Jane Endean turned her late mother's old recipe book into a successful business with a charitable aim, writes Zoe Chamberlain.

When Jane Endean lost her mother Rita to cancer, she took solace in an old cookery book they’d shared together.

As she baked their favourite chocolate cake, she was instantly transported back to her happy childhood with her mum cooking and entertaining in the kitchen.

Never did she imagine her nostalgic baking would turn into a family business.

“My mum loved life, cooking and entertaining,” says Jane, 46, who ran a convenience store near Malvern. “As a family we held large barbecues during the summer and a favourite time for everyone was when Mum produced her trays of chocolate crunch, which she would joke was her secret recipe.

“As we were going through Mum’s things, we discovered her recipe for chocolate crunch. Mum and I always cooked together, ever since I was little. If ever I was down in the dumps, we’d bake a cake.

“When I was older, we made novelty cakes as a hobby. She’d make the cakes and I’d ice them.

“Mum’s recipe book was handwritten just like the recipe books were years ago when people wrote recipes on bits of paper and stuck them down in a book that was falling apart.

“There are recipes in there I remember making when I was about seven, some of the recipes are even in my handwriting. She always had that book out.

“I found it very therapeutic to be cooking and thinking of Mum as I baked the chocolate crunch.

“It was lovely to taste it again and lots of friends said they remembered it too. I decided to bake a batch and put it in our shop for the staff and customers to try. I never had any intention of doing it as a business but, in no time, the cakes really took off and we expanded the range and began selling them elsewhere.”

For Jane, it was a huge comfort to be doing something as a tribute to her mum.

“When Mum found a lump in her breast we thought nothing of it because she’d recently been for a mammogram,” says Jane, who is married to Dave, 49.

“I’m a nurse and I didn’t think it was anything, and neither did her doctor. But it turned out to be the most aggressive form of breast cancer. We were totally devastated. It was such a shock although my grandma had been diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 69 too. She started chemotherapy straight away but instead of shrinking the tumour, it just seemed to grow.

“Mum came to live with us but she was only there for six months in the end. My brother was getting married and Mum even helped me to make his wedding cake just weeks before she died. She made it to his wedding in a wheelchair.

“Her passing happened very suddenly, around nine months after she’d been diagnosed. I left her in hospital, having a manicure, then Dave went to see her and he called me, very calmly, and said she was poorly. My brother raced to the hospital from his honeymoon and Mum died. She said she had wanted to see him married.

“She had just turned 70 when she died – the same age as her mum. She was laughing and joking to the end. She always wanted to lose weight and she joked she was the only person who had cancer and didn’t lose weight.

“We’d lost Dad only a couple of years before Mum. He had a brain haemorrhage a few years before that and died of scepticima just before Christmas.

“Both their funerals were packed with people. All of our friends became their friends, which was nice.”

Jane and Dave named their business My Mum’s Cakes and decided to donate at least 10 per cent of their profits to Breakthrough Breast Cancer.

Jane says: “Mum and I always said we were more apple crumble people than tiramisu types!

“So the cakes I make now are flapjacks, teaser malt bars and bread pudding, nothing posh.

“I also make a powerbar with linseed, pumpkin seeds, almonds and cranberries, which sells well in gyms. I have a friend who runs marathons who swears by it. We leave honesty baskets in various different companies for people to help themselves to for £1. I also make rice crispy cakes – people love cakes like this because they are nostalgic. They remind them of the cakes they used to make with their mums. Everyone has a recipe they remember their mum making.

“We’ve taken My Mum’s Cakes to food shows and lots of people have come to talk to us about their experiences of breast cancer. It’s nice to do something so personal. Many of them have been touched by our story, our tribute to Mum. I hope she would have been proud of us.”

The couple’s daughters, Laura, now 22, and Amy, 20, help out with the cake-making when they are at home, although Laura is at university and Amy is in Australia now.

Having grown to sell over 15,000 individual cakes a year, Jane and Dave decided to leave their convenience store and make the cakes a proper business.

Jane says: “We still wanted to keep it small, working from home. But, in the last three months, things have been on hold due to a nightmare house move.

“We moved out of our house near Malvern but the house we were due to move into flooded. So we’ve been homeless for the last few months, just moving from one holiday let to another as it’s not easy to rent a place with two dogs.

“Strangely, having stayed with my brother for a while in Southsea, we’re actually thinking of staying down there now. We originally opened the shop near Malvern because we love people, and we still have contacts and friends in Malvern and so we’ll still be selling our cakes there. We feel that’s important as that’s where it all started.

“Before she died, Mum told me to enjoy life – that’s just what I’m doing as a tribute to her.”

* Go to www.mymumscakes.com for more details