My Career Story - From Biochemistry to Baking

Today, we will be looking at Ezinne’s career story, a story that has taken her from Biochemistry to Baking.

Ezinne is a talented baker in Enugu and the owner of Cream and Gold, a brand well known for their array of sinful delights 🤤.

When she’s not baking, she can be found tempting Twitter streets with pictures and videos of melt-in-your-mouth cakes (@CakeMaestro042).

I know they melt in your mouth because I’ve tasted them and I am now team #PleaseMoveToWhereILiveThankYou.

---

My Career Story - From Biochemistry to Baking

 

First question, what do you do? I find interesting to listen to how people introduce themselves.

I’m a baker.

 

Straight to the point, I love it. What did you study?

Biochemistry.

 

What was your first job?

Baking. I started baking in school and from my second year, I already knew I wasn’t going to practice Biochemistry.

 

How did you first get interested in baking?

Initially, I used to cook and sell but I became interested in baking because my roommate used to bake. I started teaching myself by going on Youtube and Facebook to learn and it grew on me.

 

 

As a young girl, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be a lot of things.

At first, I wanted to be an artist because I was interested in drawing and I used to draw cartoon characters, but my interest shifted to architecture because my dad is an architect.

I applied for architecture in school, but there were some issues that meant I would have had to defer my admission for a year. My father didn’t want that, so we went to a private school instead.

At the time, Architecture was not one of the available courses so we had to go for the next available course; Biochemistry.

I did not have any prior interest in Biochemistry.

As a self-taught baker, are there things that you think would have prepared you better for this or that you wish you could have learnt earlier?

Yes, I think if I’d had the resources to go to a baking academy, there are a lot of mistakes and setbacks that I could have avoided. I did not have prior experience or a mentor and there was no one I could talk to about the challenges I was facing, so I had to rely on trial and error until I got it right.

 

Beyond the art, what about the business of baking, how did you learn it?

I am still learning the business of baking, I am not yet perfect but I have gotten a better grasp of it.

What I do right now, thanks to the internet, is explore online business courses and take advantage of Instagram courses, webinars and more.

 

You are very active within the Twitter baking community, does that help? Having a network of bakers.

Yes, it does. It helps a lot, we exchange contacts.

Here’s how it works, when I interact with Lagos bakers, for example, even though Lagos is not my target market, there are people in Lagos that order cakes for people in Enugu and vice-versa and when a person in Lagos retweets my tweets, it means that his followers will see my tweets.

So when a person is looking for a baker in Enugu, they recommend me because they see my work and I interact with them, this also happens the other way round. (Remember what I said about the importance of personal branding and putting yourself out there?)

It also helps with supplies, some tools are hard to get or cheaper in other places so if you see a tool on another baker’s page, you can find out where they got it from and they can even help you get it and send it down to you.

 

How did you get into the baking community? I know some people are in WhatsApp groups with others within their category but I am not sure how they get in. Are you just all online, then one day you decide to create a group like Bakers Unite ✊?

I am not a part of any formal baking groups, the bakers I know are people I met online and we started talking naturally.

However, there is a national governing body. They have a Telegram group and organize events but the only Telegram groups I join are online classes. I am wary of large groups because sometimes, there are scandals or they start pitting themselves against each other.

 

Expectations Vs Reality. What are the things that you initially thought about baking that are different from reality?

I started baking for passion so I did not see business accounting coming e.g. worrying about overhead costs and annual profit.

 

Initially, I put prices to cakes based on what I felt the cakes were worth without calculating cost or profit but one day I realised I was baking all the time and not making any money so I had to figure out what was wrong.

 

I started asking questions and I got some insight into business accounting that led me to learn basic accounting. The business of baking became my reality.

 

This happens to a lot of business owners, sometimes they fix product prices without doing the math and considering time and price hikes. Someone I know did not realise she was losing N50 on every product until I made her do the math. She was selling at the street price but offering premium taste and packaging.

 

That’s the mistake a lot of young businesses make.

They come out, look at the market and say “This is what the average person is selling for”, but they don’t know if the person has done the math himself.

They want to be like competition without considering the peculiarity of their situation.

 

The other person might be buying ingredients from A at the cheapest possible amount while you are getting from B at a higher cost. The other person is not labelling his bottles or buying new bottles, but you are and you want to sell at the same price.

At the end of the day, you will find out that you are slaving without making any money.

Some people don’t have to worry about things like house rent, store rent and utility bills, so it is not reflected in their pricing.

For me, as long as I am sure of the quality of my product, I will tell you my price even if it is higher than everybody else’s, then I will help you understand why it is by explaining what I do differently, how it affects my pricing and why I can’t sell at the same price as Baker A.

Once in a while, I go to a superstore here to buy a cake, to remind myself how my cake is not the same thing and why nobody should be comparing their prices.

 

In a business like this, what does growth look like?

When I started, there were no orders, I used to make cakes just so I could take pictures to build my portfolio.

Then I moved on to buying the exact quantity of ingredients I needed for every order because that was what I could afford. From there, I started buying in paint buckets, then bags.

Expansion is growth in this business, you start making enough to buy in bulk. You get to a point where you buy ingredients in bulk even when you don’t have orders because you are sure of at least 10 the next day.

 

Are you where you want to be?

Not at all. I have big dreams. I always tell anybody that cares to listen that I want to open a modern bakery.

 

What’s a modern bakery?

It’s an eatery for baked goods.

I want to own a place where you can come hang out, have parties, eat baked goods, be a part of the cake making process and more. That’s a skeletal structure of what it would look like.

 

If your career story did not take you from biochemistry to baking, what would you be doing?

I would be doing something art-related. My favourite part of baking the cake is decorating, I have an affinity for art and building things.

 

If you enjoyed this article, don’t forget to follow @CakeMaestro042 on Twitter and think about her when anyone you know needs cake in Enugu.

 

Number: 09079812951
Twitter: @creamandgold042
IG: @creamandgold.enugu
Email: creamandgoldenugu@gmail.com

 

If you enjoyed her career story from biochemistry to baking and want to see more content like this, click here to subscribe.

If you want to share your career story, click here to follow me on Twitter (@chaotic_vixen) and send me a message or send me an email at irene@growingupvsadulting.com