MEET: Valeri and Christina of Queen of Heart Cupcakes

Today we talk to the ladies behind Queen of Heart Cupcakes, a delectable and delicious new business creating beautiful and unique cakes. They talk to us about how the business was created, their favourite cupcake design and dreams of owning a brand new sparkly kitchen!

Tell us a bit about Queen of Hearts Cupcakes

Queen of Hearts Cupcakes was launched early June of this year. It was founded by me, Valeri, and my best-est friend Christina. Last Mother's Day, we thought of giving our two very good friends (who we also consider our second mums) a nice pressie. We wanted something special and unique but not too expensive, so we thought of cooking or baking something for them. I went on youtube and stumbled on a Sunflower Cupcake. It was a tutorial to pipe the petals without any use of a nozzle, just a ziplock bag improvise. I had a go and it turned out to be a Sunflower (thank God!) so I was very pleased. Did some more research and found more flower buttercream tutorials until I saw a cupcake bouquet. And then we said, that's it, the perfect gift! And so we did..

The cupcakes were hard as a stone, really dry, most of them are coming out of the wrappers and icing was horribly super sweet! But as soon as they saw our present, they just loved it. One of them, Aida, was the one who really encouraged us to make it into a business. She believed in us so much and thought that it was such a unique idea and she just knows it will sell . So every payday, we invested on to a little something. The first we bought was a set of nozzles for £10..wasted tons of butter and icing sugar..practised whenever we had chance and we've never stopped doing it since.

Now, we have more to offer like cakepops (crumbled cake dipped in chocolate), candy/choco bouquets which are our ORIGINAL designs and soon we'll serve cookies as well.

What steps did you take in setting up your own business?

We are both completely self-taught.. Before we decided to make our website, we practiced almost everyday (even until now) to perfect everything..from choosing the best ingredients, right timing for mixing and baking, investing on equipments and packaging materials, securing all the certificates needed and advertising.

What is the best part of what you do?

The best part of what we do is when we get nice comments/compliments from both of our customers and fans. When we receive thank you emails and texts and people sparing some time to call us just to say how happy they are with their purchase or just admiring our work, that is just the BEST..all our hard work, back pains..sleepless nights-all worth it! Moreover, we are now actively supporting some charities namely CLIC Sargent and Oxfam. Knowing that through what we love to do we are able to help them raise vital funds that will help so many people is just as BEST.

Do you have a favourite cupcake design? Why is it your favourite?

It has to be the rose because of all the flower designs that we currently have, it is the most realistic one and never fails to reap compliments and attention.

What has been inspiring you lately?

It has to be our FFF's! F-our Families who motivate us.. F- our Friends who support us (and also play us our taste-testers) and of course, our F- Fans who believe in us..All their nice words, comments and praises inspire us to be better and better and better..

How do you get the word out about your work?

We first started sending out emails to local schools asking if we could be part of their summer school fairs.. Luckily, we had one reply..and from then on, we had referrals, invitations and orders after another. We have been into a number of fairs and festivals and received positive feedback from both attendees and organizers..

An influential local blogger even wrote something about us. We are also very active in updating our 6000+ fans in Facebook and followers at Twitter, they are like our extended family.

If you had the time, what other craft would you like to learn?

If I had the time, I would like to learn pottery and glass blowing.

Where do you see yourself in 6 months?

In 6 months, we'd like to see ourselves in a BIG sparkly kitchen with 2-3 big ovens, XL fridge and separate freezer, have 3-5 top brand stand mixers, more team members, a colourful delivery van with a driver wearing a BIG smile all the time, a big calendar on the wall with schedules of events, orders and festivals throughout the year and a phone that rings every now and then from panicking cafe owners asking us to deliver some more of our goodies because they are sold out!

How did you come up with your company name?

Queen - My second name is Quiencen (pronounced as queen-sen) and most of my friends back home call me Quien.. And since we put so much time, effort and dedication to each and every product that we make.. We call it LOVE. So that is Quien + love = the birth of Queen of Hearts -Specialty cupcakes, edible bouquets and more.

Thank you very much Valeri for talking to us about your delicious business! If you'd like to see more of Queen of Hearts Cupcakes, make sure you check out their website. You can also follow them on Twitter on Facebook.

Read about lots of other fabulous, creative people here: http://www.ukhandmade.co.uk/designers