Bishop’s Stortford’s cake decorating diva Karen Burton is getting ready to hang up her icing bag.
Karen’s Cake Studio, her Northgate End bakery, will complete its last confection on Saturday June 3.
In a career spanning 36 years, Karen has created more than 35,000 cakes for special occasions, iced over 3,500 wedding cakes and baked more cupcakes than she cares to contemplate.
She set up shop first in Waltham Abbey in 1987 and moved to Stortford in 1991.
The difficult decision to close comes after a series of bereavements for Karen, husband Terry and their close-knit families.
In a short space of time, the couple have lost Terry’s parents, Keith and Rita, who lived in Watton, Norfolk, and Karen’s father Frank, from Chingford. They have a son, Harry, 26, who lives and works in London.
“Losing three parents in such a short space of time has focused our minds and brought forward our plans to achieve a better work-life balance,” said Karen.
“So whilst neither of us is going to fully retire, we intend on reducing our everyday work commitments and enjoying life more.”
While they will be accepting bookings and operating as usual up to June 3,Karen’s right-hand woman of 25 years, her sister Lin Faiers, is looking forward to spending more time with husband Paul and their family. They have three children and two grandsons, with a third grandchild on the way in August.
Karen said that she and Lin were looking forward to free weekends.
“Baking and decorating cakes for special occasions is a deadline-based business model. Everything has to be ready on time and as ordered. The bulk of our orders are at weekends, and for wedding cakes in particular, booked many months in advance.
“Lin and I have been fully committed to the business because you have to be. You’re either in or out – now is time to be out.”
Karen, who has been baking since she was 16, studied cake decorating and flour confectionery at the National Bakery School in London and has been a trailblazer for the industry on television and in magazines. She is still thinking about her next steps.
But what will not change in the immediate future is her leadership of Bishop’s Stortford BID (Business Improvement District), the business support organisation for town centre traders, which she was instrumental in establishing and has chaired since 2018.
She said: “Being a small business owner for so many years has taught me together is better and communication is crucial, and BID is the only thing that can deliver that.
“To have the support of our town centre’s business community for me to lead them, together with the board, and win our first term and now a second term is one of my proudest work achievements.
“We have laid some great foundations in our first term and the second term is set to build on and deliver long-term benefits for both the business community and town centre visitors.
“My passion for everything BID and Bishop’s Stortford will remain the same, and now I will have more time to give to it.”
Karen summed up: “Now is the right time to bow out gracefully and start to enjoy life outside of the day-to-day pressures of baking and cake-making.
“I have always considered it a privilege to be trusted to make cakes for those special events in our customers’ lives. In many ways I will miss that challenge of making each cake as special as the last. Never letting the standards drop has always been at the core of my business.
“With this in mind, I’m hoping to pass on the Karen’s Cakes recipes, designs and service values to a new generation of bakers, but I’m not quite ready yet to say any more than that at this time.
“All that remains to say now is a heartfelt thank you to all of our many customers over the years.”
