The musician who turned her hobby into a bakery

When Liz Oughton started baking sweet treats for her band more than a decade ago, she had no idea how popular the snacks would become.

The freelance musician was encouraged to turn her hobby into a business during lockdown and now bakes more than 700 cookies a week from her converted garage in Willenhall.

She works almost full-time for Bostin Bakery, named for the Black Country word's positive meaning: great, brilliant or smashing.

"It feels surreal to have the business. Without lockdown it definitely wouldn't have happened as I wouldn't have time to try it," she said.

"In an ideal world it would be really nice for everyone to have time to try something new."

The 37-year-old balances her business alongside teaching instruments like the clarinet and saxophone, and musical performances in theatres.

She described baking as something that brings people together and provides a sense of community.

For Ms Oughton, baking cookies is also a meditative activity, except for the washing up.

"It's therapeutic and relaxing, you're concentrating on the baking so you've not got time to think about other things," she said.

But why cookies?

"I made them for my other half and he was like 'this is the best thing you've ever baked' and then just refused to eat anything else that I baked," she said.

She regularly posts boxes of her cookies to businesses around the West Midlands and hopes to expand her bakery in the future.

"If you would have told me in 2020 that I'd still be doing this and that I would have moved house to accommodate it, I would have been like 'if you say so,'" she said.

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