Let Your Cake Live: Why This Space Exists

Have you ever had a cake reach a moment where it is technically correct — and still feels wrong? You’ve followed the tutorial, chosen the colours carefully, piped with precision, and yet something about it won’t settle. I met that same discomfort not in my kitchen, but while designing the header for this very page. So let’s explore it using my new logo as a guide.

I began by assuming this space needed to be branded.

Doesn’t everything?

I asked myself whether I was leading people to JL Cake, or somewhere else entirely.
Did they need to trust my business — or trust me?

So I did what I always do when something feels heavy.
I removed everything.

What remained was technically correct.
Balanced. Clean. Quiet.

And completely uninviting.

It had bones, but no breath.

So I warmed it — slowly — adjusting colour until the page stopped feeling clinical and started feeling like an invitation.

I needed to show that I understood the rules of design, so I introduced a damask pattern — elegant blue-grey on cream. A nod to the Victorian and Edwardian eras, when celebration cakes began to be elaborately iced and embellished with piped royal icing and early Lambeth-style motifs.

It worked.

But it didn’t belong.

It felt like I had pinned fabric to the page — respectful, careful, obedient — and in doing so I realised I was still following rules instead of listening to the work.

That’s when the idea arrived.

What if the damask wasn’t decoration at all?

What if it was wallpaper?

Something that had always been there.
Rules. Expectations. Traditions I never consciously chose.

So I tore part of it away.

Not to reject it — but to make room.

What was left wasn’t rebellion.
It was space.
Movement.
Breath.

This is what I mean when I say Let Your Cake Live.

We don’t begin by creating. We begin by noticing what we’ve inherited but never chose — and gently setting it aside until there is room for something that truly belongs to the person the cake is meant for.

The cake doesn’t need more.
You do.
Permission to choose.
Permission to trust your eye.
Permission to be an artist.

This isn’t a story about a logo. It’s a reminder that every cake carries layers of tradition, expectation, and borrowed taste beneath its surface. Sometimes the most generous thing we can do is loosen our grip on what we think is correct. When you make room for breath, the cake doesn’t become simpler — it becomes truer.

This is the first in a series of field notes on giving yourself permission to be an artist.

Talk soon,
Jen