This is not a popular subject as a “business person” but...I'm going to talk about it anyay. I’ve recognised that I have reached burnout...physically, creatively. You may have noticed I’ve been a bit quiet on Instagram too (or the actual likelihood is, you probably haven’t!). It can only take a few small triggers to topple that mountain of anxious nerves but this time my trigger was a big one - we ruined a wedding and completely let down a couple.

This past weekend, one of our macaron tower parcels heading to a wedding got pummelled by our long trusted couriers and didn’t make it in one piece...but many many crushed pieces. It was a last minute order and the team worked round the clock to try to fulfil it so the pain of seeing 300 macarons look like rubble on arrival across the country was quite a lot to bear. And then of course not being able to come to the rescue a la cake-crusader style and having let down a couple was the straw that broke this cake-ing camel’s back.  

In our years of experience of sending macarons across the nation, situations like these were so very rare, so there is no real way to police my emotions, because while we can prepare as much as possible for every eventuality sometimes I just cannot do anything but accept that sh!t happens despite our best efforts. And accepting that is hard enough, but then I also have to accept that it may well happen again before someone else’s wedding as once that parcel leaves our hands it’s out of our control. 

And that’s where I am struggling. We built this business with macarons 7 years ago - sending them across the country via couriers, and spending a LOT of time, effort and money to figure out exactly how best to package them and the most competent and reliable couriers. We had gift boxes, favours, macaron towers that our trusted couriers were delivering in great condition. Sure, our business changed along the way and we phased out a lot of our other products as we eventually morphed into a cake business hand delivering celebration cakes across London and sometimes even beyond. But I always held on to the macarons...they were my babies to begin with and I wanted to hang onto my "roots", reaching parts of the country with our macarons that our cakes couldn’t (unless at great great cost!). That was all until we started noting damage to our parcels by our previously trusted couriers. 

So we've made a difficult decision - in order to not disappoint another poor couple in the future and have our macarons guaranteed to arrive in mint condition we would have to take back control and scale back which means limiting delivery of them to London only. This is a hard decision but necessary - we lose out on a massive nationwide market, and I would rather that than potentially cause disappointment before another special occasion with the fate of our precious products out of our hands. 

But when one door closes, another opens. That other door for us is our Vegan cake range. Having a completely new market to cater for is juicing up my creative brain cells and injecting some much needed mojo back into my cake-spirit.

To snap myself out of the funk, I tapped back into the beginning of my cake-journey...doughnut-topped drip cakes. So first up - vegan doughnuts! These vegan baked doughnuts are egg-less, dairy-free and glazed in a delicious and cute pink icing. Now onto the freakshake cupcakes!

Decorating this Vegan Oreo Freakshake Cake has been therapeutic. Layers of vegan chocolate sponge, Oreo vegan frosting, vegan doughnuts and a Freakshake cupcake with vegan chocolate drip and sprinkles...it’s making me smile just looking at it. 

As much as I’d love to think I can just bake my way out of this burn-out, I need some time away to recharge. Like an actual real holiday, with my husband and little X-ray, to be just us, and come back as a better, brighter me. Sooo I may go quiet again, you won't notice again, and I'll be back and you probably DGAF but I'll go on pretending you'll miss me and treat you with some irrelevant smug holiday spam.

Lots of love,

Reshmi xoxo