A woman has gone viral on TikTok for baking nostalgic cakes inspired by school lunches - including butterscotch tarts, custard, shortbread and iced sponges. <br /><br />Becky Evans, 24, began her baking career over lockdown, making and delivering cakes to her friends and neighbours.<br /><br />Eager to get her business up and running, she started a TikTok account, @beckysbakingstoke.<br /><br />She posted a video of herself baking a chocolate crunch – a gooey and crunchy chocolate slice that most people remember from their primary school days.<br /><br />Becky was thrilled by the response, and began her series, “School Dinner Recipes,” which has amassed nearly 15 million views on TikTok.<br /><br />She entertains her 200k followers by posting recipes for nostalgic cakes, including butterscotch tarts, shortbread and iced sponge – even branching out to include chocolate and mint custards.<br /><br />“This was just a random idea I had one morning,” said Becky.<br /><br />“I woke up and didn’t have much to do that day, and normally, I’d just bake something fun for myself.<br /><br />“I wanted to make an old school-style cake to have in the evening, and I thought I could film them for TikTok, and maybe even make a series of me making them.<br /><br />“At the time, I only had about a hundred followers, so I didn’t think anyone would see it.<br /><br />“It was insane. I posted the video and closed the app for a second, and when I went back on my phone, it had 11,000 views – which for me at the time was a lot.<br /><br />“A few minutes later, I had hundreds of notifications, and the video was at hundreds of thousands of views.<br /><br />“It was really exciting! I was texting my sister the whole time – we’d always made jokes about me being ‘TikTok famous,’ but I never thought it would actually happen!”<br /><br />Becky’s most popular video is her classic sponge cake with white icing, sprinkles, and custard, which has a whopping 6.2 million views and over 2,000 comments reminiscing about their own primary school experience – and even requesting new treats for her to make.<br /><br />Even classic British brands have joined in the fun – with ASDA’s official account commenting, “primary school cake is top tier TBF.” <br /><br />Becky now hopes to grow her following even more – and has made the huge step of launching her own Etsy shop to sell her school-style treats.<br /><br />“I’d always enjoyed baking, but over lockdown I was baking a lot more because I wasn’t working,” said Becky.<br /><br />“People in the area started asking me to bake them things, so I made a lot for family and friends around that time.<br /><br />“Last June, I decided to bite the bullet and register as a business.<br /><br />“It’s been quite overwhelming at times! Before that first video went viral, I had just started my Etsy shop, and I had a couple of orders every so often.<br /><br />“My website was linked on my TikTok, and then orders started flying in. <br /><br />"I had hundreds of orders, and it’s just me doing everything, so it was quite wild trying to keep up with that!<br /><br />“But he response has been really great. Naturally, you do get negative comments, but most people are really nice or asking questions.<br /><br />“I even get messages telling me that people love the series and they’re excited to order something!”
