Following a two-year stint in Australia, cake-maker and decorator Victoria Forward is back in the UK and planning to set up a new business.

Forward, a previous category winner at the National Cupcake Championships, and regular CakeWire blogger, closed her business, Let Them Eat Cake, in 2012, when she moved to Sydney.

However, following her husband’s recent redundancy, her family has moved back to the UK, and she is keen to kick-start her new business, which will be known as Victoria Sponge.

While restrictions on home catering businesses in the area of Australia she lived in had meant she could not continue her business out there, she spent the time learning new skills, as well as teaching others her own. Forward said: "Some techniques they use are only just coming out over here. For example, there is a big trend for covering celebration cakes with ganache, rather than marizipan."

She said there was also much more use of sugar flowers rather than fresh flowers.

She took classes at a company called The Whimsical Cake House, where she learned how to ganache a cake, as well as brushing up on her sugar craft skills at Planet Cake. She also learnt the art of tempering chocolate.

Now living in Dunstable, Forward said she was keen to use these skills in her business venture.

Firstly she needs to get permission to run a cake business from her rented property. "If I can’t do so, then the business will have to wait six months or so, until we find our own house to buy," she explained.