Making cakes is therapy for Ilkley shop owner (From Wharfedale Observer)

Making cakes is therapy for Ilkley shop owner

3:00pm Friday 2nd November 2012 in News By Amanda Greaves

The founder of an Ilkley business is celebrating a year of balancing her new trade with rewarding work in a Bradford hospital.

Moorish Cakes owner, Pat Moore, set up the cake-making and decorating business a year ago – and it has fast become a success story.

But Mrs Moore, 63, of Eastburn, has also carried on working as a therapist providing specialist treatment for angina patients at Bradford Royal Infirmary, despite initially retiring earlier this year.

She works with outpatients five mornings a week, providing external enhanced counter pulsation therapy. Only a handful of centres in the country offer the treatment, Bradford Royal Infirmary being the most northern.

In the afternoons, Mrs Moore returns to Moorish Cakes in Wells Road, where she and her daughters design and make elaborate cakes and cupcakes for weddings and birthday celebrations.

She said: “I love working with people, obviously. I’m a people person, working with patients and working with members of the public who come in here. I get a lot of satisfaction when I see their faces.”

A mother of six, Mrs Moore first began making cakes as a hobby when her children were young. She later went to a night school to learn the art of sugarcraft – making intricate edible flowers and decorations.

After working in the cardio-respiratory department of Bradford Hospital for more than 20 years, one of her daughters suggested setting up a shop. As well as making bespoke cakes, they hold small cake decorating parties for children.

Mrs Moore retired from her work at the hospital earlier this year after her patients had completed their therapy sessions. But colleagues asked her to return part-time as other patients required the sought-after treatment.

Mrs Moore eventually hopes to train another therapist to continue the hospital work to concentrate purely on her cake business.