Watch: Carrickfergus TikTok star Cheryl Bakes Cakes on a mission to share 'easy and delicious' recipes
A Carrickfergus TikTok star whose channel focuses on ‘easy and delicious’ recipes has shared how her home baking videos are now reaching thousands of people around the world.
Cheryl Smyth set up her channel ‘Cheryl Bakes Cakes’ (@homemadetreatsireland) in 2024, initially with the aim of recording recipes for friends and family.
“I have grown up children who are married and I was recording things for their wives, or for the boys of how I make certain things,” Cheryl said.
"What seems to do really well is traditional, easy, delicious, quick to make food. I break it down into steps, make things affordable, and show people how to do it easily.”
Combining her love of cookery with TikTok, Cheryl’s channel gained further fans when a hilarious ‘weather report’ she filmed during Storm Isha racked up an astonishing 8.2 million views.
Momentum has continued to build since, with over 300,000 people now following her tutorials on how to make hearty fare such as soda bread farls, pint glass wheaten bread, and the ‘OG Northern Irish treat’, Fifteens.
Explaining how she first honed her culinary skills, the local mum and grandmother said: “My granny was a wee country woman from Maghermorne and she was very much about the farmhouse cooking, so that’s where I have got that from. Then we moved to Zambia when I was 7, and my mum allowed me to cook, so I started baking chocolate buns from [that age].”
While a large portion of her audience is from the UK and Ireland, there are also fans from South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Spain.
Her content has also resonated with a large number of American and Canadian followers, particularly those with Irish connections, Cheryl added.
Such is the reach of the channel that while on a recent holiday in Spain, a group of viewers from Cork approached Cheryl for a chat after recognising her from her online content.
And as for the future of the channel, Cheryl is determined to “go with the flow”. She added: “I don’t have any business plans for it or anything along those lines; while I’m enjoying it and people are enjoying it, I’ll just keep going.”