A BARRY mum has tasted prize-winning success after winning a top baking show.

Francesca Price, from Palmerston, clinched the gold award in the Cake International cupcake category recently.

Cake International is a popular sugarcraft, cake decorating and baking show, which attracts more than 1000 world-wide entries annually.

Mrs Price started entering competitions three years ago and has previously received silver and bronze awards at the showcase.

She said: “After my last entry where I received a silver award I had decided to take a break but as the closing date for the most recent show approached I had this niggling feeling that I needed to enter.

"I then had to get to work as I had less than two weeks to make the entry. I've always loved the old fashioned sweet shops and I really wanted to make an entry to represent that so I got to work trying to recreate some of my favourite sweets. But the sweets were time consuming as they all have to be identical.

“Cupcakes are also judged on taste unlike the other entries.

“I wanted to recreate sweet in the flavours so I decided on lemon cupcakes, filled with homemade lemon curd and lemon butter cream topping, and for the other flavour I made mint humbug; a mint and caramel cupcake.”

Mrs Price was unable to attend the awards in person, over the weekend, but said she had a shock when she saw she had won online.

"I honestly had no expectations," she said. "The standards of entries is always very high.

"I had a shock when on Saturday I was sent a photo by a member of a cake group I belong on Facebook to say I had a gold award and a first place in my category.

"It definately took a few days to sink in.”

For details, visit www.francescascakes.co.uk or www.facebook.com/francescascakes