When her pals were getting dolls for Christmas, all the baking-mad Ann-Marie Dunne wanted was a Kenwood mixer. Her passion for making cakes has never left her, as Olive Keogh reports

Anne-Marie Dunne was Ireland's first female bakery production manager and aged just 23, also one of the industry's youngest. She studied bakery production and management at the National Bakery School and spent three years in management in industry before deciding she wanted to get back to hands-on baking.

She was recruited by the National Bakery School to teach part-time and she hoped to combine teaching with setting up her own confectionary and cake decorating business. But her part-time teaching hours grew and she has been teaching full-time since 1997. She is now responsible for designing and delivering the professional cake-making courses run by the National Bakery School for mature students.

Anne-Marie Dunne was brought up on a large working farm in north county Dublin. She is the only girl in a family of five brothers and she says that as soon as she was old enough, she started baking. "Baking was part and parcel of everyday life and I loved it even as a tiny kid. I got a terrible teasing one Christmas when I was about 10 and all I wanted was a Kenwood Mixer! I always wanted a career in baking and from about the age of 14 on I spent my Saturdays at Gabriel Vaughan's bakery in Swords. He really encouraged me and I wanted to leave school and become his apprentice. But he wouldn't hear of it. He said I had to finish school and go to college." Since joining DIT Anne-Marie's feet have not touched the ground. On top of taking on a new job, she got married, had two children and did a BSc in education and technology. "It's been a bit hectic, but I love what I'm doing now and it's fantastic to teach mature students. They are so enthusiastic.

"We work them very hard but they seem to thrive on it and their eagerness makes me put everything I've got into my teaching. I have enormous job satisfaction and the students are thrilled with the standard of products they are making, which are as good if not better than most of what they can buy. "

For information about the professional baking courses mentioned here contact the National Bakery School on (01) 402 4676.