Happy Monday to you wherever you are.  I hope you had a lovely weekend and the week ahead is looking exciting.

Today we are meeting Belinda from Baked by Belle who today is sharing with us a little about her business and images of her amazing cookies which she is known for.  Here is what Belinda had to tell us:-

I have always loved baking. A few years ago, the first cookies I learnt to make with a family member, were for my two boys Mickey Mouse themed birthday party. A few months later I resigned from my job in the insurance industry after 10 years and thought it was time to look for a job closer to home. I started experimenting and trying different recipes since I was home and had spare time. My two little boys were involved having fun cutting shapes, helping me and being my taste testers too! I then made some baby cookies for a girlfriend who was expecting twin girls. That night my girlfriends were all encouraging me to start selling them and my response was “Who is going to pay for a biscuit? you girls are crazy it will never happen!”  I posted these photos on my Facebook page and started getting messages from friends enquiring if they could place an order. I still rememebr the first order I received. I ran outside to my husband in excitement letting him know that people actually want to buy these from me.  And as they say the rest is history!

I never thought I would be working from my own home and 2 years on I still have the passion, love and drive for my baking and decorating.  I have an amazing family that has been behind me all the way along with a fantastic group of friends. I never thought I had a creative side but my sister soon reminded me about my jewellery making that I once sold several years ago so I guess it has always been there…somewhere! I have been given the most amazing oppurtunities with my work and I have loved all the beautiful people I have met along the way.

 I feel honoured to have made cookies for so many wonderful people & charities. I would have to say one of my favourite cookies I have made were my ruffled flower cookies for Samantha Wills. It was so exciting to see her writing about my cookies on her Instagram, Twitter & Facebook. Someone as successful as herself was writing about little old me!

To see more of Belinda’s fantastic cookies you can visit her facebook page here or find her on instagram or twitter.

Welcome to another Monday on the blog!  Today I am featuring the lovely Karen who owns Sweet ‘n’ Pretty here in my hometown of Sydney.

While Karen makes gorgeous cakes today I am featuring some of the stunning cookies as part of my month of cookies and biscuits for October.    Here is what Karen had to tell me about her business and love of creating.

I owe my love for cookie making to the ‘world wide web’.  I stumbled on some amazing images of cookies about 2 years ago that I had never ever seen before and given my major problem with OCD (hahah) it was a challenge that I really wanted to take on and after starting to make them that very next day I have just gone from better to better.  There is an infinite limit to the ideas of new cookies and of course my lovely customers also come up with orders or things they want.

 I started cake decorating around 25 years ago after being inspired by my mum who used to make lovely wedding cakes just as a hobby.  I took a few cake decorating courses and was encouraged by my teacher to enter my first Christmas cake at a local show and I won first prize in the novice section. I made a couple of cakes for family and friends, but then it was all put on hold for a few years whilst I had a family.  So further down the track when the kids had all left home, I seemed to drift back into making cakes for family and friends again, but they seem to have gotten a bit better along the way and thanks to my daughter Jayde – the lovely creator and owner of Little Paper Lane – who totally encouraged me to do it as my own business – I did not seem to look back.  So I picked Sweet ‘n’ Pretty as the name and it went from there.  So I am pretty well self taught and love to find new ideas for cakes.  I love the prettier cakes, and try to avoid novelty cakes.  So now I am at a point where the cookies are taking over the cakes.

I was approached quite a while back by a lady who used to come into Little Paper Lane (I help my daughter out for 2 days of the week) and we got talking about The Day of Dead Cookies and how much she would like to order some, so I went home and put on my thinking cap and searched “www” for sugar skulls and there was another world full of them.  They absolutely fascinated me as it was just going to be an extension of my love of ‘doodling’ on paper.  My sugar skulls would have to be my fav cookie at the moment and I can see as I compare them from when I made my first skull cookie to the ones I am doing today and there is no comparison.  I just recently completed an order for sugar skull cookies for Samantha Wills to use as her media release for her latest jewellery which included skulls.

Happy Monday everyone – how was your weekend?  We have been enjoying a long weekend here in Sydney and it is the end of school holidays meaning I will hopefully have more blogging time now kids are back at school.

Today on my Monday Favourite I am bringing you some beautiful work by Lara & Tanya at Mudgee Made in country NSW.  During the month of October I am showcasing a few of the wonderful dessert ladies that specialise in desserts other than cakes!  Lara & Tanya specialises in Macaron’s and here is what they told me about her business and love of Mac’s.

When did you find a passion for macaron making?

I love cookbooks, and started seeing increasing numbers of macaron recipes and thought I would give them a try for Mothers’ Day 2011. They were delicious, and not currently available in our region, so we decided to make them for the local Farmer’s Market.  They were an absolute hit, and while we are still making them for the markets, we are increasingly making them for dessert tables, high teas, weddings, birthdays, etc.  We started off with three basic flavours – chocolate, strawberry and lemon – but have created more than 60 different flavours, including special occasion macarons for Christmas, Easter and Valentines Day

Tell us a little bit more about your business, how long have you had it and how did it get started

 We met in Mothers’ Group with our first babies and quickly became close friends as we live on nearby farms and both share a passion for cooking.  We were both looking for a business we could run from home, which would allow us to raise our young families and work to our own pace.  So we came up with the concept of Mudgee Made, offering delicious and wholesome Australian and international foods. We started off catering for small events, but now can cater for weddings of up to 250 guests. In addition to our catering services, we offer beautiful cakes for all events, macarons our specialty and will include homegrown David Austin roses from this spring.  A career highlight for us was having our macarons featured in Country Style Magazine (with our Christmas range of macarons – Christmas pudding, white christmas, candy cane and brandy custard flavours) – and having one of our wedding towers featured in Cosmo Bride Magazine.   More information can be found at www.mudgeemade.com.au or on our Facebook page.

 What is the most popular colour and flavour of macaron.

There are endless flavour and colour combinations for macarons and we are always experimenting and trying something new.  We have lots of Facebook competitions too, letting our customers be involved in the creative process!  As determined by sales, our most popular flavour is our rocky road macaron which features, roasted peanuts and coconut, turkish delight and marshmallow. One of my personal favourites is our “Hot Cross Bun” macaron that we make at Easter with a slightly salty buttery filling and spiced shell.  The most popular macaron colour is probably bright red, but our recent “Freckle” macarons have been really fun and popular with the young and young at heart.  When it comes to weddings, more traditional colour and flavour combinations are chosen – rose, pistachio, hazelnut, chocolate and macadamia.

We are back again today with this weeks Monday Favourite that is courtesy of Lydia from Cake It in Gladstone, Queensland.

Lydia tells me she found her passion for creating cakes in 2010 when she began making cakes for friends and people at work.  Slowly things began to build from there and Cake It has now been busy for 2 years.

The chocolate mud cake is the one cake that is being requested all the time, but lately clients seem to be venturing out and trying new things.  Vanilla buttermilk with white chocolate ganache is a new favourite and also Lydia’s personal favourite.

To see some more beautiful cakes by Cake it please visit Lydia’s website here or her facebook page here.

Good Morning everyone.  I hope you weekend was fun?  I had a huge weekend with our annual school fair that I co-ordinated so in catch up mode this week.  To keep us motivated for the week I have some really beautiful cakes to show you today by Vivienne from Bespoke Cakes in Melbourne.

I asked Viv to let use know about how she came to be involved in the cake industry, starting her business and the all important question about the most popular flavour of cake and here is what she told me:-

 “I have always loved to bake and so decorating came as a natural progression 5 years ago. The more people saw my cakes, the more I would get asked, so I started the business Bespoke Cakes in February  2011.  The most popular flavour is White chocolate raspberry swirl mud , followed closely by ferrero rocher mud cake, which has actual ferrero rocher chocolates crushed and stirred through the batter and the ganache filling.”

I must says those flavours have my mouth watering!

To see more work by Bespoke Cakes visit their facebook page.