Stop worrying about the crumbs in the icing BY LOU DUGGAN
When you launch a DIY Cake Kit company, that combines everything someone needs to pour their love into a home-made cake, delivers it to their door, and offers 400+ designs to suit even the most imaginative child’s whims, you naturally assume it will be an overnight success. Well, you’d be wrong! Sales growth at Cake 2 The Rescue was hard fought in the early days. I did everything I could to get us out there, but it just didn’t seem to convert to increased sales. It wasn’t until I formed our gorgeous cake kit community Facebook group that I realised what was truly holding parents back from taking the leap of faith to make a homemade cake. Having kids, loving them so hard and wanting the best for them, can leave us terrified that we’re not enough. Add to that the perfect parenting images flooding our Instagram feeds, and “poof”, there goes what’s left of our self-esteem. So when it comes to deciding to make the birthday cake, it can feel like there are only two choices. One, have a go myself, fail, let my child down and look like an idiot in front of everyone on the socials. Errrrm,
no thank you. Two, play it safe and shell out a heap of cash for someone else to make it. Yep, here’s my credit card! Knowing that, like me, most parents dream of making homemade cakes for their kids, I realised that I owed it to parents to find a way to support their emotional journey, not just the practical one to change their mind. Celebrating imperfection Have you been in a Facebook cake group? The ones with heaps of cake decorating professionals disguised as “hobby bakers”? They post 3D masterpieces, intimidating the hell out of any poor home baker that recently joined. Not to mention the passive aggressive comments and sniggering when someone posts a cake that’s not quite on par or asks a basic decorating question! Not only do we battle our own fears of not being good enough to make a cake, we also have to brave the new toxic culture of faceless women tearing other women down on social media. That’s exactly the reason why when people first post
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