I have never been to school or had any lessons in cake making, but I learned from the best with my mum. She always made for me and my siblings fantastic birthday cakes when we were growing up better than anything you could get on a supermarket shelf. She was so good even parents from our village would ask her to do cakes for their children. I remember one birthday my auntie and my mum stayed up most of the night making fondent dalmations to make a 101 dalmations cake for me. I only wish we'd had photos of it. She taught me everything I know and in recent years she helped me make decorated cakes for our friends. Since then though I have pretty much been on my own as we don't live close so I've basically watched lots of cake making programmes and looked up techniques on the internet and it's worked out pretty well so far.
