My business is piece of cake

A WOMAN has started her own bakery business after making the wedding cake for her niece and nephew’s weddings.

Vikki Schofield, 54, from Turville Heath, used to work as a private chef but gave this up because of the growing popularity of the celebration cakes she was making as a hobby.

She made her first wedding cake for her niece, Bethany, about six years ago and friends and family enjoyed it so much she started a Facebook page called “Auntie Vikki’s Cakes”.

Mrs Schofield, who lives with her husband Alan, realised that baking and decorating cakes was her true passion and started her business, The Mouse & The Cake, last summer.

She said: “I’ve always baked, even as a child. My nana can remember me running straight into her kitchen and banging my little fists on the table saying, ‘Cake, Nana, cake’. She was a great baker and so was my mum.

“I used to bake Christmas cakes with minimal decorations and that used to be the extent of it until my niece got married.

“I had never made a five-tiered cake before and she wanted each layer decorated differently and it was a steep learning curve for me.

“At the wedding everyone kept saying it was amazing and asking where she got it so I made a Facebook page just for friends and family to look at.

“I then dabbled with baking and decorating for a bit and a couple of years later her brother got married and said, ‘Well, Auntie Vikki, you did Bethany’s cake, can you make mine as well?’

“I’m a perfectionist and because it was my family I put so much effort into it and it really all led from there.”

Mrs Schofield, who grew up in Scotland, took some evening classes in cake decorating while still working as a chef.

She previously worked as a nanny, a personal assistant and a wedding co-ordinator.

She and her husband, who is a head gardener, moved to Turville Heath in January last year and she wanted to bake cakes full-time.

She took a 16-week online class about how to run a wedding cake business and one about building a website.

Mrs Schofield said: “Then we decided to move and I said to my husband if he could find a job as a head gardener I’d start my own business.

“I’m fortunate enough to have a separate room to work in at home. When we moved here it was a small kitchen but we had a downstairs room which I think used to be a bedroom that we transformed into a kitchen and office space.

“Alan has been so supportive throughout the whole process because we were down a whole salary. He has been amazing.

“He tells everyone he meets that I bake cakes and his colleagues get excited when some scraps come their way because I try not eat too much cake myself.”

Mrs Schofield named her business after a poem she loved to read to children when she was a nanny.

The Mouse and The Cake by Eliza Cook is a story which teaches children to share.

Mrs Schofield said: “It’s a very odd name for a business but because I was a nanny for a long time I loved the poem and the children loved it as well. They would always shout out the ‘the patient was dead’ line.

“I had thought of all these different names, such as Holly Tree Cakes after the name of our cottage but it sounded like an old lady making lemon drizzle cakes in her kitchen.

“I’m passionate about the poem and it means a lot to me.”

Mrs Schofield has already won an award for best wedding cakes in the Hitched Wedding Awards, which were voted for by couples across the country.

“I knew nothing about the award until the email came through,” she said. “I was thrilled. I thought, ‘Gosh it’s such a surprise’, especially as the business is so new. It makes me feel very proud.”

Mrs Schofield will be exhibiting her cakes at three wedding fairs this month and next.

She said: “My plan is to continue concentrating on larger celebration cakes. I just enjoy the process of making the cakes and the design process.

“To me, the taste of the cake is just as important as the look. You want your wedding cake to taste absolutely delicious.”