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Joni Davidson had a six-month-old baby and two young children when she started her bakery business.

So it was during nursery hours and naptimes when other mums might grab a little shuteye themselves that she would mix, ice and box customers’ orders.

And five years on, bedtime for everyone else still often means the start of the working day for Joni, 29.

Juggling family and working life continues – but with the sweet smell of success.

Jojo’s Bakes is a flourishing and popular bakery in Joni’s hometown of Montrose.

Joni is a regular stallholder at Montrose Market and other markets, sometimes ably assisted by children Esme, 10, Nancy, 7, and Fletcher, 5, and husband Paul.

Often customers are queued up for Joni’s sweet treats – and that’s unsurprising with offerings such as banana bread Biscoff cookies, Dubai brownies and caramel corn flake roll.

It was baking birthday cakes for her children, and then for friends that inspired Jojo’s Bakes.

As a little girl Joni had baked with her mum and her gran, and showed a natural flair.

“I’d lost my touch with that for a while,” she admits, “but then I started doing the children’s birthday cakes and started baking different things again.”

An ambitious and decadent Descendants birthday cake for Esme which she “threw everything at” was among her early efforts.

“When I look back now I’m like, ‘oh my God, what was I thinking?

“It’s good to see looking back at their cakes how much better I have got.”

Friends and family loved Joni’s efforts.  “Everyone said ‘your cakes are so good, you should start a business'”, she explains.

And in November 2020, when the country was still under Covid-19 restrictions, she decided to give it a go.

After a few years as a stay-at-home mum, Joni was keen to return to work.

“I didn’t know what else to do with childcare and everything, but thought this would work around them,” she says.

“It gave me the flexibility I needed and then it just grew into something bigger and bigger.”

Joni started taking orders for Christmas treat boxes, packed with traybakes, stuffed cookies and the like.

She says: “Fortunately, Fletcher was a good napper as a baby.  Otherwise I don’t think I would have been able to get anything done.

“Fletcher would be napping and my elder two were at school and nursery so that gave me time to bake them.

“Then he would wake up as I was trying to get things boxed.  If I couldn’t get everything done when they were at school it would be when they were sleeping at night.

“So, once everybody else is off to bed at 8pm or whatever, I can be starting work.  Even today, I still sometimes have to do baking in the middle of the night if I’m busy.”

Paul is usually on hand in the evenings and weekends to look after the children if Joni is working on orders or preparing for her market stalls.

But working with an offshore mooring company, he can sometimes be on nightshifts or away for a few weeks at a time.

So there are times Joni has to bake in the wee small hours.

“Sometimes I fall asleep with the children and if Paul is on night shift or away I’ll wake up at 1am and still have lots to do for a stall the next day.  I don’t know how I manage to stay awake some days!”

But Joni has adapted to juggling the demands of work and family.

“I just have to stick to the schedule of getting the kids to school, getting baking done, them coming home, getting tea done, getting them to bed.

“And making sure I don’t fall asleep, so that I can get back up and do anything else I need to get done!”

At weekends when he’s at home, Paul takes on family duties to let Joni concentrate on her market stalls.

“He’ll come along and help me set up then go away with the kids.

“They love coming along too, though, and seeing how busy I am.”

Joni’s customers are clearly impressed with what she produces in her kitchen at home in Montrose.

And Joni is surprised and delighted at demand for Jojo’s Bakes.

“I started it and thought I’ll see how it goes – but it got really busy, really fast.

“I have got customers who have got cakes for the kids since their first birthdays and now they’re five or six and they’re still coming.

“At the markets, I have people who come every time.  It’s great to see people supporting me.”

And the most popular product?

“The favourite from the start is my Kinder stuffed cookies.

“Anything with Kinder in it, everyone’s always loving it.  So I always make double or triple of them.”

Health regulations mean Joni’s kids can’t help in the kitchen when she’s making cakes for Jojo’s Bakes.

“When I’m not doing stuff for the markets, I’ll bake with them.

“My daughter has just been diagnosed with coeliac disease so we’ve been trying some gluten-free recipes.

“My daughters say they want to have a baking business when they’re older and my son says he’s going to be a firefighter and a baker!”

This article appeared in The Courier on 11 October 2025