Cakes By Anna serves up the baked goods
Anna Worthington never thought cakes could be a full-time job. She could not have been more wrong.
This weekend alone, Worthington is baking three multitiered wedding cakes and close to 20 private orders, all under her Cakes By Anna moniker.
The 29-year-old said she stumbled into the baking industry ‘‘completely by accident’’.
After studying fine arts in Auckland for four years, the Christchurch local spent a yearand-a-half overseas and ended up baking Kiwi-inspired goods for markets in places like France and Belgium.
‘‘I came back and thought I would stay here for a few months and move to Wellington or Auckland, because I never really enjoyed Christchurch that much, but the place was way more interesting post-quake,’’ she said from her Buchan St, Sydenham kitchen.
In 2012, she opened a stall at Riccarton Farmers Market, the starting point of many Christchurch success stories, with four cakes sliced and ready to sell to punters. The next week, she baked 12.
‘‘It kind of went crazy, people began to make orders for birthdays and weddings and it went from there.’’
She now caters to weddings most weekends and is often forced to put a notice on her website saying she is fully booked. Some wedding cakes were booked a year in advance.
‘‘Wedding cakes are definitely more difficult, more labour intensive, but I don’t get stressed out about them anymore because, I mean, at the end of the day it’s just a cake really.’’
Worthington said she had no ambitions to expand her cake empire. An artist with a spatula, she made all the cakes herself, occasionally bringing in a parttime baker ‘‘for those days where I’m just, like, help!’’
She supplies six Christchurch cafes and turns around dozens of private orders a week. Most surfaces at her pink-walled kitchen were taken by cakes.
‘‘The most important part is that they taste great, so I’m all about taste first. The smell of the cake is also really important – when you open the box, if you can smell a rose, that’s really cool. You don’t get that from factory-made cakes.’’
Fresh flowers and foraged foliage sat on most of her creations. When visited, her decoration shelves were stocked with roses from the red zone.
‘‘My style is quite fuss-free and kind of natural...the kind of cake your mum would make.’’
"Wedding cakes are definitely more difficult, but I don't get stressed out about them anymore because at the end of the day it's just a cake really."
Anna Worthington, Cakes By Anna