A love affair for baking for Raelene began in her nan’s kitchen when she was a little girl. Her mum came from a large family who had a sheep farm near Bracknell and her Nan Lindsay baked everything from scratch. No bought packets of biscuits in those cupboards! There were always tins of rock cakes, kiss biscuits, raspberry coconut slice, fruit cakes, and chocolate slice. Then there was the very special treats! Always a cream-filled sponge cake on Sunday to go with the family roast, there were a lot of people to fit around the kitchen table with seven children and grandchildren going back and forth visiting the family farm. Nan Lindsay had a few cows and even churned her own butter and Raelene fondly remembers driving around Bracknell with her delivering to the locals. 

Raelene’s Nan Bates also produced favourites she holds close in her memory bank, with her specialties being cream puffs and small delicious pizzas, which Raelene is yet to exactly replicate. Her house in Longford was surrounded by every fruit tree imaginable. Plums, greengages, figs and apricots aplenty, as well as a huge vegetable patch. After finishing school Rae went out into the big wide world working mostly in hospitality and tourism roles which took her off our little island to Melbourne for a few years.

She then travelled and worked coordinating tenders in the construction and hospitality industries before Tasmania called her home and she moved to Hobart. Launceston and family beckoned a few years later, there she found herself in a highly stressful role, leading her to seek out the mixing bowls of an evening to relieve her stress. These events led her to realise that she could perhaps make a living at this baking thing! At that point, a decision was made to move her days out of the office and into the kitchen. Her form of stress relief and escapism had now turned into a career she found daily joy and happiness in.