A cake is a cake is a cake, right? Welllll, no. Just as your average office worker gradually assimilates the local corporate lingo (side note: can we keep "action" just a NOUN, please? You can't convince me it's sounds right as a verb), so is the way with the wonderful world of baking. Ordering a custom cake can sometimes feel a little like you need a dictionary, so let me break it down for you. STRUCTURE: Tiered vs layer cake Let's start simple. So that chocolate-adorned num

It's wedding planning season! Wedding shows all over the shop, enquiries flying in from left, right and centre, and I am totally here for it ALLLLLL. I love a wedding, me. I'm probably catering more weddings than I'm being invited to as a guest these days, but I am no less in love with the whole thing. When I married my best friend almost 10 years ago (already?! gaaah!), we were paying for everything ourselves and had to streamline our guestlist down to just north of 100 peop

When I started taking this sweet stuff seriously, I got nervous enough designing and delivering cakes to my loved ones, despite knowing they would probably just be grateful for the mates' rates showstoppers I was testing on them. It's always a lovely moment when someone tells you they appreciate your work, and when it comes from a complete stranger? Well, you know they're not just saying it to be nice. So when the myBaker team told me I'd made the grade to become part of thei

Over the last decade, my day jobs have involved working behind the scenes to tell a story, being the personality behind a corporate social media channel and ghostwriting speeches and articles that no one will ever attribute to me. I am perfectly comfortable with that arrangement - the only place that I have ever been completely relaxed in the spotlight is on the dancefloor. You know, that place I used to frequent before my children stormed in and destroyed any last vestiges o

Oh yes, that is a bottle of lovely dark rum. I'd happily have a little tipple of this stuff at any time of year, if I'm honest, but at Christmas, I welcome it to the table like a family member. Why not whiskey or brandy? Well, firstly it's because I'm of Jamaican heritage, and rum is always going to be number one for us. But mostly, it's because the smell I will always associate with the festive season is the rum raisin filling for Caribbean Christmas cake, the only kind of c

You might want to make some tea: this is a long 'un. Before I started baking for business, I really couldn't understand why anyone would pay more than twenty quid for a cake. My experience of cake making was essentially mixing eggs, flour, sugar, oil and some mashed banana in a bowl with a spoon, chucking it in a pan and waiting for a couple of hours while the oven did its thing. Then boom, there be cake. No big deal. But then, I used to feel that way about food in general: b

Can one cake really change the course of your life? In my case, yes.

Baking-avoider? Bringer of shop-bought cakes but wishing you'd made your own? This one's for you.

Why I bake. Oh, and a cracking gâteau au yaourt recipe.