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This was all a great idea written down in my notebook. Then the time came to send the little feedback requests out after the first classes at the studio. It was surprisingly scary. I kind of knew we were doing ok as over half of our customers come back for more than one cake class. But what if there was loads of stuff we’d missed? How embarrassing.

Then again, does a bit of egg on your face matter? What matters is delighting your customers right? Better to know about something and improve surely?

Our top 3 tips:
1. Don’t be afraid to ask what you can improve on. Learn from what people tell you and don’t take it personally. People want cheaper cakes? Offer some additional, more simple designs.

2. Collate all the good feedback and shout about it. Use it in your marketing and on your website.

3. Use an online tool to make your own questionnaire. We’d really recommend Survey Monkey. It’s free to begin with and really easy to use.

Do you ask your customers what they thought of your cake or service? Have the replies been what you expected? Any surprises?

Thanks for reading. If you'd like to receive our newsletter with more tips and advice you can sign up here: Cupcake Workshops. There’s also loads more business advice and cake inspiration on our Pinterest: Blue Door Bakery (bluedoorbakery) on Pinterest.

Sorry, we’ve been a bit AWOL from the blog for the last few months. I could make loads of excuses, but really, sometimes you just can’t quite fit everything into the day can you?

Every week at the studio has been full to the brim with exciting new classes, old favourites and planning what’s to come for the rest of the year.

George and Harriet, my twins, turned 1 a couple of weeks ago. It’s been an amazing but really hectic year. I’ve learnt a lot about balancing business and life. There’s loads of difficult choices to make.

(Sorry for the blurry photo, it’s was nearly impossible to stop them diving into the cake and get a photo.)

When I had the babies, I decided that I’d try to work only a few days a week and finish work at 5pm. Much as I love my job, I didn’t want to work every every moment anymore. Well, just for a while, whilst the babies are so deliciously little. I’m enjoying my time with them so much. I love that working for myself lets me make that choice.

So, here are my tips for having children and running a cake business without losing your marbles:

1. Childcare. Put plans in place in good time for childcare while you’re working. I know that sounds obvious, but getting organised early on really does make it less stressful. If you’re running a cake business, you’ll probably be working some weekends aswell as during the week. This is kind of unavoidable with wedding cake making. Don’t forget to plan who is looking after your little ones then too.

2. Consultations. If you’re making wedding cakes you’ll probably need to organise consultations at home around your children. Think about booking a few cake consultations on one day or evening. This means that you only need to hide the toys and make the house pristine once..! (You also only need to bake one larger batch of samples.)

3. Make lists. It’s hard to swap from your Mum head to your business head with a moment’s notice. Lists have really helped me to remember what’s going on at work and at home.

4. Book some holiday time off. It’s really easy to forget this when you start a cake business. You’re so grateful for bookings that as you get busier you suddenly realise that you have no free weeks. (Honestly, if you’re branding, marketing and advertising your brilliant cakes well, this will happen.) Time off is really important for loads of reasons but it’s also just an opportunity to spend time with your family.

5. Remember that your babies won’t be tiny forever. Sorry old cliche but true. You might not have time to take every order you want or make a competition cake you want to right now. You can’t get this time with your children back though. There’s no shame in wanting to enjoy it and not winning business woman of the year. (This year anyway..!)

I hope those tips are useful. Do you run your own business and have children? What have you learnt? What are your top tips?!

Sarah x

PS If you’d like more cake business advice you can join me for a class on Starting Your Own Cake Business Class. It’s a day full of practical advice I’ve learnt along the way.

One of the things our students tell us is most daunting is baking large batches of cakes, some having had bad experiences of being in the kitchen until the wee hours, followed by even more hours of cleaning up, and complete panic when it comes to setting up and displaying a cupcake tower. When you start taking on larger orders it can be very stressful and its easy to jump in and start anywhere you can for fear of time running out when a few little organistaional tweaks can relieve that stress and save you lots of time.

All of us here at BDB run our own cupcake businesses or have done, so here are our top tips for baking big batches of cupcakes.

1. Knowing you have the right ingredients and the right amount of each ingredient may sound obvious but its easily forgotten. When you’re convinced you have a cupboard full of caster sugar, the most chilling feeling is to realise on the morning of the big bake that you used it all mid-week for that treacle tart Mary Berry made on GBBO. So 2 or 3 days before, check your ingredients.

2. Sitting down for half an hour and working out how many bags of flour and boxes of eggs you use for 100 or 300 cakes is priceless in terms of time-saving. Keep a record of these amounts and then the next time you have a large order coming up it’ll take 2 minutes to check what you have and exactly how much more you need to order.

3. Make your buttercream in advance and in BIG batches. Buttercream can be frozen and will keep in the fridge for roughly a week so why not make it in advance?! A quick mix of room temperature buttercream will have it as smooth as new. Just imagine. No icing sugar clouds to deal with on the day of the bake!

4. Before baking, set out all of your ingredients in front of you. If warming your butter or milk do it now so its all there in front of you, rather than running between your mixer and the microwave over and again. The same goes for equipment. One mad rush for measuring jugs and weighing scales now is better than 6 mad rushes during baking.

5. The more baking trays you have the better. It may seem excessive but this is when you’ll be really glad you bought 3 too many. Laying them out on as a big a surface as you can find and lining with cupcake cases in one go will save you lots of time later. And if you buy lots of the same brand that stack nicely no one can tell you off for taking up too much room in the cupboard!

6. Believe it or not you can also start to prepare for displaying your cakes at this early stage too. If your display consists of 2 or 3 different colour cases and you want them to alternate around the stand, alternate them in your trays. This takes no extra time but cuts out any late night diagram drawings of setting up or frantic box swapping at the venue.

7. Tidy as you go – another obvious one but getting rid of empty packets and egg shells helps you concentrate. A quick wipe over surfaces helps clear your mind as well as your workspace. To help with the fall out later on have a bowl of soapy water for pre-soaking equipment (but remember to wash hands in a separate area) -this will make grease and smudges come away with ease when washed thoroughly (one of Guru Kath’s favorites!).

8. Ice cream scoops are a god-send for evenly distributing cake mix with much less mess and much more speed. We use 2 different sizes – for flat and domed tops, both available in our online shop!

9. BIG boxes are a must. You can buy heavy duty boxes for 24 cupcakes online which have endless advantages. As soon as your cakes are cool enough pop them straight into your boxes – again they can go in the same order as they sat in your trays if you’re doing an alternating display. They can then be stacked out of the way until you’re ready to decorate – then you can ice your cakes in the box and move around with ease.

10. Decant your sprinkles into pots you can fit your hand in for easy access rather than wrestling with miniscule plastic packets. Another plus of bulk boxes is they’re self contained sprinkle catchers! As long as you’re not worried about a little rattling of loose sprinkles in the bottom there’s nothing wrong with sprinkling your cakes in the box. Hours of rogue sprinkle hunting saved!

We hope this will help anyone tackling a large order in the future and we’d love to hear your tips for stress free baking too! What helps you to be efficient in the kitchen? What have you learnt from big orders? Any big successes or never to be mentioned again disasters?!

Jenny x

1. You’ll actually miss baking.

To start with you’ll sit at your desk a lot more than you bake. I had no real concept of this when I started. Suddenly, I really missed Sunday afternoons spent baking, where I was now busy working on spreadsheets and learning web design (well, muddling through). Have faith though, it’s all worth it in the end and it’s what will help you be a success. It means that you’re spending time on building a concept, a website, marketing, making a plan and all of the other things that will make your business successful, rather than just a hobby that sometimes people pay you for.

2. Buy some really comfy shoes.