When corresponding with a business, people often forget that there are real humans behind the business.

Truthfully, I don’t really mind as I find it easier to hide behind the business. You see, I’m not the most confident human, so sometimes hiding behind the business feels easier! However, over the last year or so, I’ve been making an effort to be a bit more vulnerable and personal.

Sharing a blog post about me, who I am, behind the business feels like another positive step forward.

So who am I?

Well, I’m Kira and you know me as the owner of The Chocolate Bar. I took over The Chocolate Bar on February 14th of 2015, but today I want to take you further back to share where my story began…

I was born into a tight-knit family. We may live far apart now, but we are still just as close!

We moved around quite a bit when I was a child, but some of my most influential years were spent in a tiny wee village.

We had no cinema, iceskating, bowling, restaurants, shops, beach, soft play areas, sport centres, swimming pool. What we did have was one tiny wee park, a paper shop, our gardens and a lot of fields. While this might sound boring if you grew up in a busy, densely populated place, I loved it.

Having very little to do as a child meant that we had to rely on our imaginations! I quickly learned that nothing is off limits when you use your creativity and imagination. If I wasn’t outside climbing trees, jumping off of stuff (notably the local farmer’s hay bales) or playing a made up game, I was probably baking.

From a very young age, I was exposed to delicious food and was happiest when in the kitchen. My mum was a seamstress rather than a baker, so I cherished the time I had with my granny and auntie who both loved to cook and bake.

I feel really lucky to have grown up with such a positive relationship with food. My family didn’t mind if I made a mess, and they were more than happy to let me experiment. Having this experience as a child is what gave me confidence to get creative and come up with the recipes I use today.

I was so determined in the path I wanted to take from a very young age. I knew that my future would be in food. I spent my childhood looking up to my my granny (my mum’s mum) who was a cook and my gran (my dad’s mum) who worked in a cake shop.

So it was no surprise that when I was finally old enough, I enrolled in college to do culinary arts.

Furthering my education…

I was so excited to be accepted for the course I applied for and even more delighted when the college suggested I skip the first year of the course due to all of the experience I had.

I loved college, learning and applying my skills to a whole variety of dishes and cuisines. However, it didn’t take long for me to decide which area of culinary arts was right for me. Patisserie was my forte and my passion. It was like painting on a plate. I adored it then and still do.

I was really lucky to have incredible staff who encouraged me to keep going down this path. While studying, I sought work experience in a number of places. Education is very important, but showing you have the skills to carry out that knowledge is even more so.

Kitchens are fast paced working environments that can be incredibly stressful. They are certainly not for everyone, but I felt like I thrived there!

I will leave you here for now. I hope that you’ve enjoyed learning a bit more about me and my younger years.

If you’d like to find out how I progressed from studying culinary arts at college to eventually owning my own cafe and chocolate shop, you can read more about my story here.