Anyone passing Judith McDowall’s suburban Cromwell home in the past year has been able to pick up a sweet home-baked treat from a vending machine in her fence.
Nicknamed the Cookie Dealer, cakes and cookies baked by Mrs McDowall in her home-based business The Cake Lab can be bought from the 30-year-old restored vending machine from 2pm each day.
Mrs McDowall said she started baking part-time after struggling to find someone to bake a cake in Cromwell for her son’s first birthday.
"I was like, ‘oh, yeah, I'll give this a go’ and yeah, people just kept asking me."
The Cake Lab was founded in 2015 when she decided to bake cakes and cookies fulltime.
Her husband Greg suggested the idea and then built a council-registered kitchen on their property.
Her husband then restored it and installed it in their fence.
The type of cookies and cakes sold from the machine were regularly rotated and were popular with locals, she said.
Rotating products allowed Mrs McDowall to gauge which things customers liked the most, such as the chocolate, berry and red licorice-filled Enchanted Forest, the double chocolate chunk and salted caramel Bogan cookies and the Old Man’s Lolly Cake with licorice allsorts and no coconut, she said.
Despite the ups and downs over the years it had been an enjoyable time for Mrs McDowall.
"I love being creative and having my own touch on things and I like to make sure everyone has a cake," she said.
