I’m Emily Friend, a busy mum-of-three living in sunny Austin, Texas, and the jill-of-all-trades here at British Girl Bakes. My caking adventure began many years ago in a small town in Costa Rica called San Pedro…
Having spent large chunks of my life living across the world (from Singapore, to New Jersey, Costa Rica, US, and of course, the UK), one thing that I always found comforting in a new place was a familiar dessert. For me, that dessert was a cupcake.
As I found myself yearning for that nostalgic dessert and unable to find what I craved while living in Costa Rica in my early twenties, I started baking for myself. And then I started baking for others. And then I became known in San Pedro as the “muffin lady.”
It wasn’t long before my baking outgrew my tiny kitchen, so I put together a business plan and ventured out to make a real go of it. In 2012, I opened, “Sweet Sensations,” a cupcake shop specializing in luxury cupcakes of every flavour combination - there were 106 flavours on rotation! It soon became a bustling shop full of colour and wonderful regular customers. The years went by beautifully, and then I met my future husband, and it was time to move to the United States.
After selling my shop we moved to Los Angeles, California, where I managed several cake shops. I loved the fast-paced environment but when I had my first child, I knew I needed to change direction again.
Serendipitously, just after my son was born I stumbled across a time-lapse video of a fun Mercedes-themed cake I’d made back in Costa Rica and uploaded to YouTube. I was surprised to see it had more than a hundred thousand views, which gave me an idea!
Seeing that people all over the world were enjoying my cake decorating video gave me the idea to share more of my experience online. And British Girl Bakes was born!
In January 2018, I started sharing cake decorating videos and tutorials. Since then I’ve created thousands of videos, tutorials and courses to help bakers create cakes they’re proud of, and British Girl Bakes has grown into a community of hundreds of thousands of cake decorators!
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