Meet Perth mum Rachel Lindsay taking the cupcake world by storm

Chances are you follow Rachel Lindsay on social media, and just don’t know it.

Search her name and you’ll find glossy images of a former American Bachelorette lead. Given our Lindsay is married, blonde, and English, it’s not her.

Lindsay’s not posting stories of her family, or sharing the behind-the-scenes of her thriving business. Only some of the parents at her children’s school know what she does for work.

And yet her Caked By Rach brand has more than 2 million followers on Facebook, 1.4 million on TikTok, 1 million on Instagram, and 900,000 on YouTube. She’s also just released her first cookbook through Penguin, Cupcakes For Any Occasion.

Other than a thumbnail-sized portrait of her smiling face, and glimpses of her immaculate manicures on videos of her equally immaculate cupcakes, Lindsay is an enigma.

She prefers it that way.

In a new world of founder-led content and business owners becoming the faces of their brands, Lindsay prefers to let her cupcakes do the talking. And the world is listening.

Her most-viewed video is a Harry Potter talking hat-inspired creation, with Lindsay estimating it’s had up to 500 million views across all of her platforms at last count. The 18-second video shows an ice-cream cone being shaped into the hat, then being filled with coloured M&Ms and perched atop a lush cupcake before it’s removed to reveal red (Gryffindor, of course) chocolate spilling out.

Where her fans see a flash delicious cake, Lindsay sees a day of work. Conceptualising, then baking and constructing the cupcake, trial and error, all before she even begins editing the video. Her perfectionist nature might also add a few hours to the process.

But it’s an unexpected dream job that’s come with a following and offers which the former flight attendant never anticipated.

Baking had always been a hobby. It wasn’t until Lindsay bought a basic €100 cake with a teddy bear on top while living in Ireland for the christening of the first of her three sons that she thought: “I could do that myself.”

“So I did, I made it,” she says. “And looking back now, it was so bad. But everyone complimented it. I loved making the little teddy bears and everything more than the cake. It was a learning process as well because you’re always learning online — I’ve taught myself online and through YouTube.”

Next came the requests from friends and family before a move to Perth prompted her to set up a Facebook page. Soon, she was making cakes for the women in her mums’ group.

A successful baking business followed — birthday and wedding cakes mainly — until a particularly stressful drive from Perth’s northern suburbs to Matilda Bay with a precarious three-tiered number nearly resulted in a mini breakdown and divorce, Lindsay jokes.

Caught between her love of being creative and the stress and pressure that came with executing the perfect cake for someone’s big day, Lindsay turned her hand to making and posting cupcakes on TikTok during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It took off,” she reflects. “A lot of the early videos were just a swirl of buttercream.

“When I look back, how it’s evolved, even the quality of the videos with the iPhone over the past five years . . . what would take off then wouldn’t take off now because it’s saturated (on social media). Then I moved over to Instagram and YouTube, which were a lot harder to generate an audience.”

As her self-taught skills improved — both her cupcake designs and savviness behind the screen — her following grew, with the videos reaching cake lovers and the baking community around the world.

However, if you think this community was all sugar and sprinkles, think again. Lindsay reveals some of the abuse she receives on the platforms, particularly Facebook, is shocking.

The main lightning rod for the trolls? Her “tacky” manicured nails, particularly according to one woman who commented so persistently Lindsay had to block her. And they’re also not bots or people hiding behind fake accounts — rather women who are her mother’s age.

“It’s as if the younger generation, who have grown up with social media, are kind and have more manners,” Lindsay says. “They’ve learnt how to behave online, whereas all the people that are rude to me, if I click into their profile, they’re older.”

As the numbers climbed, Lindsay found herself at a crossroads — throw all of her focus into her cupcake empire, or put the degree she’d just completed to use and become an education assistant.

She went with her sweet tooth, and offers of advertising and brand deals awaited her. Now, Caked By Rach pays what the other path would have.

Despite her success, and perhaps thanks to some lingering impostor syndrome, when the pitch for the cookbook came through she initially thought it was a scam.

“He’s (the editor sending the email) ended up being my editor in America because a lot of my following is in the US,” she laughs. “He’d come across one of my videos and said ‘I’d love to talk to you about a fun decorating book’.”

Over the next year Lindsay worked on the book alongside her editor, before it was photographed in her home. The process also gave her permission to silence the voice in her head telling her this couldn’t turn into something bigger.

Her videos gave the illusion of a spacious white kitchen, but as with all things social media, things are often not as they seem, and it was really just a few tiles. So with the help of her husband, the spare bedroom was transformed into a small kitchen set-up.

The cupcakes, though, live on the top shelf of the family fridge where her three sons, surprisingly, leave them alone.

As for what the future holds, the world is her mixing bowl.

The next big project is a website she’s filling with tutorials, recipes and how-tos. A product might follow — she’s not ruling anything out just yet.

This feature might blow her cover (sorry Lindsay), not that it will change much. She’ll still be her happiest in the spare room, piping buttercream, “tacky” nails and all.