The Couture Baker cake decorating after school club has arrived in Billericay, Essex!
Finally, after months of planning, The Couture Baker beginners cake decorating after school club launched in Essex in June 2022. It was everything I expected it would be. Creative, inventive, messy, fun and at times very noisy!
It felt good to branch out from my normal comfort of Wedding cake making. A career I adore but one that is quite seasonal. I therefore craved another creative sister business to keep me busy outside of wedding season and that would fit around my young, demanding family. The idea of the after school cake decorating club came to me in a pub in Stock on a date night with my husband back in December 2021! We were a few months out of lockdown and after school clubs were back up and running after years of fragmented schooling at my son's school. I noticed that creative clubs were a little limited at primary level having seen and heard what was on offer at the local schools. My son adored anything creative and anything involving cake decorating like many of his friends. Over the years and increasingly so, I also had many parents of Remy's friends ask me if I would offer cake decorating tuition. There appeared to be demand and the thought of teaching a group of children at once made perfect sense having seen the interest from the child's perspective but from a childcare perspective for the parents. I could just picture the children enjoying an hour of creative fun each week using an exciting medium of icing, biscuits, embossers and edible paints. Listening to and following step by step instructions or freestyling their own creativities. It seemed like the perfect club to bring a little more normality and joy back to children as we recovered from a post covid world, and I knew that with 8+ years' experience in the cake industry and experience teaching my own children and their friends that I was the perfect mentor.
After a lot of research, I pitched the club idea to a school in Billericay and it was met with such excitement. I got the go ahead a few months later and undertook relevant safety training and the ordering of decorating materials begun!
The club was a huge success! It was amazing seeing children have so much fun and being completely fascinated with seeing how cake tools, embossers and stencils worked. We piped buttercream swirls on mermaid themed cupcakes, piped royal icing bones onto our dinosaur skeleton biscuits, created sleepy icing clouds, dipped cake pops, moulded dragons and unicorn cake toppers, created edible beach biscuits and lemon drizzle loaf edible gardens using a whole range of edible medium and techniques along the way. It was so heart-warming seeing children super proud of their creations and being able to share their boxes of goodies with their families each week. Lots of parents would tell me that cake club day was the best day of the week as they knew that there was a treat to be had at the end of the day!
The club will be back in the Winter term and I am soon hoping to take it to other schools in Billericay and beyond. I cannot wait to hear all the laughter and see excited and proud faces at the cake club again soon!
