Caking Mad

My name is Alison and I have had a passion for all things baking since a young child helping my mother bake from scratch from the fresh produce on my parents’ farm. Baking for family & friends gave me the opportunity to try new recipes and compete successfully in the junior and then senior cookery section in the rural shows. This has given me a great grounding and enthusiasm for quality baking. ‘Champion Cake of the Show’ is an honour I can proudly claim after following in the footsteps of generations of wonderful family cooks. My love of cake decorating also began as a child as I assisted my mother mixing Royal Icing, folding piping bags and kneading the fondant in readiness for the lovely decorated cakes she was often asked to create for people within our community. Like many mums, my own children’s birthday cakes each year were chosen from that famous Woman’s Weekly Kids Birthday cake book, there are not many I haven’t made and also ones I have made multiple times! In recent years I was passed on my Mums precious basket of cake decorating tools, which once again inspired me to start my journey into a new and creative path. Undertaking cake decorating classes and joining the local Cake Decorating Association gave much inspiration for the new and modern styles of cake decorating. From surrounding myself with like-minded cake decorating friends my hobby grew and became a bit of an obsession… My home registered cake decorating business quickly grew to the point where I had to cut back my day job on Fridays, and then Thursdays in order to complete custom cake orders. A growing collection of tools and equipment rapidly starting to fill our house and was partly the inspiration to purchase the established shop Caking Mad in April 2017. My dear husband was most supportive of this huge decision for a complete career change and unsurprisingly keen to assist with the move to the new shop. We now have back our kitchen table, the lounge and cupboards in the spare room, now no longer storage for my ‘cake stuff’!