Contemporary Cake Designs Book One (eBook)

Reflections of a cake decorator

Moving to Australia in 2004 was a daunting yet exciting new chapter for my family. We had visited Australia a few years before and fell in love with this beautiful country. My husband and I enjoy travelling around the world and visiting the different cultures, so much so that we were married in Kenya. We even revisited Kenya to celebrate our third wedding anniversary.

We then travelled to Australia 13 years ago for a holiday and fell in love with the country and knew this beautiful country was a great opportunity for all 3 of us.

Settling in a lovely suburb of Daisy Hill, south of Brisbane in Queensland, we have such lovely neighbours whom we have formed great friendships with and made us feel very welcome. We have made friends who were work colleagues and through that my business has grown.

My cake business Contemporary Cakes was already established in the UK, so emigrating to Australia, I had to begin all over again. When I lived in the UK I made food and cakes, that had appeared on the big screen for Bridget Jones The Edge of Reason, Finding Neverland, Iris, Wimbledon and Silent Cry.

I worked as a chef for a wonderful catering company, owned by the talented Katherine Churcher. Champagne and Caviar is based in East Sussex. We catered for various BBC television programmes, Bargain Hunt, Antiques Roadshow, the yearly BBC Children in Need and made food for food commercials too. My biggest honour was to cater for royalty, the Duchess of Wessex, H.R.H. Prince Edwards’s wife.

My first two wedding cakes in Australia were for my neighbours children and so my business grew from there. I worked full time as a chef and built up my cake business at the same time.

I hung up my chef’s apron, 4 years ago to concentrate on my cake business full time and I have not looked back. We have no family here (although they make up for it on their 5-7 week visits!) and having had a successful cake business in the UK, I had to start from scratch. So word of mouth is the best advertising and my thanks to my customers and students who have done this for me. My thanks also to my lovely husband and son Adam, for their great support and encouragement, which has brought me the success of my cake decorating school too. I work and teach from home and have a home based licensed cake business and was the first to be licensed within my council.

I trained at Highbury College of Technology in Portsmouth, UK and completed City & Guilds to become a qualified chef and pastry chef. This was back in the early 80’s where girls were not allowed to wear chef’s trousers at college, only a pastry coat and a flat cap and apron……how things have changed! My amazing pastry chef and lecturer and hero at the time, was Ildo Nicolello whose skills in pulled sugar work and gateaux decoration was amazing. His genuine encouragement to do better and refine my skills rubbed off on me. I was in awe of his amazing skills and passion.

I met him almost 20 years later, at a Squires cake decorating show and he has not changed, still has the same passion and desire to share his skill. At college I only decorated one cake, closely resembling cake decorating and that was a royal iced Christmas cake.

Childhood baking

Having 2 lovely brothers gifted from my parents when I was almost 7 and 9 years of age. One of my brothers was born on the same day as my Dads birthday and my other brother was born 3 days later, 2 years apart. This meant that I could bake and decorate a joint birthday cake for my 3 lovely test guinea pigs! My Mum was always willing to let me experiment in the kitchen and being rather busy herself with 2 children under 2 years old. My Mum was quite pleased that cooking was something that I enjoyed and also occupied me. She would watch me measure the ingredients and put the cakes or biscuits in and out of the oven for me. Every birthday event, I would scrub my Mums roasting tin and line it with butter wrappers. I would bake a madeira cake and then turn it upside down onto a cardboard flattened box, which was covered with tin foil and then decorate with butter cream and decorate with sweets, lollies! Sometimes the cake was so heavy with frosting and lollies that the cardboard make shift cake board, would bend with the weight! I was absolutely thrilled with my cakes and my family were amazed and at the joint birthday celebrations, not a crumb was left. There is nothing more satisfying, than creating something that has brought you happiness and by sharing with others, creates happiness too.

I then started baking chocolate cupcakes and made a peppermint cream type coating, with icing sugar, egg whites and peppermint essence and green food colouring. I mixed it all together in a bowl and then flattened by rolling out with a large washed milk bottle! I used a small drinking glass to cut the circles out to place on top of the cupcakes. A cut out round piece of ice cream lid, which I used then to smooth the top! Similar to the x-ray that I use now. A freshly picked mint leaf from my garden, was my decorative cupcake topper!

I was quite inventive even back then. My son has said that it was due to the fact that there was no electricity then! But there is a message here, do we allow our children to experiment and be able to play and develop skills in our kitchens or is the kitchen just for show? There was no electrical computing games when I was young and I am very, very grateful for that.

I had an amazing mentor in my teenage years, her name was Leslie Storey. I met Leslie through my local church youth group and Leslie had been a home economics teacher. Leslie catered for the Local Businessman’s Church Fellowship and she would provide lunches and evening meals. Leslie taught me how to make melt in the mouth pastries, biscuits and cakes. At the tender age of 12, I was already making profiteroles, gateaux sponges and learning how to make puff pastry.

Leslie had such a patient way of teaching, which was a true role model for me to follow, later on in my life. There was no criticism, only smiles and reassurances, which nurtured my learning.

When I was in the last years at senior school, a home economics teacher I thought would be my career path and I would attend 6th form and then university. That quickly changed when I met a boy from school, Neil, who became a good friend of mine.

Neil informed me that he was attending a catering college to train as a chef. Wow! I knew then that was my path to go on.

I applied to the college and attended a college group interview, wearing a very short rah-rah skirt with a t shirt sporting the Wham slogan of Choose Life logo this is the 80’s remember! I was in the midst of smartly suited and booted young men and I was clearly under dressed for the interview! The interview was a group interview with Mr O’ Dell the catering principal at the time.

He asked us why we wanted to attend the course? The young men mostly replied that their Fathers were either a Head Chef in the Royal Navy, or was a Head Chef in the armed services or commanded a team of Chefs at a London hotel. It was then that I realised there was no influence from my family for my cooking, just my passion to cook with their encouragement and appetites!

My answer was a simple one, I just love to cook. To be able to take a few simple ingredients and turn them into a delicious offering to share with my family. I like the making and the baking and best of all the tasting of the food! The group looked a little stunned at my reply and Mr O’Dell smiled and almost winked at me!

A week later, I received a letter of acceptance in the post and I did not see any of those young men at the college!

College was amazing, learning about new foods that I had not even seen or tasted let alone cooked with. I had 3 part time jobs, in order to support myself as I had left home and was in a shared house. I baked biscuits, cakes and scones weekly to add to my income and sold them to a café in my seaside town of Portsmouth. I worked in a jewellers, waitresed 5 nights a week and still managed to date!

A few years later I met a wonderful man, who is my best friend and now husband Matt. I married into a family with lots more test guinea pigs! My nephew’s birthdays were an opportunity for me to dabble with sugar paste and cake decorating. Throughout my career wherever I have worked, I have always made the staff members or guest’s celebration cakes, usually only with chocolate decorations and piped cream.

When my beautiful son Adam was born, I knew then, there was even more cakes to come and was looking forward to sharing with him, my baking skills that I had discovered as a child.

Sugar paste or fondant cakes had started to become noticed in the cake world and I noticed too.

I joined my local British Sugarcraft Guild cake decorators group in Eastbourne and Lin Cook owner of Sugar City in St.Leonards East Sussex was a wonderful supportive member of the group. We would meet in a local church hall once a month and would have guest demonstrations.

The very talented Debbie Brown with her young daughter then, would visit and share her amazing skills of modelling. Frances McNaughton, who also made food props for movies too including Harry Potter, would demonstrate her amazing modelling skills. The group members were warm and welcoming and I was one of the youngest attendees at the time. This is when the real passion began for cake decorating and it is still going strong 20 years later. I attended evening classes and completed City and Guilds in Sugarcraft and flower making before moving to Australia.

Cake of Australia

When I first arrived in Australia, I was...