Starting a bakery business requires a lot of trial baking. This may seem obvious, but the sheer volume has still surprised me!
For my favourite recipes which I have been baking for years, I haven't always been making them without gluten, so they all need testing to see if they still work with gluten free alternatives. Most of them do, but some do not! That then requires a trial and error search through alternatives that give better results. This was the case with my Victoria Sponge cake.
I am regularly asked for cakes which are gluten free, and also vegan - so once I have settled on a bake, then comes the dairy free trial...a good example of this would be the cheese(not)cakes I make.
And then of course there is the trial of bakes which I hope might be popular, but which I haven't baked before, so they need testing, such as the raspberry and rose cupcakes.
Every time I settle on a bake, I need to photograph it for my website, so some then need to be baked again.
And the consequence of a lot of trial baking is....A LOT of cake in the house! Now don't get me wrong, my husband and I love cake, but there is a limit to how much cake one household can consume (no, honestly, there IS a limit!). Sometimes it feels like there are no savoury meals cooked for a week and all we eat is cake!
And that is where my trusted band of guineapigs come in. Its a tough gig, but someone has to do it! I am rapidly turning into a mad cake lady, who goes no where and visits no one without a zip lock bag of samples in my hand, shedding a trail of cake crumbs as I go - almost Hansel and Gretel style. and no one is allowed to leave this house empty handed anymore.
I guess this is the price that my friends and family are finally being paid for listening to my hopes and dreams of a baking business for all those years. It is payback in sponge cake form!