The Cake Box

Date: May 2008

Trevor Leeding is a 6ft 2in, 15 stone motorcycling rugby player and coach. He’s also an award-winning cake maker and decorator who’s about to open his own confectioners’ shop in Worthing.

With gum shield in place, Trevor has terrorised many an opponent at 2nd Row with Worthing and Shoreham Rugby Clubs. Now 42, he continues to play in the Shoreham veterans’ side, be part of the coaching team for the under-14s at Worthing RFC and work with years 8 and 9 at St Andrew’s CE High School for Boys, Broadwater.

But the larger-than-life Trevor, who’s as likely to be found on his Kawasaki ZX9R Ninja as whipping up a Victoria sponge, is set to ride into new territory with his new business, The Cake Box, at Thomas a Becket crossroads, Littlehampton Road, Worthing.

It’s a long way from his early days as a trainee in a Shoreham bakery when he took his City and Guilds in the Design and Decoration of Flour Confectionery in a course at Brighton College of Technology.

‘I had wanted to be a joiner and cabinet-maker but I couldn’t get an apprenticeship anywhere,’ says Trevor. ‘Then I found that I could really get on with the cake-making.’ Others agreed with him. He won a Salon Culinaire chef’s gold medal for his cherry and fruit cakes, and went on to take the Outstanding Achievement prize at the end of his course.

He has since worked in Shoreham and Small Dole, producing thousands of celebration cakes – everything from a nine-tier wedding special for boxer Chris Eubank (nine to symbolise the number of rounds it took to beat Nigel Benn), to a 60th birthday edible book for horror writer James Herbert, together with countless 3D dogs’ heads, elephants, handbags and a dragon.

Now he’s got the chance to make his own creations at affordable prices for all sorts of occasions. ‘I hope The Cake Box will be the first place people come when they want a cake for everything from Proms’ celebrations and birthdays to weddings, baptisms and funerals.’

But surely everyone can make a cake, or at least pop along to a supermarket and buy one? ‘Yes, you can get some sort of result by putting together a cake at home,’ says Trevor, ‘but for something special, something that may need to satisfy specific dietary requirements or requests, you need to bring in a professional to get it absolutely right for the customer. The cake is one of the most photographed things at a wedding for instance so you want to get it right.’

Trevor has always wanted to get it right in his sporting choices too. As someone whose first sport was pushbike racing with Worthing Excelsior, he later turned his attention to rugby, becoming a founder member at Shoreham. He says, ‘I still play in the first team at Shoreham twice a month or when there’s a league fixture, do the lads’ rugby on a Sunday and Wednesday, and one-and-a-half hour sessions at St Andrew’s once or twice a week. I also get up soon after 4am to start work for 5…’

Sometimes his interests beyond the bakery have put a stop to his prowess with marzipan and sugar paste. A biker since the age of 16 when he bought a moped with money from his paper round, Trevor has since spent much time and money touring on two wheels, including visits to Isle of Man TT for eight years.  But in 2001 he fractured his pelvis after coming a cropper on a bend in Albourne.

‘I learned my lesson,’ says Trevor. ‘I won’t be delivering any specials from The Cake Box by bike!’

Hobbies or special pastimes can inspire many a cake, and Trevor’s commissions have included a three-dimensional fish and a man sitting in a clog. And for chocoholics? ‘I usually suggest a ganache, a mixture of Belgian couverture boiled together with a fresh cream to a fudge-like consistency…..’

The Cake Box Media Release

Below is the media release for the initial opening of The Cake Box, it includes Trevor's history as a Master Patissier and information regarding The Cake Box shop on Littlehampton Road, Worthing.