A few years ago... Just before my eldest daughter's birthday a friend of mine was visiting me, and we were both in a bit of a tight spot as we outgrew our available income that our husbands provided to us.
Then it hit us!... Fancy cakes. I really battled to source the cake I wanted for my daughter's birthday party as well as the materials needed for us to do ourselves.
Soo, we opted to have fun and see if we could create our own marshmallow fondant and design her the little cakes she asked for.
This cake below is fruits of our first ever attempt. We did everything from scratch, cake, buttercream and fondant.
I know it doesn't look fantastic but I promise you for two people who had never attempted something like this and produced this within 1 day of deciding on doing it, I don't think it looks too bad at all!
The little cakes were a great hit by my daughter's party and we got quite a few compliments from people inside the restaurant at the time too. While there.. a lot of mommies started to ask us if we baked for others too.. this got the two of us thinking that we might have found our break to bring in our own bit of cash doing something we both rather enjoyed doing the day before.
So, my caking adventure began!
Shortly after our caking took off as a business my friend and split ways for a while, after which we decided to stop being petty about money issues and the struggles that all new businesses face and have a sit down over a cup of tea and have a heart to heart about what to do next.
We were, and still are great friends. Today we look back on the arguments which led to us parting ways as business partners as petty stresses and laugh about it.
I truly think that because of the late nights, lack of sleep and stress involved we just weren't made to be business partners and friends. We both agreed through the tears and all that it was best we both rather carried on caking but in separate businesses so that we could remain best of friends.
Honestly,,, caking sucked for quite a while after we parted ways. I really enjoyed the socials of the business between us just as much as the amazing cakes we created together.
I continued though, thankfully my husband is my anchor in life and without his support through all my attempts and adventures in life it really all seems pretty empty and meaningless to me.
At the time my daughter's were 4 and 1 yrs old. So my youngest daughter really grew up with the love of caking.
Here's a few fun cakes that I made..
Believe it or not, this one below was the most popular cake in my 'weekly' bake range.
It was and still is my favourite chocolate / coffee sponge along with my husband's special vanilla icing topped with a dusting of grated chocolate. It is simply devine and still affordable which is a huge plus point for those who need their weekly sweet tooth serving.
Here is a vanilla option for those who opt for vanilla instead of chocolate:
A great load of fun was this one made for a little boy scout boy's birthday. He simply loved camping with his friends!
Little miniature cake hubby and I had fun baking for ourselves over a weekend bake. Topped with some handmade chocolate lace work.. I had just recently made what I hoped would be an investment into the first silicon edible lace making molds in South Africa, unfortunately this didn't turn out as planned and the company carried on to supply to many other various caking supply stockists which allowed zero marketing opportunity on my behalf. Instead I kept the molds that I had bought for marketing purposes and we still have great fun with them from time to time.
Chocolate sponge topped with banana buttercream frosting. Simply delicious!
About a year after kicking off my caking adventures.. hubby's business led to us relocating to another town to be closer to his client base, but still stay a close family together.
Because the new town we moved to was extremely small, as well as the population mainly speaks my husbands home language which I am honestly not very good at. My marketing skills didn't help me much around there and I decided to pack up my baking goodies and concentrate on my horses and kiddies instead. Which was indeed great fun for me! :-D
Shortly after moving, the local doctor realized after doing blood works on me that I have a high risk of developing diabetes and suggested that I started to drink preventative medication so that I do not end up with full on diabetes later on in life. This news led to me really cutting down on my baking's at home and so on. Unfortunately for me I have a very bad habit to drink soft drinks especially the ever so bad coca-cola.
That brought my caking to an end, but the very final decision making event for me was when I realized how big a role sugars play in our health when it comes to cancers, diabetes and much much more. I sat one night while studying on of my holistic therapist studies and had a eureka moment. How can I be helping and advising people to live and be healthier on the one side, and on the other side push cakes packed with simple sugars and side effects later on.
This resulted in me packing away everything for a while and not even baking for us at all.
Now days, I do enjoy baking and doing.. but very limited and only for our own homes.
I hope you enjoyed my caking journey along with me tonight ;-)
