Everyone loves a sweet treat, right? Enjoying cakes is one thing, but becoming a master baker is another. Kate Wood decided to start her blog Wood & Spoon, after using baking as a tool to wind down and relax. After sharing her creations with her friends and family, her husband suggested that she pursue baking as part of her career.
From there, her blog was created where she is now honing her skills as a writer, photographer, computer programmer as well as, of course, an excellent baker. With a love of sugar and butter, writing and a true devotion to her family, Kate has created a beautiful space to enjoy the sweet life.
With over 40k followers on Instagram, people are absolutely loving what she does. We spoke to her about family life, her favourite recipe and her (very exciting) end goal…
“Primarily, it’s less about creating food and more about creating moments.” – Kate Wood
Taylor Magazine: Tell us about your blog and what you do.
Kate Wood: The Wood and Spoon blog was born about two years ago. It started as a baking and dessert blog but I’ve also now started including content about my children, moving into motherhood, being a wife and all those types of things. The bulk of what you’ll find on my site is a lot of sugar and butter, but I also like to tell stories. So I would say I’m a baker, a storyteller and along with that I’m a photographer and a computer programmer. They don’t tell you all the things you need to become when you start you’re own blog!
Taylor Magazine: There is so much that comes with a blog – that’s something people tend to forget! What do you love about baking and creating recipes?
Kate Wood: Primarily, it’s less about creating food and more about creating moments. I started out baking cakes, it was more of a celebratory thing – I just loved the art of celebrating and being the one that brought the goodies along! That was something that really excited me about baking. Of course, I love the experimental side of it as well. I’m a dietician by trade, so I have a little bit of food science background. Really it was more about making beautiful food that made people happy! That’s definitely my favourite part, alongside sharing the things I create. Eating it yourself isn’t a whole lot of fun, but sharing it with people you think are awesome is great!
Photo Credit | Jesse Walsh of Dreamtown Co.
Taylor Magazine: Tell us all about your new family and transitioning into motherhood.
Kate Wood: My husband Brett and I have two kids – Aimee is three and George is one. They’re really close in age, so it’s pretty busy in my house! You obviously know how much you’re going to love your children when you are pregnant and are going through that journey, but it was really surprising to me just how deeply I would care for them. The really fun part as they continue to get older and grow, is watching them begin to love each other. Their relationship is so young, it’s only a year and a half old, but it’s so special. That’s one of the best parts of being a mother – watching your children learn to love each other.
“That’s one of the best parts of being a mother – watching your children learn to love each other.”
Taylor Magazine: You have a particularly busy lifestyle. What, in your opinion, is key to managing your time successfully? How do you do it?
Kate Wood: I’m list maker! I have lists all over my house – the only unorganised thing about my house, is the amount of lists that are everywhere. If I can manage my lists, I can manage what is going on around me. It’s kind of frazzling sometimes – you just have to make priorities. For me right now, my main priorities are what goes on in my home, my children, my husband, my blog. I try to intermingle those if that’s possible. My three year old loves to be in the kitchen with me, which is usually a full on disaster! It is so much fun though and I see her leaning into baking later in life, so the possibility of her sharing that hobby with me is so wonderful. It’s fun to mix those priorities and make them one, but I also think you just have to knuckle down sometimes. My best advice is wake up before the kids are up, do whatever it is you love and definitely don’t be afraid to wake up in the early hours of the morning to get things done.
Photo Credit | Kate Wood
Taylor Magazine: What advice would you give to someone who wanted to start their own blog?
Kate Wood: One piece of advice would be don’t be afraid to start and the other would be don’t be afraid to fail. The prospect of a blog seemed huge to me – there were so many things I had to figure out and learn, but if you don’t start somewhere, it’s not going to happen. It’s all about chipping away at it – if you’re really good at baking, or writing, just dig in and hone those skills as much as possible. Along the way, you will come across failures, there will be things that don’t go as planned or meet your expectations but that’s ok, it’s a learning process. As long as you’re passionate about what you’re doing, it’s totally fine to mess up a little bit.
“Don’t be afraid to start and don’t be afraid to fail.”
Taylor Magazine: You’re also a photographer and writer – why did you decide to go down these paths on top of baking?
Kate Wood: I was working as a dietician at a hospital here in Alabama and when I had a bad day, I would come home and start baking. I started taking photos of my creations and shared these with friends and my husband realised that this was more than a hobby for me – he saw that it was something I was really good at and told me to think about making it more of a career. That was the beginning of the dream to write a cookbook – that’s the end goal for this entire process. I saw a blog as being a natural starting point for that. A lot of bloggers I was following were starting to get cookbook deals and writing on a larger scale, so I figured that blogging was a possible path into creating my own cookbook. I reached out to people, who gave me great advice to just go for it. Some parts have been easy, like the writing and baking part but photography was something I had to just figure out. Lots of YouTube videos, and terrible photos along the way, but that was how I started!
Taylor Magazine: That’s such a nice end goal to have! Because we love self-care, tell us what you would to do to cheer yourself up if you’re having a busy or stressful day.
Kate Wood: Is wine an answer?!
Taylor Magazine: Of course, always!
Kate Wood: Okay so… wine, definitely! On a more serious note, and this will sound so cheesy, but there is a lot to be joyful about in life. My life has been marked by a lot of special and beautiful things. When I feel down, I try to take a step back and remember those things that bring me joy. My family is a beautiful part of that and my spirituality is also really important to me too!
Photo Credit | Kate Wood
Taylor Magazine: We agree! Focusing on the positive is so important. What is your all time favourite recipe that you’ve created?
Kate Wood: My very favourite that I’ve ever come up is the recipe for my cinnamon bread. When I was pregnant, there was a bakery near my home that sold this cinnamon bread I was obsessed with! I would eat it all the time and I just knew I had to re-create it at home. I probably made around 25-30 loaves of bread to try and get it exactly how I wanted. I finally got it, and it is the most delicious thing ever! It’s a labour of love, it takes forever, which is kind of annoying but it is so worth it. Cinnamon bread fills my heart!
Taylor Magazine: Tell us an unusual fact about you.
Kate Wood: Oh… that’s a good one! Well, one that does surprise people often is that I’m a dietician. People are like, what are you doing? They don’t understand how I’m baking all these treats and then counselling diabetics as my day job! Something that I’m really good at, which has no use whatsoever, is quoting movies! I can find a movie quote to apply to any life circumstance. A good movie with lots of good quotes is worth its weight in gold!
Taylor Magazine: What is your plan for the next five years – what do you want to achieve?
Kate Wood: I am going to write a book! Even if I have to self-publish, I’m going to do it and it’s something I’m really looking forward to including in my life. I want to be a published writer – you heard it here first! I really think our family is going to grow too. I don’t know if that means me actually birthing another child (I’ve only just got back into my jeans), but I really want our family to grow, so we’re look at different ways to do that. Those are my two biggest goals for the next five years!
You can follow Kate’s Wood & Spoon blog here for more yummy recipes, and follow her on Instagram to keep up with her exciting new projects!
