BLACK Saturday couldn't halt this family's passion, SARAH HUDSON reports
In April 2008 Tammie Livingstone set up the kitchen for her family's biscuit business in the main street of Marysville.
Just under a year later she was ready to open the shop front for Crumbs Gourmet Biscuits when the Black Saturday fires devastated the town.
"We were able to find one of my mum's original handwritten cookbooks, some custom-made biscuit cutters and there was a big box of biscuits in the cool room," Tammie says.
"But everything was burnt or covered in toxic silt so it all had to go."
While Tammie, who lives in Healesville, still admits she is nervous about being in the area - "and not a day goes by where I don't think about it" - she has continued the business.
Now the biscuits, which will be on show at the Taste of Melbourne Festival on August 26-29, are being made out of the recreation hall at the Xavier College camp in Buxton - or at least what remains of the camp.
"We were determined to keep going, but this (the camp) is temporary until at least September when their rebuilding will be finished," says Tammie, who works with her fiance Michael and mum Kerrie in the business.
"We are still getting support through the government's emergency relief fund and we couldn't continue unless we had this. But we really need to find a full-time kitchen to be able to cook."
Despite the constricted cooking conditions, Crumbs Gourmet Biscuits continues to make about 1000 packets of their range of eight sweet treats: shortbreads, florentines, yo-yos and chocolate biscuits.
Tammie says for as long as she can remember these biscuits were part of the Livingstone family's Christmas celebrations.
As a child her mum, now the business' chef, was a chef at the Kyabram Hospital and growing up in nearby Merrigum the family were all exposed to her culinary creations.
"We were a family who grew up watching mum cook and, like her, I've always loved cooking for people," says the 28-year-old.
"The reason we went in to biscuits was because as a kid all these biscuits were made at Christmas time.
"Christmas brunch always had fruits, berries and beautiful florentines, yo-yos and all the biscuits we now make.
"They were such a treat and we wanted to share them with people."
Tammie, a mother of two young boys, did not immediately go into the cooking trade, instead studying psychology in Sydney and meeting Michael.
In 2006-07 the couple took a year off to tour Australia, during which time they immersed themselves in the best of the country's food, produce and farmers' markets.
"We were looking for a business to start up but we weren't sure what we were passionate about," Tammie says.
"We found the Barossa to be the most interesting and Margaret River and Tasmania, where it's like going on a food journey - you go to one town for cheese and another for chocolate.
"We liked the whole idea of a community experience rather than a supermarket."
They returned to Victoria - and Tammie's parents who were now living in Buxton - and chose to run the business in Marysville and live in Healesville because they loved the district and being with family.
"One of the things we wanted to be a part of was a community. We want to employ people here.
"And because it's a family business my mum gets to spend a lot of time with her grandsons."