My name is Alicia and I am a ‘Cakeaholic’. I am a wife to a wonderful husband (and cake tin washer) and mum to three young children living in the Hunter Valley. Like most cake decorators, I stumbled across the ‘caking world’ when I had children. My eldest was born and I was the ‘no sugar’, mostly organic type of new mum – poor kid was lucky to even get a cake. Agggh – it was a bland, ugly round boring cake.. Three years later my daughter was born. I was more relaxed as a mum and all I wanted to do was bake her a ‘pretty cake’. My inner ‘party planner’ and ‘cake decorator’ was discovered. I decided on a Ladybug theme party and knowing nothing about cakes, I picked the worse two colours for a beginner (red & black). I had no idea you could buy the fondant pre-coloured, I didn’t even know it was called fondant, I just thought of it as that ‘icing on wedding cakes’. An obsene amount of colour later and I had a greyish pink ladybug. I was a so disappointed and ready to quit. Lo and behold, the colour developed some more after a few hours (I had no idea gel colour does that) and it was now actually a red & black ladybug. I was delighted and it was ‘game on’ again…oh and didn’t I think I was just amazing and the ‘best cake maker’ ever! Looking back now at the bumpy ladybird, the cake was no where near as good as I thought and I was not even close to the best cake maker ever. The ‘experienced cake decorator in me today ‘sees all the faults when I look at this picture now, but it also makes me smile, as this was the cake that started it all.