The owner of Juci Luci Cake Company – and better half of UB40’s Robin Campbell – Luci Campbell has just picked up the title of UK Wedding Cake Designer of the Year at the Asian Wedding Awards for the second time
Tell us about your cooking?
I’m a baker – I make wedding cakes that lean more toward Asian events, simply because my style and designs seem to fit well into the grandeur and ceremony that surrounds a Sikh, Hindu or Muslim wedding. There’s little more exciting than setting up a huge wedding cake in the middle of a dance floor, where the scene is set for it to sit centre-stage, like a chandelier, until the bride and groom make their epic entrance.
How did you become a baker?
My first career involved lots of travel and when I decided to stop, I founded a cupcake business which quickly grew into a cake business as I ploughed all the money I made back into lessons to learning how to make cakes properly. I took a few classes at a cake school, a government-backed course, and several private tutorials from artists I admired. I still take decorating technique classes now – you’re never too old to learn!
What do you eat at home?
Not cake! I do love cooking from scratch though when I get time, and I fancy myself as pretty good at a Thai red curry.
What was your favourite food as a kid?
My parents gave us a huge range of food that most kids don’t try, and consequently I had a quite precocious palette. My mum made a lemon syllabub that I adored and probably shouldn’t have been allowed until I was 18!
Who’s the best chef in the world, and the best in Brum?
Glynn Purnell is undoubtedly the king of chefs in Brum. I’m a regular at Plates by Purnells and I’m off to Trillium this month for my birthday.
Food heaven and food hell?
Heaven is fresh seafood in any shape or form. Especially served with a glass of ice-cold pink champagne. Recently one of the Indian chefs I work with gave me a feta cheese and spinach samosa. Hands down the tastiest samosa I’ve ever had. As for hell… Bizarrely since I love seafood, I don’t like fish.
What’s the most unusual thing you’ve eaten?
In Japan in the early 90’s, if you went to a bar, you’d get a plate of big fat snails. I embraced it at the time. I’m not sure I’d be so keen now though!
If you weren’t a baker, what would you be?
Before I was a wedding cake designer I looked after lots of different bands on tour and actors in theatres in London’s West End. I looked after the backstage area, the dressing rooms and the wardrobe, and was personal dresser to actors like Dame Emma Thompson, Sir Stephen Fry and Sir Michael Gambon. I worked with Iron Maiden, Whitesnake, the Monkees, the Kinks, Squeeze, Sophie Ellis-Bextor and UB40, among many others, from the age of 17. I loved my life then and would do it all over again. It’s also how I met my husband, who was a founding member of, and still is in, Birmingham’s very own reggae stars, UB40.
Share a baking tip
As a cake baker a huge tip is that you can store eggs in the freezer. No one seems to know this! You must crack them into a container and whisk them a little to break the yolks. I always write on the side when they were frozen too. It’s a good way to save eggs if you feel you may end up wasting them. Defrosted, they also create fluffier sponges.
Give us a nice easy recipe for our readers to make at home.
To get a perfect sponge, weigh your eggs in the shell and use that weight for your self-raising flour, butter or margarine, and caster sugar. This works for cupcakes, too.