Hey, guys!
Welcome to My Cupcake Addiction's Frost My Life in Cupcakes where I'll be doing a bit
of a different take on the Draw my Life and just sharing a little bit more about me with
you, guys.
So I was born in 1982 which makes me 31 years old, and I'm a Gemini, and I was born in New
Zealand.
So New Zealand is a little country kind of off the coast of Australia, I guess.
When I was 5 years old, we move over to Australia with my family and we settled on the gold
coast.
So the gold coast is pretty cool, it's got beaches, it's pretty warm most of the time
so it was a really great place to grow up.
And I live in the gold coast in a little house with my family.
That's my dad.
He's really cool.
He's really tall.
That's my mom.
I love my mom.
She's one of my best friends.
That's my oldest sister Simone.
This is me.
I was the middle child.
And this is my little brother.
I made him sad because he had to grow up with 2 older sisters and we picked on him a little
bit.
Sorry, Luke.
So when I was young, I was a little bit susceptible to sweets.
I would eat sweets and within 15 minutes, I would be going crazy and I'll be driving
everyone around me crazy.
So my mom and dad were like, "Right, you can spend 1 dollar a week on sweets and that's
it.
Other than that, no sweets".
Sad face.
So I quickly learned that if I got like flour and sugar or cocoa and a mixer, I can mix
it all together and I can make my own sweets.
So when mom would go out or dad would be [up at] back working, I'd be baking in the kitchen.
You'll often find me up in the backyard with my sister polishing off the sweets that I've
made.
Because I made so many sweets, and I kind of have just sneakily get rid off them, obviously,
in my stomach.
I got kind of chubby.
When I got to highscool, I was chubby, I was really loud and I wasn't really popular.
So it was kind of a tough time.
I've got bullied and I spent a lot of time, I guess, hiding in the library.
I threw myself in the books.
I really want to be an author.
I love reading fiction and I love reading about baking.
So I would read about baking at school and then I would come home and bake at home.
And that just took my mind off everything and made school, I guess, a bit more enjoyable.
When I left school, I've got an awesome job as a flight attendant which I absolutely love.
It was perfect for my personality.
I could be chatty and I could be happy all day long.
And pretty much everyone that gets on a plane is relatively happy because most of the time
they go on holidays or they're coming back from holiday.
While I was a flight attendant, I met something I like a little bit more than cupcakes, in
the form of my husband [Aleck].
He was like "Hey" and I was like "Oh, hi!
How you doing?"
So we fell in love.
And it was about a year after that, I think in 2005 that he asked me to marry him.
So in 2006, we got married and we moved down to Sydney.
It was the first time I've been, I guess, interstate, away from my family so I was a
bit sad but Sydney was an awesome place to live.
We had heaps of friends and my job was great down there so I really enjoyed it.
It wasn't long before I started to feel a bit sad.
Aleck and I were both doing a shift work and it made it really hard to spend too much time
together.
So I was still flying but I started thinking of things that I might be able to do that
I could spend a bit more time at home.
My best friend Nina and I had just finished making some cupcakes.
And she said to me one day, "Hey, why don't we open a cupcake shop?"
Now the cupcake craze has just started taking off so there wasn't a cupcake shop on very
corner.
There was just a couple of really select one in Sydney and not many for the rest of the
country.
So we're like, "Yey!" and we started looking into it, looking at leases and looking at
the cost involved but it proved to be just too expensive.
We just didn't have the money to invest.
So our cupcake dreams were dashed and I kept on baking as I always had but we sort of abandoned
the idea of opening a cupcake shop.
Not long after this, one of my other friends was going to the market to sell some of her
clothes so I said, "You know what?
I'll share a stall with you.
I'll come down I'll sell some of my clothes, maybe make a bit of cash and then I can go
buy more clothes".
So one of my other friends had said to me, "Why don't you take down some of your cupcakes?
I've been baking them for ages, especially with thinking about opening the shop and everyone
love them.
So she said, "Your cupcakes are amazing.
Make some and take them down."
I made 90 in a tiny little kitchen in Sydney and I took them down.
And while I didn't sell many of my clothes, I sold all of my cupcakes.
So I was left standing there with a pile of cash, all of my clothes and cupcakes that
are sold.
I kept selling my cupcakes and I reinvested every cent that I've made into cake decorating
classes.
So I learned how to learn tiered cakes and stack cakes and novelty cakes.
And over the course of 3 or 4 years, I spent a small fortune on different cake decorating
classes, learning from some of the best decorators in the world.
That gave me another idea.
I have a lot of ideas.
I thought, surely I can open up a cake decorating school and I can teach people for less money
than I what I have to pay.
When I started looking at the classes, it really just wasn't possible.
Once you took into account overheads and what it cost you to hire a space and all those
bits and pieces, public liability insurance.
It was really quite expensive.
So I guess I put my teaching dreams on the back burner for a little while.
And my husband and I moved back up to the gold coast.
When I arrived at the gold coast, I had stopped flying so we decided that I would have a go
at selling my cupcakes for a living.
So I started selling them at the Service Paradise night market in the gold coast every Wednesday
night and every Friday night.
And I made literally hundreds of cupcakes every week, between 300 and 600 cupcakes every
night for these markets.
I'm really glad that I enjoyed it because it was some big hours.
I did it in my own kitchen with a little household oven and I absolutely loved it.
Not long after that, my husband suggested that I put a video up on YouTube.
He knew that I've been wanting to teach.
So he said, "Why don't you put up a video on YouTube?
And just see how you like teaching.
See whether or not you've got the right style for it.
See whether or not people actually enjoy the way that you teach".
So I said, "Alright."
And we put up our Cookie Monster cupcake.
At that time, that was my bestselling cupcake at the market.
So I put it up and you guys loved it.
It got a few views, then it got a few more views, and it got really positive feedback.
Not long after this, we had our first and currently only child Oliver.
And it gave me a lot of time just sitting at home, waiting for him to wake up for a
feed and all that sort of stuff.
So I started making more videos for YouTube.
We did cakepops and we did cupcakes and we did giant cupcakes.
And I basically just made videos about things that I would have wanted to know when I was
first learning to decorate.
We started out with like 10 subscribers and then there was a hundred subscribers, and
then there was a 1000 of you, and now today there is over 230,000 subscribers.
I cannot believe that in 2 years, [238,000] of you guys want to watch me teach you make
cupcakes.
I'm pretty stoked.
The one thing that I love about YouTube is that it literally unites so many countries
and cultures.
We have people watching from America, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand,
Philippines, all over the world.
And the one thing that we all have in common is that we all love cupcakes and that we all
love to bake.
There are so many things that I love about what I do but the main thing that I love is
all of you guys.
Hey guys!
I'm Elise from My Cupcake Addiction and finally, I get to meet you all.
So it's been a massive 2 years and 200 videos and I think nearly 200 or just over 200,000
of you guys following and I guess I just wanted to introduce the face behind the voice, behind
the hands, behind the cupcakes.
I wanted to say a massive Thank You to each and every single one of you.
I feel like I know so many of you, just through comments and interactions and emails and things
like that.
So I hope that you guys get a little bit of inside into me through My Frost/ Cupcake My
Life and found a little bit more about where I came from and how I started baking and I
guess how I got from a little chubby kid that like to eat to someone that loves to create
cupcakes to share with the world.
I am absolutely blown away that over 200,000 people want to follow my channel and want
to see what I'm creating but I couldn't do this without you guys.
I build this channel for you and I try to anticipate what you guys are going to enjoy,
each and everyone single one of you that send me through suggestions and ideas and pictures.
I do my best to make this channel your channel.
So you know, if enough of you guys want something, I do it.
And I hope that I manage to do it to the standard that you guys enjoy.
So I will also want to take this opportunity to answer just a couple of questions about
me, questions that I get asked a lot.
The number 1 question that I get asked, believe it or not, is what color of nail polish am
I wearing.
So for all of you that want to know, my nail polish color is OPI mod about you.
Another question that I get asked a lot is who eats all of my cakes, cupcakes and cakepops
when I'm finished making them for you guys.
Well, I have a family that are very in tune with the days that I film and they happen
to pop by just to see how I'm going, just to drop off some milk or whatever it might
be but they always happen to pop by on the days after I film.
So they're not silly when it comes to sneaking away or look [for] little creations that I've
made for you guys.
And the other question that I get asked a lot is do I have my own cupcake business,
the answer is "Yes".
For the last 7 years, I sold at a market, as you guys have seen in the Frost my Life,
and I just stopped selling at the market in January to focus more on like tiered wedding
cakes and sculpted, novelty, 3-dimensional cakes.
And that's really kind of cool, fun, creative order.
So when I was selling at the markets, I was doing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
different cupcakes, they're maybe like 100 each of 6 different styles and it just...
It didn't get boring but I just wanted to challenge myself creatively because that's
when I come up with cool ideas to share with you guys.
So I sort of cut back on the market and I've [rent] up, what I do as far as custom orders
and as far as wedding cakes and novelty 3-d, sculpted, things that really challenge me
to make myself a better decorator so that then I can bring hopefully those skills to
you guys so that you guys all learn to become better decorators as well.
So as always guys, thanks very much for watching.
***
I love cupcakes.
You love cupcakes!
How much?
I love cakepops.
What else do you love?
I love cakepops!
You love cakepops.
Oli loves cakepops.
Konichiwa.
And Oli speaks Japanese.
Sayonara.