THE SPLAT STORY

Once upon a time (April 2001) in a land far, far away (Princes Risborough) there lived a Mum (me) and two little girls (my two daughters aged 4 and 1). My eldest daughter's 5th birthday was coming up and we were having the usual discussion about kind of party she would like. She was fed up with the usual entertainers, bouncy castles and gym parties (I know, she's only 4 for goodness sake!) and wanted something different.

My daughter loves cooking and baking and wanted to make her own lunch (pizza and fairy cakes) with her friends on her birthday. My first instinct was 'I need to find someone to come and run it!' Unable to find anyone willing to come outside of London and after much nagging by my friends along the lines of "...you can do it.......... you always have a kitchen full of children cooking stuff anyway............ may as well do it yourself............we'll help!" So I did.....

The party was a great success, far less messy than anticipated, and all 12 children thoroughly enjoyed themselves and were very well behaved. The feedback from the parents was fantastic and various friends suggested I start this up as company. I had 'retired' less than 2 years earlier from my job in the City as Vice President of International Business Development for an American Telecoms Company, but never one to resist a challenge...........and so the idea for Splat was born..........

Then I found out I was pregnant with my third child and had much nagging from Mum and Mum-in-law 'not to launch a company when you're 3 months pregnant, wait until after the baby is born, don't be so silly you can't do this when you're expecting'......so what did I do - completely ignored them and did it. Of course, if my Mum say's I can't do something the first thing I'm going to do is find a way to do it.

So Splat was launched in August 2001 and since then we have been featured in The Times, The Daily Telegraph, Waitrose Food Illustrated, She, Prima, Active Kids, Delicious, Family Circle and Sainsbury's Magazine about how to get children interested in food and cooking and how much fun cooking really is.

We started out with a DIY cooking party kit (which we still provide) with the aim that any child anywhere in the world could have a cooking party without having to rely on someone coming to run it. I hate party bags with a vengeance and wanted to make sure that the children took home something they would carry on using, hence, the rolling pin or cookie cutter and recipe card. We started with 6 cutters, two different aprons, rolling pins and chefs hats.

My little boy was born in February 2002 at 6am in the morning and I was on the telephone to a customer at 10am the same morning (what happened to maternity leave?) and the company started to grow with us adding on more cutters, sprinkles and fun cooking equipment. In 2003 my friend Alison Earnshaw started nagging me to go out and run the parties, we looked into insurance cover for children cooking and it was astronomical, so high there was no way we could afford it and I was not prepared to go out and run cooking parties without proper insurance so this was put on the back burner. A shame, as this is what I was really passionate about, getting children cooking. The school curriculum has changed the the old fashioned Food And Nutrition and Home Economics classes have been lost to Food Tech where children are coming out of school knowing how to design the packaging for Lasagna but with no idea how to cook it in the first place. Fewer parents and grandparents are baking at home anymore and children are losing the connection with where food comes from, such as carrots with green leaves and mud on them - supermarkets wash them, chop the green bits off and cover them in plastic so any connection with them being grown in earth has been lost.

Then in 2004 Nigella Lawson brought out 'Feast' featuring some of our cutters, sprinkles and cake cases and listing us as a Stockist with a fabulous write up, this really helped put us on the map and enabled us to grow the business so we could afford the insurance to go out and run the parties.

Alison came on board and in July 2005 we ran our first cooking party. We now have 15 Party Organisers throughout the South East and Home Counties with more coming on board all the time and we are the process of setting up franchises. We are expanding the workshops and have a number of After School Cooking Clubs running in local schools. We now stock over 350 cookie cutters plus cake cases, sprinkles, glitters, cooking kits, chef's hats and Cathy, our product manager has launched her own range of Cake Stands and Cake related goodies to complement the range. We have all these customers making wonderful cakes and biscuits so we figured they would need something lovely to display them on. The recipes are all designed for children to be able to follow and get a grown up when they need as we feel that the children should be in charge and have their grown up as their sous-chef not the other way round.

Our products are also stocked in Hamleys and used by the Natural History Museum.

I write cookery articles for Flying Start, Chiltern Families, Raising Kids.co.uk, eparenting.co.uk, Kidzango, All4kids and have recently had recipes published in "500 Cupcakes and Muffins" in collaboration with Fergal Connolly. As well as all that I manage to fit in TV appearances on Sky News, Food Uncut and Dial-a-Mum around the school run. If that's not enough, I've also got my own column in The Times Body and Soul.