Well the last few days has been a hectic, although the whole week has been rather busy with orders to bake for collection and postal delivery along with working on the Easter ideas and all topped off with my favourite part of the week – Charity Cupcakes.
I have been dreaming about these Charity Cupcakes for the last few days and today is the day when it all comes together. I can’t wait, can you? Only problem is I don’t want to finish them too early as then they have to stand all day and that wouldn’t be good so I aiming for all the different parts to be assembled at the last minute so that the cupcakes are as fresh as possible.
The cupcakes are to be sold for the AGE.UK charity which my best friend has organised a charity concert on the behalf of. As my daughter and husband are both performing in the concert along with my friend’s children and a few other budding singers I thought it would be nice to contribute myself somehow. Once my friend got the go ahead this week it was all hands on deck. Even my husband stepped in yesterday and helped with the printing and cutting out of the icing sheet toppers. I think they look fabulous and the inspiration came from the wonderful leaflet which my friend designed. You can see more of her work on her facebook page. If you do pop over let her know I sent you. 🙂
Anyway back to the cupcakes, I made the vanilla sponges yesterday then I made a short video, as well. Also, I made the cake toppers which I took a video of too. The vanilla buttercream is ready but not yet piped onto the cakes yet as it is way too early. I dreamt last night that I made the buttercream rainbow coloured so the cupcakes had rainbow swirls on them and they were topped off with the cake topper. Whether I do this or not depends on what sort of day I have but so far this morning it has been quite stressful as the children are playing up for me already and it only just after breakfast.
At present, I am sat at my desk looking out at a dismal day – the grass is snow covered and the sky is grey. I have the windows open to let in some fresh air as one of my teenagers decided to cremate some bacon for her breakfast and the smell is overpowering. If nothing else the cold breeze from the windows has made the children disappear upstairs so I’m hoping they will get washed and dressed- save me a job later.
My jobs for the rest of the morning involves washing – how boring I know but my husband is taking my daughter to dance class rather than myself as they have a vocal coaching lesson booked straight after her dance classes and I am not needed. Yeah!!! You never know whilst the washing machine I may get some admin work done which can only be a bonus today 🙂
Hahaha 🙂 admin work – that has made me laugh as I shared a post on Facebook yesterday about self employed life as a home baker. Sometimes, I feel that when you work from home you can be belittled slightly but I feel that I do a whole lot of other jobs just to keep my business running. I have spent many a late night working on different problems that having your own business throws up. As a home baker, I have knowledge of lots of different aspects of work not just baking:-
- Most importantly I am a mother
- I am a baker
- an accountant
- an admin assistant
- head of marketing
- chief sales person
- head cleaner
- nutritionist
- the CEO
- an author
- the sole owner
- a food blogger
- a creative writer
- a budding photographer
- an IT analyst?? of sorts with my husband’s and best friend’s help
- an apprentice graphic designer?? with my best friend’s help
I know this will be the same in all self employed work so please don’t belittle us as we try our best to help support our families. I do this job as I love home baking, it fits in with my family as I am always here for my children and husband. I love sharing recipes and ideas, taking photos of what I have baked, running my blog, selling my products and so on. No doubt I have not listed every job that I do but these are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Feel free to comment if you can think of anymore
My love for this home baking has stemmed form my time at university when I studied Food Science. Here we were encouraged to experiment with food and try different ideas to see what worked. This carried on into my work as a Chemist in the brewery – after studying Brewing and Distilling as a Post Grad Diploma. With this job, we had to try lots of different flavour combinations to achieve some interesting new flavours for the beer, lager and alcopops industries.
Looking back now, I think I was always destined to work in a place where I could let my creativity run wild and being a home baker is the perfect outlet for me 🙂 I hope you keep following me in this venture and wait to see what I produce next from the depths of my kitchen and my baking mind.