Where did this whole delicious mess start?
I grew up watching my grandma decorate cakes - you know, the classic buttercream style decorating that is now becoming a lost art amid fondants and gum pastes and crazy motercycle-with-real-working-headlights-cakes featured on reality cooking shows. MomMom started out just making cakes for her kids and other family members, and then it spread to include her kids' friends, and then other friends, and now everyone in the Potomac River Valley knows that when you want a cake, you go to her.
For me, fancy professional-style cakes were just a part of life - something we had a few times a month in a large close family with plenty of birthdays and anniversaries to go around. Since leaving home, I found that this thing I grew up with is something a lot of people don't get to see and enjoy all the time, so I have something unique and creative to share with my friends and family.
Where do you get your talent/ideas/recipes?
My baking/decorating skill is a combination of years of watching my MomMom work mixed well with a few cake decorating books, supplemented with my own make-it-up-as-I-go style, plus an occasional, "Ooh-that-looks-good-I'll-try-that," thrown in on the side. I pull recipe ideas from friends, family, magazines, cookbooks, Pinterest, and the occasional witch-in-a-gingerbread-house in need of a favor. I mostly play with recipes picked up elsewhere and adapt them to my own taste. My frostings, fillings, and cheesecakes are made from scratch, while my cake batters are made from boxed mixes that are doctored beyond recognition with my own set of rules that's been created through a series of suggestions, trials, and oopses.
What am I cooking up now?
I grew up watching my grandma decorate cakes - you know, the classic buttercream style decorating that is now becoming a lost art amid fondants and gum pastes and crazy motercycle-with-real-working-headlights-cakes featured on reality cooking shows. MomMom started out just making cakes for her kids and other family members, and then it spread to include her kids' friends, and then other friends, and now everyone in the Potomac River Valley knows that when you want a cake, you go to her.
For me, fancy professional-style cakes were just a part of life - something we had a few times a month in a large close family with plenty of birthdays and anniversaries to go around. Since leaving home, I found that this thing I grew up with is something a lot of people don't get to see and enjoy all the time, so I have something unique and creative to share with my friends and family.
Where do you get your talent/ideas/recipes?
My baking/decorating skill is a combination of years of watching my MomMom work mixed well with a few cake decorating books, supplemented with my own make-it-up-as-I-go style, plus an occasional, "Ooh-that-looks-good-I'll-try-that," thrown in on the side. I pull recipe ideas from friends, family, magazines, cookbooks, Pinterest, and the occasional witch-in-a-gingerbread-house in need of a favor. I mostly play with recipes picked up elsewhere and adapt them to my own taste. My frostings, fillings, and cheesecakes are made from scratch, while my cake batters are made from boxed mixes that are doctored beyond recognition with my own set of rules that's been created through a series of suggestions, trials, and oopses.
What am I cooking up now?
For now, cake decorating is my hobby. I am not a professional cake decorator or pastry chef (though perhaps that may come someday). Like my MomMom 50-odd years ago, I decorate cakes for my friends and my family, and I do it for fun. This is a place for me to showcase what I can do and what I'm learning.
Will you make a cake for me?/What do you charge?
If you're around the Salt Lake area, I love to take commissions for cakes privately. See my Commissions & Costs Page!
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