in local producers? Where is the individualism? Where is the pride for heritage? And where is the style…? It is in short supply!

I also have intense reactions to the ‘weight police’ such as: “who are you to tell me what size I should be?” No doubt this is one manifestation of soft feminist principles I have written about in this blog before. I hate the fact that bigger people are often labelled as greedy and/or lazy and/or stupid and/or funny. There’s one main reason I am bigger than size 10 –I love food, in good times and bad!

The most disappointing manifestation of this is seeing models and beautiful people with perfect figures cooking comfort food on TV. When I see such TV shows (and adverts), I am often disappointed that this extra pressure is piled on women. There must be so many people following diets at this time of the year, confused about their size and goals.

I will admit to still being quite confused about this issue, 40 years on. It would be really good to get to grips with it. And by that I mean to just be more or less happy with whatever size I choose to be. I think the key for me has to be who you are trying to make an impression upon. As with so many other things I am discovering recently, the answer to that question simply has to be ‘yourself’.

I have just spent quite a bit of time away from my business on a wonderful InterRail adventure around Europe. There were long, scenic train journeys to ponder upon and beautiful sights to marvel at. Living on a strict budget was part of the adventure.Everywhere we went was quiet and very Christmassy. It was a perfect environment to reflect on the last couple of years and think about the future. 

Just before we went away, I heard the Nottingham designer Paul Smith on the radio, sharing advice he would give our government in these dismal times. He was discussing the notion of giving things a bit more time (than we are currently used to) to develop. This was mainly in relation to starting a business and he talked about his early experiences of being compelled to make lots of money quickly in order to ‘be successful’. It bought me back to my previous musings about not simply using money as my measure of success these days. Building up the Classy Cupcakes business has allowed me to indulge my passion, spend more time looking after my family, develop my creativity, bring happiness to my customers, as well as making some money.   

I have a very occasional urge to go back to the ‘conventional’ work that I have done for years (office based or something similar) but this New Year I am really not ready to give up my baking dreams as there are still many things to do. I have come back from my trip refreshed with plenty of ideas.   

This year, I will be enriching the Classy Cupcakes offer. So far, I have felt compelled to take absolutely everything on that has been offered, normally at the cost of my resting and sleeping time, but in the next year I will be refining my offer, branching out and taking on more help. 

Watch this space, cake lovers!