One kitchen, one pair of hands, a set number of cakes a week.

I’m Lulu. From the first mix of the batter to folding the final box, I make every single cake myself in my own kitchen in Harare. I started baking because I was tired of feeding my two children store-bought cakes that tasted like synthetic icing and preservatives. I wanted them to know what a real, scratch-made celebration tastes like.

The rule I have never broken: real butter, always. It costs more than fresh cream and takes longer to bring to the right temperature. It also means a slice tastes as good at four in the afternoon as it did at nine in the morning, which is when most of a birthday cake actually gets eaten.

I cap the week deliberately. When the cakes are full, I say so and offer you the next date rather than squeezing yours in. It is the least commercial decision I make and the one I would defend hardest.

Enquiries come through the form; quotes come back in writing, with the price, the size, the flavour and the delivery all set down before you pay anything.