Alyx Oakley (’16) started baking cakes when she was 12 years old, and was inspired by the TLC show Cake Boss with Buddy Valastro. Since then, she has baked cakes for many events like birthdays, baby showers, and even a wedding cake.

“My cousin’s baby shower cake [was my favorite]. It was three tiers, and she was having a boy so I made cute little animal toppers,” she said.

While most hobbies tend to relax people, cake decorating has actually served as a nuisance for Alyx.

“It stresses me out and I hate it,” Oakley said. “I’m good at it though, and it’s satisfying seeing the finished product.”

Oakley recalls her fondest cake baking memory of when she baked and decorated a cake for her grandmother’s surprise birthday one year.

“It was a surprise, so she had no idea I made her anything. Then when I gave it to her she started crying,” Oakley said. “I love my grandma, so that was a really good feeling.”

When it comes to decorating a cake, Oakley begins with a crumb coat, a thin layer of watered down icing that lightly coats the cake to secure any loose crumbs or tears. Oakley leaves the crumb coated cake in the fridge overnight to harden so that it may be properly iced and decorated the next day.

Once it has hardened, Oakley applies a thick layer of buttercream icing to the cake that serves as glue for the fondant. She then spreads the icing so that is completely covers the cake, and smoothes it out to prevent any bumps for the fondant.

Oakley expressed her hatred for fondant, a very fragile layer of thick hard icing that has the consistency of gum. She cut the fondant into strips and bent them into swirly shapes which were added around the cake to create a puzzle pattern.

After all of the fondant strips were applied, Alyx took the triple washed pink roses and cut their stems and wrapped them in cling wrap so that the cake didn’t taste like plants. After the top of the cake was filled with flowers, she decided which side of the cake would be the front and added a single flower to the bottom that completed her decoration.

The cake was consumed by Mrs. Stuller’s 5A English class, but the cake wasn’t the only thing that was tasty. Maddy Gibson (’16) made it her goal to eat the real flowers that topped the cake after a dare from a classmate.

“They had a little tang to them; and I thought if I had eaten them with the cake, and if everybody else ate them with the cake, it probably would have made it a better cake. So good job Alyx, I don’t know if [Alyx] intended for people to eat them, but it was really good,” said Gibson.

“My favorite part was the arrangement of the flowers on the top of the cake,” said Cameron Bibaud (’16). “I thought the cake was really tasty and so moist.”

If you’re interested in a cake for an event, please contact Alyx Oakley at 410-627-4732.