A talented former pastry chef and entrepreneur overcame a debilitating illness to set up her homegrown confectionery business.

As the creative force and founder of the family-run business Sweet Tree by Browns, Christina Brown is one of six entrepreneurs shortlisted in this year’s Food & Drink Heroes Awards, an annual award programme that recognises challenger brands within Britain’s food and drink industry.

Sweet Tree By Browns has grown from an idea Christina, 58, had for an edible table decoration at her daughter's wedding ten years ago to a successful e-commerce brand with a turnover of just under £2 million.

Her confectionery creations have acquired a loyal and often high-profile fan base, featuring in the Big Brother House, on ITV's This Morning, Celebrity Juice and Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway. Christina has also been delighted to include members of the Royal Family among recent new customers this year.

It’s a business that continues to make everything by hand from Christina’s home kitchen in Watford, an accessible location that allows her to balance running a business with living with a physical disability caused by spinal inflammation syndrome myelitis.

Christina said: “I know a lot of people with my condition that can’t work and don’t have the type of creative outlet that Sweet Tree by Browns gives me. I’m so lucky to have it.

“The journey to where we are now hasn’t always been easy, or good for my health. In fact, my physical condition was made much worse by early financial failure at the end of our second year of trading.

"I lost everything, including the outlet that we’d been trading from and, most importantly, my confidence in myself as an entrepreneur. But I picked myself up, enrolled on a course to study the basics of running a business and started again with support from my husband, Chris, from our semi-detached home’s kitchen.

"Eight years later, we’re dealing with 130,000 orders a year and employing a team of ten - and every room in our house resembles Willy Wonka’s factory!”

“It’s not just our products that make us unique, the way we make and pack them by hand in my house with a small (and growing) work family really stands us apart,” says Christina.

“At busy times there can be 13 of us working in the kitchen. What was my lounge is now our ‘chocolate room’ and my children’s old bedrooms are now packed to the ceiling with sugary stock. Photography for our website is all done in the back garden and goodness knows what the neighbours think every time pallets of chocolate shipped in from Belgium are delivered by lorry to my driveway.

The way our all-female production team works together feels just like a family. We look out for each other and when push comes to shove and we’re under a lot of pressure, or I’m not feeling well enough to work, they’re the ones that say ‘we can do this’. It’s a privilege to work with people who are such a source of inspiration.”