LOVE A MOTHER Growing up with homemade birthday cakes, chosen from the pages of Women’s Weekly, is what many of our childhood memories are made of! Who can forget the swimming pool cake filled with jelly, the giant duck with chips for a beak or the amazing train with all its carriages filled with popcorn. Queensland Mum of three Lou Duggan loves making her kids special themed cakes but was done with all the special ingredients and the 3am finishes trying to create them as a surprise. Stressed to the max, she knew there had to be a better way! So she founded Cake 2 The Rescue, providing families with cake kits containing ingredients, instructions and everything they need to create a homemade masterpiece. Today Lou has helped over 50,000 families pour their love into a homemade cake the easy way, so we chat to Lou about how this all came about and why Cake 2 The Rescue has been such a success. Firstly, what a brilliant idea. Cake making for a novice is hard and social media has placed such unrealistic expectations on parents too. Your kits allow parents of ‘all baking skills levels’ to have a go. Tell us about how it all began. I can’t believe it’s been 12 years since two mums decided to create a business together. I was such a Martha Stewart type mum that we started off trying to work out how to ship me to everyones home each time they had a party. That’s when we came up with the kit concept. The genius behind the concept is my lack of cake decorating skills. I’m a Geologist, Engineer and Interior Designer with no cooking qualifications at all. We knew if I could design the kits and make them, then so could every other parent. My lack of skills became our secret weapon. You’ve got three daughters and you’re originally from Scotland. Tell us a bit more about you and your family.
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When they say your kids will grow up in the blink of an eye, I couldn’t agree more. My girls are 21, 19 and 17 and hubby and I have been
married for 25 years in October! We live in the Gold Coast hinterland with our Covid Cavi George. We are at the beautiful stage where we are now more like friends living together, but I still set the boundaries and pay for everything hahaha!!! You created the business to rescue families from the stress of cake making, but realistically it also rescued you. How? I really struggled with being a stay at home mum if I’m honest. We had 3 girls in 4.5 years and in those early years I lost myself. I was bored and lonely and my self-confidence was hanging by a thread. So when my youngest was ready for school I jumped on a friends suggestion to start a business together. Cake 2 The Rescue gave me a place to stand in the world again, a place to remember all the things I loved about me. The Facebook Cake 2 The Rescue Support Group is a place where mums can cheer on total stranger’s creations, ask questions and celebrate imperfection! With more than 13k members, you must see some amazing creations come to life here, or some great fails. Care to share any? I’m so so proud of our carer community. I’m just not willing to tolerate those faceless bullies living in the comments of social media so we call it the kindest group on Facebook. Our group’s not really a place for those intimidating 3D tiered masterpieces. The stories are about parents who’ve never made a cake before who are just so damn proud and blown away that their cake kit turns out “just like the picture”. Teary posts about their kids saying “wow that cake is amazing mama”. Our mantra is, kids don’t see crumbs in the icing, they only see the love and time you poured into their homemade cake. How many different cake designs do you have available in your range and what has been the most popular ones? Oh gosh, we have over 300 designs in our standard range and have also helped design more than 200 custom design that are also
