Wednesday, 25 April 2012

Cupcake workshop at Afonwen Craft & Antique centre



Back at the beginning of the year I had the idea of running a cupcake workshop here in the centre. It should be simple, fun and hopefully encourage people of all ages to have a go.  We set the date for the Easter Bank holiday weekend, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Not knowing how this would work, would people come? would they even like it! it  was all a bit little scary; but the idea was a good one and really just needed some thought to make it a success.

We were very proud to have two of our children helping on the days. As a child growing up I was very lucky to live on a farm and work in the family business. This gave me many skills from simply talking to people, to serving, and as I got older dealing with the till. Mainly it gave me a sense of responsibility that I was being relied upon to do a job - and do it properly. Of course we never got the best jobs, my older brother and I got the muckiest, the dirtiest and the most repetitive jobs on many occasions!!.   For Ethan and Phoebe there were no mucky jobs, no dirty jobs just good old fashioned serving and some cake decorating to be done. 

The children did extremely well. They helped with greeting people, getting the cake toppings and cake boxes and serving on the till. This was a wonderful experience and in short spells they both enjoyed it very much.  In fact it was a delight to spend this time with them - completely different to anything else they have done before, it let them see us at work, and us see them behaving so fantastically. We were very proud of them both for being so fabulous. 


Table set with cutters, boards and rolling pins. Ready to go.


 we baked extra cakes for customers to buy and take home. They looked so good and the samples went down fantastically.

The cake topping were displayed in jars for all to see and select from. From silver ball, to green and blue ones, chocolate buttons, sprinkles, glitter and marshmallows, mini eggs and sugar glitter.... so much to choose from. We cut our butterflies and flowers, adding glitter for the finishing touches. All ready for the workshop to begin.
Our very first customer made these three beautiful cakes. It amazed me how different every one was throughout the whole three days.
concentration ! this cake decorating is serious work......

Adding fairy dust glitter to the finished cake......




"Wow just look at my fabulous cakes" - these truly were so pretty.

We had boys and girls having a go and even a few big ones came.  Hopefully we showed them its not difficult, its all about having some fun. With a little bit of spending you can get all  the basic equipment and ingredients to play for hours and hours.


Ethan busy at work making monsters! in between helping with the workshop


The work shop was a great success, in fact due to so many people asking us to do it again we are busy trying to schedule in another day. Adrian and I were so pleased - it was something different for the centre, something we have never done before and it made new people come into the centre and see what we are all about. The weekend was full of happy smiling faces.