Baking has always been a part of my life, even before I started working on cakes on my own and holding fundraisers and whatnot. By the time I was in kindergarten I was helping my mom with small things like pouring the brown sugar “sand” onto a sandbox cake and sitting in the back seat of the car, making sure that a round bowling ball cake made it to the party without rolling away. We have tons of photos of me with an apron and a chef’s hat that fell over my eyes, standing next to my mom in the kitchen with the biggest smile on my face. 

However, my passion for baking really started when my family moved to Charlotte, North Carolina and I realized that I could use baking to help other people. It started small, with neighborhood bake sales and a batch of cookies for some friends. My favorite time to bake was during Christmas when we made plates of 5-7 different types of cookies, including hand decorated sugar sprinkle cookies, and delivered them to friends, family, pretty much everyone we could think of - just so long as we got the majority of the desserts out of the house. Eventually, I began holding fundraisers to raise money for different projects, such as Loaves and Fishes and the piano department at Northwest School of the Arts. 

I started to work with my mom more and more, spending a lot of my free time learning to layer cakes, frost cupcakes, and add little touches to our Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Toffee cookies to make them an absolute favorite of anyone who’d ever tasted one. Slowly I began to do more and more cakes on my own until I was working on 1-2 cakes a week, especially during COVID. I had spent a year or two developing my skills working with clay, which easily transferred over to fondant molding. 

My favorite part of baking isn’t the creation of the desserts themselves, but the delivering of it. Bringing smiles to people’s faces is a joy that will never get old, and getting to drive to different places and talk to different people is an opportunity that I am grateful for.

I've been bringing smiles in the form of baked goods for as long as I can remember.  Late night shoots in college, trying to keep moral up and the crew fed with brownies or pineapple upside cakes.  Bundt cakes delivered to the editorial crew during crunch time.  When I became a Production Supervisor, I kept team moral up in my departments with weekly birthday celebrations.  Soon I had artists asking for special treats that I'd never heard of (a Russian Pluck cake, English Flap Jacks (which are NOT pancakes), a peanut butter and jelly cake?!?!) which had me scouring the internet for recipes and grocery stores for ingredients.  

Then co-workers started asking for decorative cakes for baby showers, birthdays, end of movie productions, etc.  So I learned how to decorate with buttercream and how to mold with fondant.  Soon I was averaging at least one cake a week and loving the joy the baked goods brought everyone (although I did hear more than once that my artists lost weight when I moved to a different show).  My husband only complained when I didn't leave some "tasters" for him at home!

We left CA in 2015 and moved to Charlotte.  I started baking gifts for neighbors and friends and the local elementary school but it was a shadow of what I had been doing in CA.  Then my daughter, Ryann, asked to hold a bake sale to raise money for a program at her school.  We were blown away by the generosity of our neighbors and the rave reviews for our mini cakes.  Over the next few years Ryann held bake sales to raise money for many different programs and charities.  Soon she was soaking up any and all knowledge I could give her on baking and cake decorating and searching YouTube and Pinterest for even more tips and techniques.  She found that her talent and love for clay sculpting transferred easily to fondant and I soon found myself asking for HER help instead of the other way around.

During COVID all baking stopped since we thought people would be concerned about germs.  A post on NextDoor caught my attention - a lady craving some homemade chocolate chip cookies.  Ryann wrote back that she'd be glad to help!  That one post launched a ton of orders for cookies and cakes that led to at least one or two baked goods each week.  Ryann has also been baking mini cupcakes and/or bundt cakes for the hardworking teachers and staff at local schools every Monday for the past 4 years.  She delivers the treats to the school each week and is rewarded with so many smiles and notes of thanks.

Ryann is headed off to Webster University in the fall so I'll be losing my bakery partner.  However my son will be stepping in when needed so we can continue to deliver baked goods to anyone who needs a smile or a homemade treat.