It’s odd thinking about what to post. I have wanted to blog for ages but I haven’t had the guts to do it. Now that I have set up my cakey corner of the web I am wondering what you lovely people might want to read about.

The more I thought about it the more I realised why not start at the beginning and tell you all how I first got into baking. When I left home to go to uni when I was 18 I had never cooked much more than a microwaveable ready meal and as for cakes, well that was territory that completely terrified me and was a no-go zone. Eventually I learned to cook proper meals for myself and I even mastered one or two cake box mixes. I then did a year out placement as part of my degree and my boss there always cooked and baked from scratch. She gave me an “idiot proof” chocolate cake recipe but even I managed to mess that up first time – the recipe said to use oil instead of butter and we only had olive oil in the cupboard. Yeah well that didn’t exactly turn out right, the cake hardly rose and tasted foul, honestly I wouldn’t have given it to a dog!

Once I mastered the “idiot proof” chocolate cake (use sunflower or vegetable oil!) I finally found something I could do well in the kitchen – I’m still not the best of cooks… From there my love of baking grew and grew. I did consider going down the route of celebration cakes for a while but I would never have made much money from it. I decided I would bake because I love it and everyone loves a wee bit of cake!

I love buying new baking books, I am rapidly running out of room in my baking cupboard and I have to say the Kenwood Chef that Himself bought me as a surprise 2 years ago has to be the best present he ever bought me! (I will tell you the story of that another time)

Here are a few examples of my cakes, as you can see I am a baker, not a photographer!

I now need to do some baking in the next few days, question is - what to bake??? Hmmmm.......