[4] She baked a cake for a friend's wedding when she was just seventeen and worked at local bakers, Bovine Bakery and Cakework.

[4] In 2005, she moved to London and quickly became a food stylist for celebrity chefs such as Yotam Ottolenghi, Nigella Lawson, and Jamie Oliver.

In 2008, Ptak began running a stall at Broadway Market in East London, where she sold cookies, pies, and cakes made at home with fresh buttercream flavoured with seasonal ingredients.

[7] Following two years at the market, Ptak expanded the business out of her home and moved the Violet Cakes stall to a derelict building in Hackney, which she renovated into a bakery-café.

[4] Ptak made the cake for Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor, Prince Harry and Meghan's daughter, for her first birthday held in London in June 2022.