Annette to taste a different slice of life
After making cakes for every occasion for 10 years, Annette Howey is hanging up her apron, saying she’ll miss her customers the most and ‘‘being part of people’s journeys’’.
‘‘There’s people who I made an engagement cake for, then the cake for their wedding and then their baby shower.’’
Due to making gender reveal cakes for parties, she’s also known the gender of some Timaru babies before their parents, receiving their gender envelope and making the cake accordingly.
‘‘I’m the first person to see the gender of their baby.’’
After making an estimated 5000 cakes in Timaru, and never dropping one, Howey and her husband, Steve, are opting for a different way of life, moving into a campervan and having their weekends free.
‘‘We’re excited to have our weekends back. I do fourteen cakes on a Saturday. It’s getting a bit stressful at times.
‘‘I’m sad too, it’s been such a huge part of our lives for the past 10 years, it’s the end of an era.’’
She’s seen the ebbs and flows of different cake trends, noting the most popular cake request for the past few months is ‘‘a cake just because’’.
‘‘People are more celebrating the fact they can be together again.
‘‘Over the past few months, most of the cakes I’ve done are just ‘cause’.’’
Howey handed out her second last cake on Monday, to Jess Grewal who had ordered the cake for no particular reason. Her last official cake goes went out yesterday. But Howey said she might do a few more afterwards to run down the leftover ingredients in her home.
‘‘My registration runs out at the end of August.’’
Similarly, Howey’s cakemaking journey has had a few changes over the years, starting in 2012 when Christchurch business Divine Cakes trialled a Timaru store.
‘‘I applied for the manager position.’’
Howey scored the role, and
did her cake-decorating training with Divine Cakes in Christchurch.
‘‘They were here [in Timaru] for two years, and then they pulled the pin.’’
But Howey was keen to keep going, buying the Timaru business from Divine Cakes, changing the name and continuing on. She moved the business into her home about six years ago.
‘‘Doing it at my home is great because I do my own hours.’’
Howey said she’s also done ‘‘a few little part-time hours’’ in different jobs around, because she missed the more constant customer interaction of owning a physical shop.
She said orders stayed consistent during the pandemic but, the lockdown ‘‘made it trickier’’ to drop off the cakes. But in the past decade, the customers have almost always been loyal.
‘‘I’ve only had one cake that didn’t get picked up,’’ Howey said.
But the situation was easily solved, she posted the cake on her social media platform and ‘‘it got lapped up pretty quick’’.