MEET the Plymouth mum who won gold at a world-renowned cake decorating competition and set up her own business while caring for her two young children.
Lucia Gallie, 32, hit the ground running with her White Rose Bakery business after taking up cake decorating as a hobby while pregnant with her second child.
The former Tavistock College history teacher won gold at the world-renowned Cake International competition held at Birmingham National Exhibition Centre earlier this month.
The mother-of-two won first prize with her Secret Garden-inspired wedding cake – but says she did not expect to do so well.
"I honestly was not expecting it at all," she said.
"I thought if I was really lucky I might get a bronze or silver; I didn't think in my wildest dreams I would get gold.
"I always feel like a bit of a fraud because I go to these things and there are people who have been doing it professionally for years and I've only really been doing it for a handful of months."
Mrs Gallie makes cakes to order from the Tavistock home she shares with her husband Rob, 34, son Harry, seven, and 22-month-old daughter Evelyn.
Her story began when she decided to teach herself cake decorating after taking early maternity leave from her teaching job a couple of years ago.
She said: "When I was pregnant with Evelyn I had a bit of a tricky pregnancy and ended up going on maternity leave a lot earlier for bed rest.
"I got really bored and it did my head in.
"It really completely threw me and I thought about how I'd always wanted to learn a new skill like cake decorating and I love baking so I just spent a few months with my head in books and the internet was amazing for tutorials.
"I was just hooked to the point where the first time I iced a cake I thought I would do three tiers instead of one and I was so proud of it."
Mrs Gallie set up a Facebook page for her business and then a website and has been inundated with wedding cake orders ever since.
Over the last year the talented mother has picked up two medals at international competitions and has featured in magazines.
She won bronze during her first competition at Birmingham last year and went on to win silver at London Cake International in April this year.
"During my first competition I was stunned to win bronze because I had only been doing it for months and was totally terrified," said Mrs Gallie.
"I went to the London Cake International in April this year and got the silver and everyone was joking saying that I would have to get gold next."
Mrs Gallie says she had put plans for winning a gold medal on the back burner until an interview with Wedding Cakes Magazine was published last month.
She said: "In the interview back in May I'd said I was going to enter the Birmingham Cake International but I hadn't so I thought 'I'm going to have to do it now'.
"I only had a week to get my cake ready.
"I worked a total of about 50 hours over four nights in a row and managed to pull it off."
Mrs Gallie's winning cake – inspired by her favourite children's book The Secret Garden – featured sugar ivy creeping up the cake, wild flowers, hand-painted brickwork and a red robin which she carved and sculpted by hand using modelling chocolate.
But despite this, the mother says she was never artistic growing up and finds the longest part of the process for her is coming up with the cake design.
She said: "I never considered myself artistic.
"I've always enjoyed it and have always appreciated the arts but if you'd asked me two years ago to describe my qualities, artistic, creative and design-based would have been at the bottom of the pile.
"One thing I love is making sugar flowers and making cakes really pretty so this design allowed me to showcase different aspects of decorating."
Her plan for the future is to keep making cakes to order during the wedding season over the summer and to teach other people through tutorials or workshops.
She said: "I definitely feel that this is the right step for me at the moment.
"I do miss the teaching side of my teaching career so I think I'm quite keen to go into tutorials or my own classes at some point.
"The cake community is just so warm and friendly to people; it feels like another family really.
"It's been amazing actually and I've met so many like-minded people and an awful lot of women who have given up careers to do this."
Mrs Gallie grew up in Tavistock but moved to Southampton and London for university and teacher training.
She spent two years teaching history in London before moving back to Tavistock when she decided to start a family.
She taught history at Tavistock College for about six years from September 2008.