Angie of Sweet Creations began decorating cakes about 5 years ago after her youngest daughter turned 2.   She had been in the retail and design industry for 25 years before she had children.   After her children were born, Angie and her husband decided to move to Texas so that she could stay home with them.

Angie loves to cook and design, so baking seemed to be a logical path for her to follow.  She took the Wilton Decorating Courses 1-3 at her local Hobby Lobby and everything blossomed from there.   She began creating little works of art for some of the local residents and word slowly got out about what she was doing.   It took a couple of years but she is at the point now where she doubles her orders each year.

The most Angie has received for a cake so far has been $600.  This included all the supplies and time that was put into making the cake.    After all her costs were taken into account, she is not sure she charged enough.   She is still in the process of learning the different aspects of running a cake decorating business.   As she gains more knowledge about the business, she will have a better idea of how much she should be charging for her cakes. 

The best advice Angie would like to give someone interested in getting into the cake decorating business is to take it slow in the beginning with the purchasing of pans and specialty items.   You will find that when you first get started cake decorating everything is so exciting that you may want to run out and start buying lots of cake pans.  However, you will find that unless you have someone ask for a specific character, you may never need or use that pan again.  Or in Angie’s case, she has several shaped pans  that have never been used because she custom carves most everything she does.    Therefore, she recommends building your cake supplies up slowly. 

Angie loves using fondant  and also creating 3D shapes.  She finds it so much easier to create the details on parts of the cake that cannot be done with buttercream.  Fondant also hides the little oopsies that each cake seems to have.  She prefers to use Satin Ice  ready-made fondant and has it shipped in from Cakes by Sam.   She finds they have a great website store and their prices are very reasonable.  Angie lives in a very small town and she can’t find any of the specialty cake  items there.  The Internet has so many resources that you can find anything you need with a click of a button.

One of the biggest decorating mistakes she ever made on a cake was using a very moist chocolate fudge cake as the bottom tier on a three tier topsy turvy cake.  No matter how many supports she tried to use, it would not keep the shape and as you can imagine had to be re-done.    She never thought that a cake being too moist would cause a problem, but she learned to use a firmer cake on the base when it is more than two tiers high.

Out of all the cake designs that she has done, Angie’s favorite was a 3D horse  lying on his tummy. Those big eyes looking up at you were so sweet and the reaction of the little boy who received the cake was priceless.   She has another cake that is closer to her heart.  Her oldest daughter drew her own three tier birthday cake and Angie was able to duplicate her drawing .   Her daughter was so proud of her work; it was like she made it herself!

For children’s birthday parties, Angie enjoys creating cookie favors that match the party theme.   Instead of giving out candy and other items, each child receives a hand decorated cookie to bring home.  She recently did one of a John Deere Tractor cake  and matching favor cookies.  They really turned out great.    She also made an adorable Wubbzy birthday cake  with matching kickball favor cookies.   Besides making great party favors, displaying the favor cookies is a wonderful way of adding to the birthday party decor.

Although Angie is self taught in many areas of cake decorating, she hopes to one day have a chance to take classes from some of the great cake artists of our time!  

To view more of Angie’s gorgeous cake and cookie creations, please visit her flickr photo gallery.

Related Links:
Wow Wow Wubbzy Birthday Party
Horse Theme Birthday Party
Cowboy Theme Birthday Party
John Deere Deluxe Party Pack