ISSUE 2127

When Jacqueline Gill decided to earn a living from baking fruit cakes, there was just one problem - she'd never baked one before, says Tamasin Day Lewis

JACQUELINE GILL, mother of three, was living a quietly comfortable country life. You know the sort that I mean: husband Julian, a Lloyd's broker with his own company in Exeter; dogs, hens, ducks; a Devon farmhouse, pony club, the school run.

Decorating a simnel cake: Jacqueline Gill at her premises in Tiverton, Devon

And then life changed overnight. Julian became a Lloyd's casualty, and Jacqueline's father died, leaving everything to his new wife. Jacqueline and Julian lost their home, removed their youngest daughter from boarding school, and Jacqueline got a job in a kitchen shop. "I lasted a week, but I'd earned £100," she says. "Guy, an old friend who organises lots of big charity fairs, said, 'You've got to get out of this. Why don't you make fruit cakes and sell them at my fairs?'

"I said, 'I can't make fruit cakes, and anyway you can buy them at M & S.' But I had no option. I spent the £100 on ingredients and got a 200-year-old Scottish recipe from a girlfriend. I had three cake tins, a Magimix, a roll of greaseproof paper and an Aga."

Even with her limited kit and experience, Jacqueline calculated that she could produce nine cakes every 24 hours. "I'd put them overnight in the top left oven as I went to bed, then get up and put another lot in at 6am, which would be ready by 2pm and the third lot would go in then and come out around 11pm.

"I had no idea if they were cooked through that first year - talk about naive - and, by the end of October, I'd iced them all. By Christmas, they'd have been a hammer and chisel job. In fact, one girl rang me up and said I'd ruined their Christmas. I sobbed for the whole of Boxing Day."

That was 13 years ago, but at least all the cakes sold and Jacqueline was left clinging to a philosophy that was to prove expedient: "Some people are so brave staking their future on a passion; we were clutching at straws, but we had to succeed. There was no room for failure."

The immolation of life as she knew it was both spur and scourge. By the next Christmas, Jacqueline had made 900 cakes for three big fairs - and had mastered the icing ("We had £3,000 in the bank at the end of that, and were cock-a-hoop"). All too aware that she knew nothing about selling, Jacqueline went to see a friend who could help with marketing.

Cake crusader: "Mrs Gill's wonderful almond cake" created by Jacqueline Gill

"She advised me to boast. It totally goes against the grain, but actually I'm much better than everyone else at selling my own thing, and I do believe we make a very good product. You never go to a buyer and whinge or say 'I can't do that' if they ask you for a cake with a row of houses, smoking chimney pots and cabbages round the back. You say, of course, I can do it."

By the third year, a cottage industry had sprung up but, with 3,000 Christmas cakes, the industry had outgrown the cottage. Jacqueline moved the burgeoning operation to an unprepossessing industrial estate in Tiverton where a basic gas heater of the sort that reminds one of holiday cottages still fails to have any impact on the temperature.

The shelves are sky-high with cake tins, and simnel cakes in varying stages of déshabillé. As we talk, Jacqueline waves a Terminator-style Black & Decker paint stripper at a topcoat of marzipan, flaming it into submission. Everything here is made with the best butter, sugar, fruit and flour, almonds, eggs and Armagnac.

Selfridges was the first big store to take Jacqueline's cakes, followed by Harvey Nichols, Partridges and Fortnum's. "I remember Mr Gates at Fortnum's asking me how I was one day, and replying that we could be doing much better. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'We'll always look after you.' And they have.

"It's different with the supermarkets. When I finally got in to see the buyer at Tesco, he said he'd probably want 32,000 cakes. I said that wasn't why I'd come, that I wanted to suggest he put a few of my cakes in each of his top stores. 'Mrs Gill,' he said. 'Do you know where you are?' I replied: 'Yes. It's taken me four years to get here and these are the very best hand-made cakes.' He suggested that I went home. I said, 'No, I'll sit it out.' I made my presentation and they bought 3,000 cakes.

I've never got anywhere with Sainsbury's, even though I tried for four years, and thought I'd be just right for their special selection." There are rich Dundee and old-fashioned, black-speckled porter cakes, brilliant Christmas, wedding and simnel cakes, and Jacqueline is working on a flourless rich chocolate cake which I'm rather hoping to help develop and test. And there's also 'Mrs Gill's wonderful almond cake', a sticky, damp almond confection with a stratum of marzipan running seam-like through its midriff.

Far from resenting her new life, Jacqueline is warrior-like, exuding fun and optimism. The phrase "We are so lucky" is repeated several times during our conversation. That her new-found luck is entirely to her credit doesn't seem to occur to her because when the river of fate changed its course, she flailed around a bit and almost went under before resurfacing downstream.

'I t has been amazingly hard graft, but we are so lucky to have it. And I never knew that I could do anything - that's what has been terrific. Every year has to be renegotiated because you're only as good as your last cake, but, instead of waiting for the grandchildren, I'm running a business." I don't think Mrs Gill would have it any other way.