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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.

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

After a contestant on one of our favourites programs, The Great British Bake Off, brought to light the dilemma of whether a glitter used to decorate cupcakes was truly edible, the cake world has descended into chaos and confusion! So we thought we’d shed a little light on the matter and try to clear up any misunderstandings on one of the industry’s most used products…

The issue…

In recent guidelines on edible glitter and dust, the FSA have now decided that in order for a product to be sold as “edible” the ingredients must all be digested by the body. They have recommended that non-toxic glitter be used on cakes for decorative purposes only and should not be intended for consumption.

In most cases cake glitters are in fact non-digestible so can no longer be described as “edible”. While the majority of glitters on the market are non-toxic and will not cause any harm to anyone eating them, there are a number of products available out there that are misleading in their marketing and description. So it is important to find out the ingredients of a glitter before purchasing – these should be readily available from your supplier so don’t hesitate to check with them if you can’t see anything outlining this.

Our products…

For this reason we have reclassified the glitters we sell as “non-toxic”, so as not to mislead our customers, and avoid any confusion.

The glitters we sell are made by EdAble Art. Certification from Trading Standards of the EdAble Art glitters’ safety is freely available and the company works hard to keep up to date with new regulations and legislation.

So, to put it plainly, while the products are not considered to be a food item under The Food Safety Act 1990 they can be consumed without injurious effects and Trading Standards results indicate that the range of glitters is safe for consumption.

Please be assured that there is no threat to health in eating our glitters on a cupcake or as decoration on a cake, as they are intended, in small amounts. They’re made up of two materials known as Mica (E555) and Titanium Dioxide (E171), both of which are permitted additives, as outlined by the FSA.

We’ll do our very best to keep up to date with any changes to classifications and regulations of any of the products we sell and we’ll make sure you’re the first to know about anything and everything we find!

Our experience…

We have supplied and used these glitters to pretty up our cakes for a number of years without ever having experienced any problems. Lots of other companies in the industry use them and as far as we are aware, there have been no incidents of anyone suffering as a result of using them.

While we think EdAble Art glitter is safe to eat in small amounts, we also feel it is our responsibility to let you know as much as possible about it and give you the latest news on the subject, as well as our honest opinion. So you can decide whether you’d like to use it or not!

More information…

For more information on the subject please see the FSA’s recent article on edible glitter and dust guidelines HERE

An article on the moment the issue was brought to light HERE!

And, of course, please don’t hesitate to get in contact with us if you’d like any more clarification on our products and what you should/shouldn’t be using.

hello@bluedoorbakery.co.uk

We hope this helps make things a little clearer. Together we can get over Glittergate!

Jenny x

Calling all of you Blue Door Bakery cupcake entrepreneurs! If you’ve been on a Blue Door Bakery full day class and are have started your own cupcake business, we’d love to invite you to do a guest post for our blog.

This is really great coverage for your business and it’s really good for your search engine optimisation to have your website link appear on other web pages. We’re looking for original content that our cupcake fans would enjoy reading. This could be a photo of some of your original work with a little guide on how to achieve the same effect. It could be a round up of photos of amazing, random or bizarre cupcakes (these obviously need to be credited accordingly and be used with permission of the owner). An original or adapted recipe or could be a list of your favourite original tips and tricks that you’ve picked up. Anything you think our cupcake fans would like to read about.

Please email your submissions to blog@bluedoorbakery.co.uk, with a link to your website and letting us know when you attended a full day class with us. We may not be able to use everything that is sent, but we’ll let you know if, and when, we’ll be using yours. There’s no time limit on this, just send your emails as and when you have something to say!

We can’t wait to hear from you!

How are your resolutions going on day 17 of the new year? Holding fast we hope. If not, have a cake anyway, it makes every grey January day better. 

If you’re thinking of a career change for 2011, here’s some more inspiration for you. Today’s blog is from Sarah at Bake180, another new cupcake businesses who has had a helping hand from our Cupcake Business Workshops.

 

I had been baking for friends and family since April 2010 when I was getting more and more orders but needed help with the “business” side of things, so I booked in for the Blue Door Bakery class, which helped me immensely with sorting out my pricing as I had been a busy fool for too long to make it a business I needed to think of it in that way, it helped me think about my brand and the direction I wanted to go in, which wasn’t the same direction as Blue Door Bakery or other people at the class, however it just shows there are niches for everyone and what doesn’t work for one business is exactly what another business might really thrive in.

I enjoy doing smaller orders and fetes and events, I know for others they prefer larger orders and weddings predominately.  I love doing children’s parties, the fun novelty side of cupcakes which is where I am slightly different.

The workshop was a clear indicator into the requirements needed to run your business, what’s necessary to trade what isn’t. All in all it was an amazing day and I got to meet like minded people, some of which I keep in touch with and we see how each other is getting on.

Sarah 07599403600
www.Bake180.co.uk
www.facebook.com/cookies.cupcakes

Here’s some more inspiration for you on this wet Wednesday, if you’re thinking of a career change for 2011.

Today’s blog is from Jenny at Nom Nom, another new cupcake businesses who has had a helping hand from our Cupcake Business Workshops. Jenny is so lovely and kind, her blog made me a bit over emotional!

After losing my marketing job in May 2010 I fell into cupcakes when a lovely (and very trusting) friend asked me to do her wedding cupcakes. Apart from knowing I didn’t want to go into another dead-end job I had no clue where to go from here, just that it would be a dream of mine (and most peoples’) to make a living doing something I really enjoyed. With the faint hope that I’d go self-employed, and the unbelievable support from my family, I went on a brilliant Business Link course and booked into one of Sarah’s cupcake decorating workshops, on the recommendation of another lovely friend. I muddled my way through finding out all the necessary procedures and taking the steps you need to make cakes from home (often finding out I’d missed something along the way). I spent so much time baking and buying unnecessary things, while trying to please every man and his dog with any number of cakes they desired and whenever they desired them, at discounted prices. By the time I got round to the cupcake decorating workshop I thought I may be told a lot of things I already knew how to do. How wrong I was! The amount of tips and tricks I find myself using that Sarah taught us every time I bake is ridiculous, and what an improvement!

After this I remembered the legendary words of Bob Howard at Business Link… “If you find someone doing what you do really well, copy them and everything they do, and if they offer you advice, snatch their hand off” And that is the most brilliant thing about Sarah and Blue Door Bakery. They are the best at what they do and you don’t need to copy them, or snatch their hand off. They willingly offer you precious and invaluable information about starting your own business at the touch of a button! So I immediately booked onto the business workshop…

At the workshop there were 7 of us, all at different stages of starting our own business in cakes and cupcakes, and all from different areas (some miles away – a testament to the quality!). Sarah very clearly went through how to get started (Dear Lord, this would’ve been helpful a few months previous), taking us through creating a business plan (Bob would be proud), finances and information on registering/courses. She answered all questions asked and could pass for a career advisor with the knowledge she has acquired from somewhere. Then we went on to all areas of advertising and marketing through to suppliers and target market.

For me, it was worth every penny and more despite the fact that I’d gone through a lot of the legal bits and bobs. It opened my eyes to so many areas I’d been going wrong, or needed to tweak, as well as showing me what and how to offer, to best represent the service I WANT to provide, rather than what I think people want. It’s made me approach the business in a completely different way and shown me how to get the best out of my business and that you need to change things that aren’t working, not cling to them because you like them. Whenever I feel it’s too difficult and I’m not sure I can make it work I think of how quickly Sarah has built up her business and how successful she is. Then take out my workshop notes and think about what I need to work on. And Sarah is always willing to offer further advice, I do sometimes wonder how she stays so calm and polite with everyone.

I’m still in the early stages but I’d go as far as saying I think the workshop has stopped me dwindling in them for the next year, and possibly even giving up through not knowing which direction to head in. It’s such a viable business and people want cupcakes so you can do it!

If you haven’t worked it out by now, I’d recommend this workshop to anyone who has a slight inkling that they may like to make cupcakes for a living, or even for a little extra alongside another job. Even with the varied stages of people in the workshop, every question was answered and speaking to others in similar situation is priceless. It’s unbelievable how differently people go about things, and so helpful to see things from a completely different perspective in terms of seeing your business as it appears to others. Sarah is so professional and confident in her work that its infectious, you will leave feeling like you can make this work and it’s not a million miles away.

When I started out I just wanted to make the tastiest cupcakes and perfect every single one, regardless of how long it took me. I’m still very new to it and trying to find my U.S.P. (YUK marketing past!). But the thing that really floats my boat is contributing to someone’s big day; being asked to make a very important part of (what some consider) the most important day of a girl’s life. I adore baking and making things look pretty, so this is the heart of what I do, add this to a real desire to produce something that makes someone’s wedding day that bit more spectacular (along with a huge whack of perfectionism), and you have what I’m trying to achieve with Nom Nom. It means a lot to me that people trust me to do this and if I can make a living out of combining my love for baking with making people happy, you have a life-long very happy Jenny May. I don’t just make cupcakes, I ONLY make cupcakes I think people will absolutely adore and enjoy, and I intend to do so for a very long time.

www.facebook.com/cakes.nomnom

www.twitter.com/nomnom_cupcakes

www.nomnomcupcakes.co.uk

cakes.nomnom@gmail.com

Thanks so much Jenny, so pleased you loved it. More blogs to follow! x

–
Click here to become a fan on Facebook
and see our latest creations and workshops!

www.bluedoorbakery.co.uk
telephone 07876 708 715

To welcome in 2011, we thought we’d say hello to some new cupcake businesses who’ve had a helping hand from our Cupcake Business Workshops and Cupcake Decorating Workshops.

If you’ve made a new year resolution to ditch the 9 to 5 and set up your own cupcake business, we’re here to help. We can give you all the advice you could ever need to help you start the new year with a flourish of sprinkles (and profit of course). We hope the blog posts that are coming up will inspire you to make your cupcake dreams a reality this year!

Our first post is from the lovely Andrea and Leigh at Two Cousins Bakery in Coventry.

Before signing up for one of Blue Door Bakery’s courses, we had been making cupcakes for ourselves and our friends and family. To be fair, our cakes were lacking in ideas and  we wanted to know how to pipe and decorate with a little more flair and professionalism. Whilst booking the decorating course, we also decided to take the plunge and book one of the cupcake business courses, as we had both been thinking about a change of career.

The initial decorating course was not only great fun but we learnt a huge amount. Sarah showed us how to hand make decorations, something we had never tried before. That first course certainly boosted our confidence and we couldn’t wait to get stuck in and try our hand at using our new found skills at home.  

It was a few months later that we attended the cupcake business course and it was also around that time that we had decided to start our own cupcake business. The course was relaxed, informal and Sarah explained everything in very simple terms. She also gave excellent advice on the do’s and dont’s of building a successful cupcake business, after all she had already made the mistakes so we didn’t have to. Starting a cupcake business seemed so daunting as there was so much to sort out but Sarah explained the steps to take and which things to do first.

As a direct result of attending Sarah’s courses, we now run Two Cousins Bakery in Coventry. What makes us special? Well apart from being the only cupcake bakery in Coventry run by two cousins…..we also offer ‘mix and match’ cupcakes where you can choose the flavour of the sponge and combine it with your favourite topping and type of sprinkle or decoration. All of our cakes are made fresh to order and we’ll have a go at any type of decoration, making our cakes unique to that person!

Website:    www.twocousinsbakery.com
Facebook:     http://on.fb.me/b0ep38

Hope you enjoyed meeting Two Cousins Bakery, more inspiring posts to follow!

x

www.bluedoorbakery.co.uk
telephone 07876 708 715