Food blogger Lady Aga makes amazing cakes which taste as good as they look. She tells Ruth Campbell how her growing up enjoying convivial family meals, cooked on the range of her North Yorkshire upbringing home, first inspired her passion for baking and cooking

AT first glance, Lady Aga is nothing like the famous pop star who almost shares her moniker. She bakes wonderful cakes, while her not-quite-namesake makes magnificent records.

But after just moments in food blogger Lady Aga’s company, it looks as though the two are not that dissimilar. For Lady Aga, also known as Celia Glass, is, just like the six-time Grammy winner and pop provocateur, a quirky one-off, unique in her field. Her cakes - from stunning, multi-layered ombre sponges in graded, dark to light, hues with matching icing, to towering wedding cakes covered in hundreds of hand-made, individually painted fondant flowers – are works of art.

Celia, 31, spends hours meticulously perfecting each culinary creation, often working on a cake until the early hours, then rising at 5am to finish off the decoration. One recent, particularly magnificent, red velvet tiered ombre wedding cake, complete with 250 handmade icing hydrangea petals painstakingly painted with edible lustre in white, with hints of peach, pink and green, took her 50 hours to complete.

Although Celia started out baking birthday cakes for friends, as word spread, her fabulous sponges attracted the attention of national publications and appeared in the pages of Brides and The Sunday Times Style magazines. She also featured in a Daily Telegraph’s top ten Diamond Jubilee cakes article.

As demand for her artfully crafted masterpieces increased, she was asked to make an album cover cake for the launch of pop star Danni Nicholls’s record and once even found herself delivering a particularly tall, pastel-coloured ombre cake to a senior stylist in the middle of a photo shoot with top model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. “I arrived in between takes and outfit changes so the first thing I saw of Rosie was her naked bottom! And very gorgeous it was too,” laughs Celia, a Newcastle University graduate, who grew up in rural North Yorkshire.

It was watching, tasting and then helping both her grandmother and mother cooking on their respective Agas that first got Celia, who is married to film producer Tarquin Glass and now lives in north London, interested in food and cooking. As well as making and writing about cakes, outside her full-time job as operations co-ordinator for the Manicomio Italian restaurant group, she fills her popular food blog with recipes and regular restaurant reviews.

Her enthusiasm for food is infectious. Here, for example, is an excerpt from her review of the Star Inn at Harome: “Ok people, it’s high time you met my first restaurant love; the coup de foudre that ignited an irrepressible hunger for wining and dining; the venue that has so much to answer for. I give you, The Star Inn. This is my Castle on a Cloud restaurant, situated in gorgeous rural North Yorkshire with a signature dish of black pudding and foie gras with vanilla scrumpy reduction and caramelised apple slice. Say no more, Mon Amour.

She continues, in her own, inimitable style: “Some (namely my father) would argue that this unrelenting love for The Star stems, in part, from me never having actually picked up the tab. There is a theory that free food tastes infinitely better but if that is the case, why then my parents continued repeat custom? Riddle me that, Daddy!”

Daddy is none other than Major-General Michael Charlton-Weedy, former commanding officer of the 4th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, who now works in emergency planning and, says Celia. "makes a mean soup, great cauliflower cheese and is the world’s best carver".

It was he and his wife, Julia, who share a love of fresh, quality ingredients and a belief in the importance of family mealtimes, who instilled in Celia a love of good food and fine dining. While her father grows potatoes, lettuce and herbs in their North Yorkshire garden, the family also enjoys apples from their orchard and get fresh eggs every day from their neighbour’s chickens

“We always eat at the table, not in front of the TV, " says Celia, who has two brothers Edward 29, and Henry, 27. “Mealtimes have always been a proper occasion in our family, they are always special. The socialising and chatting is very important.”

When she was growing up, both her grandmother and mother’s enthusiasm for cooking was contagious, says Celia. “My mum is an amazing cook, she pulls the most incredible cakes out of the Aga. And there is nothing more comforting than one of her roast dinners.”

Celia started helping in the kitchen from the age of five. “It was nothing too complicated. I made biscuits and fairy cakes. I also have vivid memories of sweet corn tortillas and a delicious peanut butter cake, “ she says.

Educated at Queen Margaret’s School York, she was able to indulge her love of cookery there. “I wasn’t particularly sporty at school. But I was lucky enough to spend hours in the kitchen at school every Wednesday night, taking a City and Guilds qualification,” she says.

Before university, she cooked for fishing and shooting parties in Scotland and worked as a mother’s help for a family with four girls. “The girls enjoyed lots of home-made brownies. I was a bit out of control on the food budget.”

Celia went on to study English Literature at Newcastle University, where she met Tarquin, and eventually moved to London, where she started working for the Italian restaurant group in 2008. She began her blog three-and-a-half years ago. “The baking was very low key at first, a chance to develop my skills,” she says. But having done A level art, the decorative challenges involved appealed to her creative streak.

One of the first cakes she made was a red velvet sponge, covered in cream cheese and sprinkles. “I love sprinkles,” she enthuses. She used coloured rice paper discs she discovered on her honeymoon in Mexico to make a novel piñata cake filled with Smarties for her brother’s birthday.

It was when she started to experiment with multi-layered ombre cakes, in pinks, blues, aqua greens and vibrant purple, that her business began to take off. The ombres, which cost between £70 and £1,000, fast became her signature bake, especially after Brides magazine commissioned one in stunning orchid shades of fuchsia, purple and pink, with cabbage roses on top. She has been busy baking, outside her day job, ever since: “Children’s birthday parties are getting big,” she says.

Unfortunately, says Celia, she cooks not on an Aga but on an Indesit double oven at home, a ground floor flat with high ceilings in Finsbury Park which she shares with husband Tarquin and their puggle dog, Zissou. Tarquin, whose film Tiger House, starring Dougray Scott and Kaya Scodelario, is due out this spring, particularly enjoys her leftover cake trimmings. “I trim the layers of sponge to make it all even, then make him a "cake jar" filled with layers of leftover cake and icing. He loves it.”

Constantly developing her recipes, she is obsessive about measurements. “I weigh everything, even the eggs. I am very specific. Everything, the flour, sugar, butter and eggs, has to be exactly the same weight. That contributes to the taste,” she says. “I do think a lot of cakes you buy in supermarkets can look amazing, but don’t always taste that good. Everyone says my cakes taste as good as they look. “

Celia gets lots of ideas online. Her top tip is to put your cake in the fridge to allow the first layer of icing to set for 20 minutes before doing the top layer. This stops cake crumbs breaking into the icing. “I read it on a food blog and it was such a revelation,” she says.

Transporting a cake covered in buttercream can be a nightmare, she says. “I have had a couple of disasters where a cake has been squished in a box and I have had to run home and redo it," she says. "Taking it on the Tube with a dog is not a good combination. Now I tend to get people to collect or send it in a taxi.”

An average cake involves at least five hours work. “Sometimes I am up until 1am and think: ‘I must be a bit mad, why am I doing this?," she says. "But I do love baking so much and won’t ever say no if someone wants a cake. I love seeing people’s reactions when you produce the finished article. You just can’t beat it.”

W: lady-aga.com