Hi, I’m Carol 👋

I’m a mum of four, a grandma of nine, and baking has been part of my life for as long as I can remember.

Some of my happiest memories are of baking with my grandma, and later I carried that tradition on with my own children. As they grew up, life got busy and baking quietly took a back seat for a while.

Then I hit 50... and something changed.

My love of baking came roaring back. 🎂

But there was one thing that really frustrated me: flavour.

I struggled to find flavourings that actually tasted like the flavour they claimed to be. Some tasted synthetic, some were disappointing, and I never particularly enjoyed working with liquid flavourings either.

So I started experimenting.

That experimenting eventually led me to create flavoured icing sugar, a wonderfully versatile product that could be used for both baking and decorating.

From that idea, my husband and I created Sugar and Crumbs.

Like every business, we experienced the ups, the downs, the tears, the laughter and plenty of moments where we wondered what on earth we were doing. But our little company grew.

And then something rather wonderful happened.

In 2015, I started doing Facebook Lives.

That changed everything.

Over the years, I built an amazing, friendly audience who have never really felt like customers to me. They feel like friends.

And anyone who watched those Lives will know I have never pretended to be something I’m not.

I’d stand there with all the tools, all the ingredients... and occasionally absolutely no idea what I was doing. 🤣

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My mantra became:

“It’s only cake. Don’t get stressed. At least it will taste nice!”

If something went wrong during a Live, there was nowhere to hide. I had to think quickly, rescue it somehow and carry on while everyone watched.

Terrifying? Occasionally.

Funny? Very often.

Perfect? Almost never. 😂

But that was the whole point.

I wanted people watching at home to realise that you don’t have to be a professional cake decorator to enjoy baking.

I was just like them in the kitchen.

So we rolled up our sleeves, cracked on and gave it a go.

I’m sure plenty of professional bakers would have fallen about laughing at some of my antics, but my mission was simple: get people baking, help them enjoy themselves and create something delicious along the way.

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And now?

I’m retired from Sugar and Crumbs, but I’m definitely not retiring from life.

Far from it!

I still want to spend time with the wonderful audience I’ve built over the years, only now we can have even more fun.

The Carol McFarland Way is about baking cakes, decorating cakes, making doggie treats, sharing my dog boarding adventures and occasionally wandering into all the other things I love doing too.

You might see acrylic nails, scalp micropigmentation, SPM eyebrows, dogs, hobbies, experiments, conversations, disasters, successes and probably a few completely unexpected things along the way.

There are no rules here.

It’s about learning, trying things, laughing when they go wrong, celebrating when they go right and enjoying ourselves along the way.

So whether you’ve been following me since those early Facebook Live days or you’ve only just discovered me...

Welcome. ❤️

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Grab a cuppa, pull up a chair and join me.

We’ll give things a go, have plenty of laughs and do it...

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The Carol McFarland Way! 💕