LISA Wellington may be baking cybercakes, but the end-product is both real and yummy.

Now her York-based internet business, Curiositeashop.blogspot.com is being pitched for the Small Business Of The Year title while she is personally gunning for the Women In Enterprise accolade.

The idea for Curiositea came at a hectic time for Lisa. In the early hours of the morning she baked a Wallace and Gromit cake for her son’s fourth birthday.

It was just four weeks after her youngest son was born nearly five weeks prematurely.

Not long afterwards someone asked her for a party mermaid cake. Then she had a referral for an RAF- themed cake and suddenly the future appeared before her.

She gained planning permission to commercially bake at her home in Emerald Street, York, then launched online. As a result, she was booked into a handful of school fairs.

At first, she predominantly sold hand-sewn items such as bunting and children’s aprons, but then the cakes took over, with loss-leader cupcakes leading to big cake orders.

She joined forces with Susan Tobias, proprietor of Yorkshire Teas, to book space at craft fairs up to last Christmas but also exhibited at The Wedding Affair exhibition, creating a seven-tier tower of vintage-themed cupcakes of varying sizes and decoration.

But then, through her active online blog plus a Facebook page, the orders began to pour in.

But there was a big hurdle ahead. Once Lisa had finished maternity leave, could she cope both with her new venture and her old job as creative business development officer at York St John University?

“To my relief, the two jobs fitted around each other well,” she said. “Cake requests and events were usually at weekends, which meant I could maintain my job for three days midweek.”