Cake Boxing Guide To Life

Hello, lovely blog-reading pals!
I've not done any writing here for 2 months, which is a bit rubbish.  I've been stonkingly busy with work, Home-Ed, and some substantial home life upheavals and I'd just not had anything to say that wouldn't have included big dull moans about how tired I was.  I thought I'd spare you all that guff.
Anyway, here I am on a cold, rainy April afternoon juggling cake baking, chores, preparation for some work up ahead and teaching No 1 Son some maths.  None of these was engaging my interest very much; it was all a bit routine. So I got to thinking about how to make my day better. And because I'm friendly-like, I thought I'd share my conclusions with you.

I'm always telling my kids they they are the most powerful people in their own lives. They may not control everything that happens to them but they can choose how they react and what changes they make. If my day was to feel better I needed to practise what I preach.

1. Being Awesome
Deciding that you will be the kick-ass fabulous You for the day is generally a good plan.  I like Awesome Me way better than Can't Be Bothered Me, although she has her time and place.  Awesome Me is more likely to get stuff done, and more likely to make sure she fits something ace in to her day.  The act of deciding to Be Awesome means I approach the day in a more positive, productive and flexible way. My eldest approves of Awesome Me, which is a high endorsement indeed.
Should you feel you need inspiration for Being Awesome, why not visit The Bloggess? She'll steer you right.

2. Coffee
I love coffee.  I really, really LOVE coffee. One of the things I like most is what it stands for - a couple of minutes break from what I'm doing, a small gesture of being cared for (because coffee made by someone else is the best kind). Having a small indulgence definitely makes a day nicer. I've gone from instant to cafetiere to individual filters to cheap espresso machine to proper espresso machine and I don't begrudge any of the money we've spent. Proper coffee is delicious. Not to mention the caffeine kick. All hail the Goddess of Coffee!

3. A List
Everything is better if you have a List. Sometimes the List is so long that I intimidate myself, but at least once it's all written down I'm not trying to remember everything. Also, they mean I can easily prioritise things because I can see them all at once rather than remembering in a panic that I meant to do such-and-such before ringing so-and-so.  And of course the MAIN joy of a list is crossing things off it. For that reason I write mine the old fashioned way, with a notepad and pencil. My laptop or iPhone can do lists too, but crossing items off is less fun that way.

4. Tom Petty
Happy guitar music is one of the most ace ways to banish tedium.  It helps if you know the words and can belt out the chorus along with the laconic Mr Petty but fake it if necessary.  Free Fallin', Yer So Bad, Learning to Fly, You Wreck Me... I love heaps of them. Oh, had a thought! There's also Tom Petty in The Travelling Wilburys, and that gets you George Harrison, which leads neatly onto the Greatest Pop Song Ever Written, Here Comes The Sun, and by extension all of The Beatles' music. Crappy days are less crappy when you sing to happy guitar music.

5. Growing Something
Not a beer belly, not a hairy chin (middle age can be a bitch for both genders.) I mean growing plants. My preference is for stuff you can eat rather than the strictly decorative stuff, but to start with I grew winter pansies in pots by my back door and those made me happy too. Nowadays we rock an Allotment Chic look i.e. very grubby with scaffolding plank raised beds and plumbing tubing as hoops to hold the netting in place. But just having a small plastic trough with cut-and-come-again salad seeds planted there would do just as well.  I get so much happiness from having some of my own grown veg in my dinner. I really can't recommend it highly enough. 15 minutes a day outside faffing with the garden does me no end of good.

Not glamorous, but wonderful anyway

6. Fridge Magnets
Built in fridges that coordinate with the kitchen are kind of depressing.  I like a busy fridge.  Ours, as you can see, is full of stuff the kids made, receipts, invitations, reminders, vouchers, tickets, and lots and lots of fridge magnets. They are one of my favourite souvenirs because they don't take much packing room, are cheap and easily available, and I look at them all the time. Especially the ones from New York. I nearly always wish I were in New York at any given moment.

Also, if you are feeling really fed up you can use the magnetic letters to spell rude words.  A small act of rebellious silliness can do a soul a power of good. It's quite important to remember to change them before the kids come in, though. Oops.

7. iPlayer
Thank you, BBC, for the wonderful, marvellous delight that is iPlayer. The laptop plugs into speakers in the kitchen, and I can listen to ANYTHING while I work.  Only caught Woman's Hour on the Jane Garvey days (ho hum) but missed the Jenni-Queen-Of-Fabulous-Murray shows? Easy peasy, click on iPlayer and there it is. Stories, music, comedy, current affairs, documentaries: the delightful boffins at the BBC give them all to us. Adam and Joe's 6Music show was my favourite but now they're off doing other stuff like writing movies, so I dabble with different shows.  I keep forgetting I shouldn't listen to The News Quiz when I'm mixing things because the Kitchen Aid drowns out what they're saying.  However, with iPlayer I can rewind the radio. Modern life is brilliant.

8. Exercise
Just kidding.  No, honestly, I'm joking. I know all the theory about how good exercise makes you feel and how it helps in innumerable ways but I hate it worse than rats. With the exceptions of skating outdoors and rowing on the boating lake in Central Park I have hated pretty much every bit of exercise I've ever tried. Walking is good, because it takes you places. Getting tired, sweaty and wheezing for no actual purpose is my idea of hell. How about a nice cup of coffee and a slice of cake while you read your book instead?

See? There are heaps of things I could do to make my dull day better.  So I did.

Work thoughts

I don't like sat navs in cars; I like maps and roadsigns. I think sat nav makes us a bit stupid - like calculators for simple sums, and not knowing our own mobile phone numbers. If we don't do these things for ourselves we stop thinking we can. I know there are times these things are useful sometimes, but I'm all for using our noggins where possible.

However, I wish there were one I could borrow for business directions. I'm not sure where I ought to go next and if I don't plan things properly I could end up spiralling about uselessly.

I bake. That's nice and simple. But for whom do I bake and what? Shops, cafes and restaurants? Individuals, to order? Market stalls? Wedding and christening and that sort of malarkey? Just cakes? cupcakes, cookies, pies, puddings, scones, squares, brownies?

At the moment I'm a bit scatter gun really. I'm going where enquiries lead me. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but in the medium term I need to make some decisions about where I'm going. Packaging for shops is different to that for delivering to restaurants and recipes good for eaten-on-the-day birthday cakes are not the same as those that will still be delicious in a cafe after 3 days.

Selling to retail places means more steady orders, less profit per cake but more cakes overall. I'm more likely to earn actual wages. It makes having days off tricky when I have standard delivery days to meet. Do I want that while the kids are so little?

Individual orders have a higher profit margin per cake but the orders are more erratic, the packaging costs higher and earning a living is a little impractical, i think. However, I control when I work and when I don't, like not taking orders for out summer holidays and so on. And the cakes themselves are good fun, there's more variety and you get all the nice positive feedback of people getting all chuffed with their lovely cakes. I think this is the hobbyist's approach, and I don't think I just want to be a hobbyist, so it probably ought not be the core of my market unless I want premises.

Selling in shops and delis means I need to deal with labelling and packaging, and need to worry much more about products with longer shelf lives. However, that could be a really good way to get into more outlets and a more sensible income. And there's the puddings range. I'd need to think about things in individual portions as well as whole cakes.

Market stalls don't appeal to me right now. Everything I bake now is pre-sold, so here's no wastage (well, very little, but I can usually sell any spares pretty easily) whereas with a market stall you need to prepare loads of cakes for sale on the same day with no guarantee they will sell. I may change my view later, but for the foreseeable future it's not where i think i should be. Oddly, it is where almost everyone I talk to assumes I should be.

When I've finished the college course I could think about wedding and other formal cakes. There's oodles of money in it but it is very exacting and time consuming. There is clearly a demand as quite a few people have asked me about it already.

As to what i make - I like "proper" cakes, I like squares and scones. I am iffy about cheesecake because the risk of breakage is quite high when removing it from the tin to the cardboard box, and having to keep them in my (not very big) fridge overnight to set after they've been baked is a drag. I do love eating them, though... right, back to sensible thoughts. Pies. I don't want to do pies. I am still scared of pastry. I'm not good enough at fancy cakes yet but that's improving thanks to the college course (and practice). I love making cookies, that could be a goer. Cupcakes are time consuming but fun and popular.

If I focus a bit more I can be sure I am devoting my times and development costs in a direction best suited to my long term goals. Spending a month and £300 on packaging for a market I am not going to reach, for example, would be a bit dumb. no matter how pretty the packaging is and how much i fancy having a play with it.
(note to self, stop browsing suppliers online when bored - that way temptation lies.)

I still think that this is a business I could make a real go of. My advantages are that I love working for myself, I'm happy putting a lot of hours in, I enjoy the work itself, I don't have childcare costs, we can afford to take a year or two to build up the business to a "proper" wage, and I do make damned fine cakes.

My limitations are time, facilities and storage. Oh, and not driving. If this takes off, at some point I am going to have to consider learning to drive a car. Urgh. But not one with a sat nav.

Starting out

Hello
I'm Jay. I am 40, and I live in Leeds with my family and our pet chickens. I bake cakes at home a lot, and I started my own business doing this a few months back, called Cake Box. I thought I'd blog my progress, experiments, successes and, erm, learning experiences (OK, failures and culinary disasters) as I go.

I've never had a blog before and I am a shockingly bad typist, so I apologise in advance for the many typos, missed letters and any breaches of netiquette I stumble into while I learn. However, I solemnly swear I will not use text speak and will never, ever write things like "Wot u like?!!! R U comin out 2nite?" This is because I am an old grump and I honestly don't think typing You is significantly more arduous that U. And thus ends my first rant.

Actually, managing a quick rant in paragraph 2 of my first ever blog is an achievement, even for me.

Other than ranting, what is this blog going to be about? I'll go where this adventure takes me, but I expect it will chronicle my recipe trials, learning to ice cakes like a proper professional, juggling the demands of 3 kids with a home business, and eating a lot of cake. An awful lot of cake.