Going running means I can eat more cakes', grins Emma Goss-Custard, who runs Honeybuns bakery in Dorset. It sounds too good to be true, but making cakes and cookies and being surrounded by delicious ingredients is her job.
Back in 1998 Emma started her baking business with a scrapbook of her granny's recipes and a second-hand bike. 'I spent £50 on the bike and £20 on a basket for the front,' sas Emma, 36. 'I called my delivery round "Honeybuns", and the name stuck.'

In fact baking was a change of direction for Emma, 'I trained as a secondary school teacher but it didn't go well, 'admits Emma, 'I wasn't hot on discipline and the kids ran rings around me. It became clear that I wasn't a natural born teacher'.
Leaving teaching really knocked my confidence and I didn't know what to do next,' says Emma. 'So I got a fill-in job in a little patisserie in Oxford while I decided my next move and it turned out to be the perfect job for me, I loved feeding people.'
'I learnt loads working there and my boss encouraged me to stat making my own range of cakes. I set up Honeybuns with his blessing and using my Mum's Kenwood mixer, I would make cakes into the night, then deliver them by bike in the morning. I'd deliver direct to offices and see people bite into their cakes and start smiling.'

Since then Emma's business has grown so much that she and husband Matt, 40, moved into Naish Farm in Holwell in Dorset in 2002. That bike is still proped up against the wall of the office. It's how I started. I still have my Mum's Kenwood too.

However, Emma's the first to say that her success story hasn't been all sitting around having tea and cake. 'I'm not a naturally organized person and in the early days I was happy just to cover my living expenses,' she says. 'The cakes were winning awards but I was not charging enough for them. So I went on courses to learn more about the financial side of things and joined a nationwide business club which offered strategy seminars, talks and events.'

'We turned a corner in 2002 and that allowed us to move to Dorset. It was our dream - Dorset is the larder of England, a foodie's Mecca. We get our butter and free-range eggs from a local farm, while our honey is from Filberts the Beefarmers at nearby Muckleford,' says Emma. 'But I'm sure that that first year in Dorset put years on me like no other. I was getting up at 4am to manhandle sacks of sugar and oats over to the bakery!'

Eleven years after she first starting experimenting with her gran's recipes in her flat, Emma has earned the luxury of spending an afternoon in the kitchen developing new cakes. 'My gran passed on the recipes she gathered on trips to Italy in her twenties, says Emma. 'Her cakes were so flavoursome - made with very little four and full of almonds and hazelnuts, polenta and citrus. Even today most of the Honeybuns recipes are gluten-free.

If Emma has one tip for women thinking of turning a hobby into a business it's this. 'Trust your female intuition, I was bucking the trend by using fresh lemons and butter instead of flavourings and margarine. But I decided that's what people would like. And I was right.'

Honeybuns opens the doors of the Bee Shack cafe, a converted chicken hut, on the first Saturday of every month from March to December. But if you can't get down to Dorset, you can buy Emmas cakes and slices with your coffee at Sainsbury's and Morisson's cafes and off the shelves in Waitrose. Look out for the Honeybuns logo and you're in for a teat. You can also order Honeybuns goodies from £1.40 on their website, www.honeybuns.co.uk.