MY LIGHT BULB MOMENT
Royal cake maker Fiona Cairns
FIONA CAIRNS, 62, founded her luxury cake-making business 34 years ago. She designed the royal wedding cake for Prince William and Kate Middleton, and made the christening cakes for Princes George and Louis, and Princess Charlotte. She lives with her husband, Kishore. They have two children, aged 27 and 23.
THE Christmas of 1985, seven friends and I decided to take a skiing holiday. We all had to take a present costing €1. I was working as a pastry chef, so I made a batch of miniature Christmas cakes cooked in baked bean cans.
My friends loved them. There wasn’t anything like them on the market — it was long before the cupcake trend — and my husband suggested I set up a business.
We’d had our wedding list with The Conran Shop, so I approached the firm with my sample cake in 1987 and was asked to make 72 miniature fruit cakes and 72 gingerbread trees for Christmas.
Today we make millions of cakes a year, but it seemed a huge order at the time. I employed a relative to help me and asked neighbours to collect baked beans cans. After that, Harrods took a regular order, followed by The Ritz. I had been to art college, hoping to be an illustrator, and the training proved useful when decorating cakes.
Being asked to create the royal wedding cake was an honour. We were told the couple were fans of our fruit cake, but we didn’t expect to be commissioned. Kate Middleton was a driving force behind the design. She was keen on the meanings behind flowers, and drew up a list of the 17 flowers and leaves she wanted on the cake, such as Sweet William.
We worked closely with the Queen’s pastry chef. It involved many sleepless nights. The cake was over 1m tall and weighed close to 100kg. It took us three months to complete.
We made more than 900 sugar flowers and were given a room above the kitchens in Buckingham Palace to put the layers together, which took three days.
Today we sell hand-decorated cakes and biscuits to many leading stores and also from our online shop. We’ve even made Christmas cakes for Paul McCartney.
I couldn’t do it all without my amazing team of 130 people. I never planned to open a cake business. I stumbled into it. I still can’t believe it started with a baked bean can.