Cake Club Bakers Dozen... An interview with Amanda MacLeod

Last month we launched our new feature... The Bakers Dozen in which we showcase 13 special bakers. 

This month the second spot is dedicated to the name on everyone's lips at the moment... Amanda MacLeod.  

Amanda recently won GOLD at Cake International London for her amazing Marie Antoinette cake and has since gained a HUGE following so we are delighted that Amanda agreed to answer some questions for us to find out a bit more about her and her cake decorating business...

What made you decide to enter the world of cake making?
I made a cake for my mum around 20 years ago for her birthday. It took forever, was extremely frustrating but she loved it and I continued to make cakes for friends and family.

What did you do before you started your cake business?
After leaving school I studied graphic design, although before setting up my business I was a student nurse. However after 2 years of study it became clear that shift work and a young child were not a good match. A career in nursing was not for me.

Who and what inspires you?
There are different people who inspire me for different reasons. In the world of sugarcraft and cake decorating, Colette Peters was the first sugar artist I became familiar with and I love her style and her innovative ideas. More recently Karen Portaleo has become my heroine. Her imagination and ability are breathtaking. My husband has always been a driving force behind my business and his drive, passion and enthusiasm to expand and move forward is inspiring. My family also inspires me to work hard to make my business successful. I am inspired everyday by the cake community on Facebook and their willingness to share tips, promote each other and support each other.

How did you prepare for Cake International and was it your first competition?
I entered a competition class at squires Kitchen around 5 years ago with a miniature wedding cake. I decided on my competition piece for Cake International having designed a Marie Antoinette inspired wedding cake. I did some research into the fashion and headwear during that period of time. I also did some reading about the French Revolution and Marie Antoinette which was interesting.

Has winning GOLD at Cake International boosted your sales?
I haven’t seen a surge in sales but it has certainly done a fantastic job in raising my profile. My Facebook page has increased in popularity and this has a knock on effect. I have had several enquiries from magazines to be part of features and articles. One very exciting thing to have happened is interest from other cake businesses and schools to be a guest tutor. This is a fantastic opportunity for future growth.

How do you respond to negativity on your page and the press?
So far I have not encountered negativity on my Facebook page and most people are enthusiastic, interested and supportive. I had my first experience of negativity with the press when my Cake International win was featured in the Daily Mail Online. There were some very negative and insulting comments made. Having not been exposed to this kind of thing, I found it upsetting and decided the best thing to do was stop reading and get on with work.

What was the hardest part about setting up your own business?
The hardest part was finding customers without spending huge sums of money on advertising and marketing. It was also hard to find enough working space at home as orders increased.

Do you bake and decorate by yourself or do you involve others?
I have, up until recently done this myself. As I now want to expand my business to include taking on more orders and teaching I have taken on an intern to learn all about cake making and sugarcraft.


Are there any parts of cake making that you wish you didn't have to do?
I must admit that making butter cream is not my favourite thing to do but it has to be done before I can fill & cover the cake for decorating.


If you could make a cake for anyone who would it be?
I would love to make a cake for Vivienne Westwood and perhaps Lady Gaga just because it would have to be something really weird and wonderful and I could let my imagination run wild!

If you could make only one of your cakes again which one would it be?
I think it would be the designer bags I have made although I am not sure which one.


If you could only follow one FB cakey page which one would you choose?
Ooh that is a tough one! I think it would have to be Cake Masters for the wealth of amazing talent they feature.

And finally, what would be your biggest tip to help any bakers out there still learning?
Practice, practice, practice! When you are learning you will most likely have mishaps and problems along the way. The thing is to see these as learning opportunities to do things better, more efficiently or differently in the future.

Make sure you visit Amanda's website where she has some amazing photos of her cakes and a brilliant blog with lots of hints and tips to help with your cake decorating.  http://www.amandamacleod.co.uk/gallery/

From all of us at Cake Club we send a HUGE thank you to Amanda for allowing us to get a little bit more of an insight into life as the latest celebrity baker and welcome to The Bakers Dozen!

Cake clubbers meet up

Following the launch of our Cake Club community groups we were delighted to hear that the cake clubbers of Surrey had met up! This is what Susie had to tell us about their day together..


"It was lovely to meet so many other cake clubbers today, there were 8 of us in total, I think half of us had kids in tow. There was one 9 month old but the rest from 4-7 then my two at 15 months and nearly 2&1/2. Due to the age of mine I did find I was dipping in and out of conversations to run after mine.

We chatted about how long our companies had been running, the best ways to promote your business for free (Yell and google maps)

One of our members is Leslie from Leslie's cakes, her business has only been going for 3 years but already employs 2 people, so she was giving us her top tips for expanding; word of mouth and google ads.

We chatted about what courses people had been on and with whom and if they were worth doing.

We also chatted about doing a group purchase from a supplier with a high minimum spend!

I left after 1&1/2 hrs, I left 5 still there enjoying the sunshine and great company. Rather disappointingly no cake was eaten-sorry, we failed you!!!!

We all agreed our next meet up would be in a pub with booze!!"




Thank you Surrey Cake Club, it is great to know that the community groups really are creating little cake communities!! If any other counties organise a meet up we would love to hear about it!

If you are yet to join a community group then follow the link below to see if there is one in your area. You MUST be a cake business to join, this means you must have a FB page and be registered with your local EHO.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/cake-club/cake-club-business-community-group-pages-for-registered-baking-businesses-only/148875615286999

Please make sure if you are arranging meet ups with someone you haven't met before that you meet in a safe public place and let someone know where you are going, safety first and all that!!

Once upon a bake date... with Jens Just Desserts

Last month at Cake International we were lucky enough to meet the lovely Jen from Jens Just Desserts who kindly invited us to her house for a macaron bake date!  

Since then we have been counting the days until the big day and this weekend it finally arrived! 

So this is what happened when Cake Club met Jens Just Desserts...

Jen gave us a brief idea of what she had in store for us and told us to bring a melon, a giant cupcake chocolate shell and be ready for a surprise!

So Laura was tasked with finding the melon which was like mission impossible in Worthing! Eventually, after searching 4 supermarkets and various green grocers a little continental supermarket came up trumps with the biggest watermelons you have ever seen, it was so heavy the seatbelt warning light was on the whole way home! But Laura did get to mutter those immortal words... "I carried a watermelon"! (If you don't get it then you are clearly far too young and need to go immediately to your nearest DVD store and buy Dirty Dancing)

Now, we all follow Jens Facebook page, drool over her photos and read her posts with slight envy at her creations, the gorgeous cake stands she uses, the backdrop in her pictures etc so of course we had a certain image of what her house would be like and what a day with the queen of desserts would be like. Let me tell you, your imagination can never do it justice!

Jens house is beautiful and we arrived to a table set perfectly with the prettiest spoons you ever saw, cake stands full of cupcakes & pink macarons and even a green macaron covered bra! 

She has a room full of baking and decorating things, shelves full of cake stands and sprinkles in every colour imaginable. Its like a little room of heaven (and since we left we have all been trying to work out which of our childrens rooms we can convert into our own sprinkles room!)

Jen had prepared mini cupcakes covered in fondant which we were to attach to the giant chocolate cupcake shell ready for painting later on. This was easier said than done with Charmaine showing her stingy side when it came to adding the white chocolate to glue them on!

We were then treated to a lesson in rice paper flowers, if you follow Jens page then you will have seen these on her photos. We were stunned by how simple but effective they were and have all vowed to make these on all our cakes as soon as possible! Jen has very kindly donated a tutorial for this to our Cake Club Charity shop so pop over and download it so you can see just how brilliant this technique is! (all proceeds from the cake club shop go to Baking a Smile - the link to the shop is under the cover photo on our FB page - not accessible via mobiles/app)

You may be aware that last week was Charmaine's birthday so the Cake Club admins thought it would be amazing to make her a cake for the bake date - after all most cake makers never have a cake made for them do they! So between the three of us we knocked up a three tier cake in three counties which was put together as a surprise!  Jen was very helpful in getting Charmaine out of the house on a hunt for sugar (!) whilst we quickly assembled the cake for her!  

The next mission was the macaron corset! Dolly had volunteered to be the model and brought her corset with her so we could stick them on her for a photo shoot! But this proved rather hard! 

 

Word to the wise, never use royal icing to stick macarons to a satin corset, it does not work!! Poor Dolly was lounged on a chaise-longue with us covering her corset with royal icing whilst trying to all hold them in place long enough to set! There were rogue macarons rolling about all over the place, under the sofa and all over Jens immaculate white carpets (dont tell her will you!!)

Truth be told, we probably did "sample" (for research purposes of course) more than we managed to stick down! Charmaine even resorted to eating them straight off the corset!!

Would those naughty macs stick? Nope, you'd be more likely to find a decent batch of Tescos fondant than have them stick on there! So after a few rows we gave up but look at the amazing results! Doesn't our Dolly look amazing!

Remember I mentioned a green mac'd up bra? Here are Laura & Charmaine "modelling" it..  (yes modelling may not be not the right word for this!!)

                  

Did you know the Queen of macarons herself does actually wear a tiara whilst baking?

Next job was painting the fondant on the mini cupcake giant cupcake, Suze is the Cake Club queen of painting so she passed on some tips to us newbies and soon we had knocked up this rather gorgeous design, even Laura managed to look like she knew what she was doing!!

Look how amazing it looked when we had finished!  This would be such a brilliant idea for an alternative "smash cake" just imagine it filled to the brim with beautiful macarons!

But of course the one thing everyone wants to learn from Jen is how to make a mac right? And were we in for a treat! We were talked through the stages of macaron-ing and between us made a batch of tiffany blue macarons. Of course "Queen Macaron" made the piping of them look easy so when we tried our hand at it we looked like complete amateurs! But after some fixing they were all a similar size and were ready to rest for a while before baking. 

And what better way to pass the time than afternoon tea! The table was full of cakes of all sorts including the cupcakes Jen has been posting on her page about recently - chocolate & salted caramel cupcakes, topped with Baileys & salted caramel IMBC, drizzled with a bit more Baileys & salted caramel. WOW these were THE best cupcakes we have EVER tasted and between the four of us, we have tasted ALOT of cupcakes!!

But although they were the best cupcakes ever, nothing could have prepared us for the best cake in the world. Looks like a normal cake right?

NOPE! Its a sandwich cake! Bread filled to the brim with lots of different hams, meats, cheeses, mayo, peppers, pickles and all sorts smothered with whipped cream cheese!!! Seriously this was the best cake/sandwich ever! And we were so honoured that Jen had taken the time to make it for us little cake clubbers, what a lovely surprise!

So bellies full, macarons were ready to go in the oven and this was the exciting bit, waiting for the "feet"! Yes apparently macarons have feet! Who knew??!!

Once baked and cooled, it was the fun part, filling (with an amazing caramel sauce) and decorating with gorgeous gold "pebbles" from Jens room of sprinkles! Don't they look amazing! We have all vowed to try this again at home very very soon and we will keep you updated with the results but doubt they will live up to the queen of macs!

So after the best bake date ever we left laden with goodies from cakes to lotus spread (OMG If you dont know what this is go to Waitrose NOW!)

From all of us to Jen THANK YOU for the best Sunday we have ever had! We loved it and hope we were well behaved enough to be invited back one day!!

Laura, Suze, Dolly (Holly, Chandler Bing) and Charmaine xxx

Oh we forgot to say we ran out of time to use the melon but this is what Jen made with it, how stunning is it! Full details on how to make something like this are at http://www.paleocupboard.com/watermelon-cake.html