My name is Wendy, and my business is baking - so you might assume that coming up with the name Wendy Bakes was a simple, short and obvious process...but you would be wrong! There was a lot of thought went into it, believe it or not!
Many years ago (see blog post 'I had a dream' - once again, sorry to my long suffering friends for going on), I spent the weekend with my very wise and very wonderful group of girl friends, where the main topic of conversation was my baking dream and we brainstormed potential names. I liked 'Minnie's' - inspired by my Grandma who was known to everyone as Minnie although she was actually called Florence. Your guess as to the reason for her adopting a pseudonym is as good as mine - although now I come to think of it, my Auntie Margaret was also named Catherine, so... Grandma Minnie was one of my early baking influences. She is the legend behind my cherry and marzipan cake. The other baking influence was my Mum who makes the best pastry bar none, but I couldn't exactly call it Mum's Cafe! That would just be weird. My glorious friend G favoured the name Professor Nom Nom Nom - but if I am honest I think this might have been influenced by wine...
Just before Christmas 2023, when the dream of Wendy Bakes was really beginning to pick up momentum again, I spent another weekend away with the very same group of friends, and so the naming debate surfaced again. Professor Nom Nom Nom never really returned to the running. We bandied about lots of gluten free options (#GF / The Gluten Free Gluten / Freedom Cakes). We tried to think of names that used the GF initials but lent themselves to merchandising artwork, such as Gold Finch Bakery. Keen to shoehorn in a word pun, a much repeated option was Geoff Cakes, inspired by the popular World's Strongest Man contestant Geoff Capes), but no matter how many times it was suggested I just wasn't having it.
It wasn't actually until the car ride home that Wendy Bakes was suggested...just goes to show that sometimes you can try and be too clever.
Wendy Bakes - does exactly what it says on the (cake) tin!