Colour Mill x Cupcake Jemma

Not afraid to splash colour on beautiful, bright bakes it's hard to miss Cupcake Jemma's signature flair. So it was only fitting that we team up with Jemma for a collab pack that will bake a rainbow no matter the colour combo!

I was baking for fun, whenever I wasn't at work. I loved everything about it from researching recipes, testing and tweaking, trying bakes out on friends and seeing their reactions and, of course, eating them myself! One day I decided I wanted to do it for a living. An ex colleague of mine was about to leave her job at Rose Bakery in Mayfair and she suggested that I apply for her role. I got the job and that was the beginning of what is now a long career in the baking world.

I was approached by Jamie Oliver's team initially. YouTube was still quite new and they were launching their own channel, Food Tube, and wanted some fresh talent to present recipe videos on it. Eventually we launched the Cupcake Jemma channel in 2013 and made it a Crumbs & Doilies operation, making all of the content in-house, filming in the bakery and the shop, as well as at home.

I love that other members of the Crumbs & Doilies team have developed new skills. We all started off as bakers, in the kitchen, churning out delicious cakes for customers and that was it. But now, we have bakers filming and editing content, managing our social media, building relationships with brands and growing with the company. It's also really collaborative and we have fun working together. And we all get to eat a lot of delicious things, on a daily basis!

I think all of my favourite tips are butter-related! I don't own a microwave so when I'm baking at home but have forgotten to leave butter out to soften, I always grate the cold butter onto a sheet of greaseproof paper. It will soften in minutes! The other one is using browned butter in almost any bake! It will add such warmth and toastiness to your bakes and even whips up from room temperature to make sponges.

Aside from the amazing range of colours, I love how solid the colours are. They blend into buttercreams and sponges so nicely, there is never any streaking or lumps and the consistency stays as it should.

I think Swiss Meringue Buttercream is my absolute fave thing to colour with Colour Mill. It takes the colours so well. But colouring white chocolate or candy melts is also really satisfying, after years of trying to do it with other products and only ever achieving a mottled, grainy colour.

We picked this selection because they are really representative of the Cupcake Jemma and Crumbs & Doilies brands. If you come to our shop, watch videos filmed in our studio or even flick through the Crumbs & Doilies book, you will see these colours all over us! Plus, they are happily a really great starter kit. If you didn't own a single colour but bought this pack, you'd be set for pretty much anything!