My name is Karen and I’m a cake decorating addict!….

My name is Karen and I’m a cake decorating addict!…That’s official!

So here I am, sitting at home, its day 11 of social isolation and I have come to the realisation I am officially a cake decorating addict!

I have spent every single day since the Sunday before last looking at cakes. And as yet, I’m not bored! If anything I’m more in love with my chosen profession than ever!

Me with my mates and tutor, Ken Christoper, at the National bakery school. Its 1977!

Let me explain. My cake decorating career started when I was 16. My favourite subject at school was domestic science (that’s what they called it in the olden days, it’s now called ‘food technology’, lol). My mum loved to cook and that had rubbed of on me. I also had a lovey teacher who nurtured and encouraged me in my early cake baking and decorating efforts, so my path was set!

I studied cake decorating and flour confectionery at the National Bakery School in London and then went on to work for various different bakeries honing my skills for 10 years before opening Karen’s Cakes first shop in Waltham Abbey in 1987.

The ad I had in the local paper when I opened, the year 1987!

Over those years I’ve made thousands of cakes for every occasion you could possibly imagine! (Go on, I dare you to test me on that one!) In 2017, the year of the shops 30^th anniversary, I worked out roughly how many I’d made. The figures are staggering large!

I’ve thousand of cake pictures on my computer.

It was in the region of 35,000 celebration cakes and 3,500 thousand wedding cakes. I’m not even going to contemplate the number of cupcakes, I fear it would blow my mind! My work has been seen in the likes of Brides and You and Your Wedding magazines. I’ve been on a shopping channel demonstrating cake decorating equipment (I won’t forget that day in a hurry! But that’s another story!).

This is my own wedding cake! 4 tiers, deep cakes and coated and decorated with royal icing!

I’ve written for the most successful part magazine of all time, ‘Cake Decorating’, which included going on the photo shoots with my work for the ‘step by step’ and finished cake photos. That was fun! And I’ve taught and demonstrated my craft to hundreds of people.

Photo shoot for the Cake Decorating magazine

I spend my days baking and icing, designing and creating and advising my customers making their own cakes at home what to and not to buy from my shop.

The days and weeks fly by, my friends and family know, ‘cake comes first’, there is no compromise! Every single order and I mean every one, has to be as my customer expected it to be, ready for them to collect on time and of course taste as good as it looks.

Super heroes mash-up cake, one of my most popular pins on Pinterest.

I am missing my normal life, as I’m sure many of you are! For now though, I’m feeding my addiction by trawling through the excessive amount of pictures I have of the cakes I’ve made over the years.

This wedding cake was as pretty at the back as it was at the front!

There’s lots of, ‘OMG! I forgot all about that one!’ And remembering the ones when the customers reaction, especially if it was a child, was one of amazement with a smile to match! Then there are the wedding cakes I’ve delivered to beautiful venues on sunny days for couples I’ve got to know a little when they booked and feeling proud to be a part of their special day.

Children’s cake are always nice to design and make.

In truth, every cake I make is as special and perfect as the one before, and that’s what gives me my fix, it makes me happy and this is why I say ‘my name is Karen and I’m a Cake decorating addict!’

My shop 30 anniversary celebrations and cake!

A wise old sea turtle! Yes it’s cake!